Dec 08
3
Oohgle, do you?
Ooh, what’s this?
I’ve been noticing “Oohgle” adverts on the tube trains around London recently. They consist of no information about the product, just a bright pixelated search button containing the text “Oohgle”.
Now, I usually get a bit annoyed with adverts that don’t tell you what they are selling, but this time it was so sparse and gave no hint whatsoever about its purpose, that I had to look. So, off to Google I went to follow the honey trap set out on the tube.
It turns out Oohgle seem to be some sort of advertising agency, but even their website is void of any hard facts about what they do. They have a tool called Prism Search which “analyses the relationship between OOH and Search” – OOH being “Out Of Home”, which apparently seems to mean bewildering people until they finally crack and curiosity gets the better of them – as I did.
However, Oohgle seem to be offering something a bit more intelligent than just bewilderment. The statement “The way we gather data means we’re not reliant on campaign-specific URLs” suggests to me that they are replacing URLs printed in traditional media with the suggestion to search for a particular keyword, and as we all know, keywords are trackable, which is where Prism Search seems to come into play.
Ooh Bugger
This concept is actually quite a reasonable idea, but it could go massively wrong.
If, for example, your expensive above the line campaign contained the keyword, oh I don’t know, let’s say ‘Oohgle‘, then to actually see any traffic off that you’re going to have to be number one for both PPC and Natural listings across all of the big engines. That could be quite expensive depending on the keyword, but much worse than that, it means competitors can very easily hijack your expensive advertisment by being a little bit better at SEO or having a slightly more robust PPC campaign.
Ultimately this is a good idea, but unless you are prepared to invest a lot of money to safeguard your OOH keyword, then it’s a dangerous prospect, although does open the door for your PPC agency to be much more attentive to your competitors advertisements. If you can move quickly, you could be the one reaping the benefits, not them!