Reuters is reporting that Google is opening up its “advertise on this site” feature to everyone by re-branding it “On-site Advertiser Sign-Up.”
Previously it was in a closed beta. They also put together a new page that aggregates all of their tools for Web publishers. With blogging, this Google constituency is growing as will its importance.
Google is clearly taking steps to reach out to publishers of all kinds with lots of services. This includes: empowering individuals who want to blog, helping people list items for sale in Google Base, and, with this new move today, enabling bloggers to actively solicit advertisers. On top of it all, Google is increasingly offering tools to help us track our performance as micro publishers – e.g. Google Analytics and Google Sitemaps.
So what’s going on here? To me it’s obvious that The Big G is all about the Long T – the Long Tail that is. They recognize that they win best by aggregating services for the niches and then building enough of a base to generate cash flow. It’s all very smart and it’s indicative of why Google will dominate all of its competitors – including AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft. Those guys all have a short tail focus (e.g. securing big brand name advertisers). It’s too difficult to walk away from this revenue stream to aggregate niches.
Google started out as a Long Tail company and it’s continuing to operate tht way. Never underestimate the power of the Long Tail.
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.
