Performics SEO/SEM Section to be Sold by Google

It has been almost a year since Google announced that it plans to acquire the advertising giant DoubleClick for 3.1 billion US Dollars. While the government was started to look into whether or not this acquisition will put Google in a quasi-monopoly position in online advertising, did the search engine marketing and optimization talk about a problem that was much more important to them.BackgroundDanny Sullivan did express his concerns already right after the announcement at his popular podcast and radio show “The Daily SearchCast” at WebmasterRadio.fm. What he was talking about is the DoubleClick Performics division, which is separate from the main business of DoubleClick, which is providing a display advertising publishing and tracking platform. He stated then and there already that Performics has to go, best would be even before the acquisition is finalized.The IssuePerformics is one of the largest US affiliate networks, but that is not the concern of the SEO and SEM marketers. Little known to affiliate marketers is the fact that Performics is also one of the largest search marketing agencies and search engine optimization companies in the United States.Conflict of InterestA company whose job it is to improve ranking and visibility in search engines owned by the largest search engine itself is a clear conflict of interest and asks for bad blood and issues. The issue was discussed at many blogs and other places around the web and offline at conferences as well.The acquisition got the green light from the US in December 2007 already, but the European Commission required a little bit more time to get to a consensus. In the months since the announcement in April 2007 did Google and DoubleClick keep things quiet and did not bring the issue up.Green LightWhen the European Commission gave the green light as well at the end of March and Google officially announced that the acquisition of DoubleClick was now completed did the topic heat the heads of the search marketing community again, reaching its climax with Danny Sullivan’s long plea to Google to get rid of Performics. In another post did Danny Sullivan also mention Microsoft’s acquisition of Avenue A/Razorfish, which next to display advertising, does search marketing as well. He said that what applies to Google does also apply for any other search engine, including the no.3 in the United States, Live.com and MSN Search by Microsoft.The AnnouncementGoogle did make an announcement yesterday that relieved the search engine marketing industry. They said that they are going to break up Perfomics SEM and SEO business from their affiliate business and then will sell the SEM/SEO part, but keeping the affiliate marketing/network piece.What’s Next?This shows Google’s commitment and interest in the affiliate marketing space, which became obvious to most marketers when they announced the launch and later the global expansion of their Google Pay per Action program that allows advertisers to promote their products and services on a CPA basis as compensation rather than the typical pay-per-click (CPC/PPC) or CPM (impression) basis.It will be interesting to see how things will go from here. Changes to the Performics affiliate network will probably not be right around the corner, because it will take Google a little bit time to fully integrate the Performics business into the Google platform.What are your thoughts on this and where do you think is Google heading next?Cheers!Carsten CumbrowskiNo BS Internet Marketing Resources at Cumbrowski.comp.s. Performics also sent an email out to all affiliates of the network following the announcement by Google. Here is the entire content of that email for all the folks who are not involved directly with Performics.

As you are aware, Google closed its acquisition of DoubleClick on March 11, 2008. Since that time, we have been actively involved in integration planning for each of our products and business units. We have recently completed this process for the DoubleClick Performics business.As a result of our planning, we are formally splitting DoubleClick Performics into two separately-run business units – Affiliate Marketing and Search Marketing. We plan to integrate the Affiliate Marketing business into existing Google operations, providing enhanced value and reach for our Affiliate advertisers and additional tools and monetization opportunities for our publishers. We plan to sell the Search Marketing business unit to a third party. In Europe, these plans and their implications for our employees are subject to consultation with staff and employee representatives, where applicable.During this transition, we will ensure that customers receive the same high level of service that they have always experienced. For those of you who have DoubleClick Performics relationships that include both Search and Affiliate Marketing services, we will assign separate account teams for each service. We will contact you shortly with more information regarding your assigned account team.The Search Marketing business will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold. All client data will, of course, be kept confidential. Please contact yourSearch account manager for additional information.We plan to continue to aggressively invest in and grow our Search Marketing business during this period of transition, and we look forward to continuing our relationship with each of our Search clients.Thank you for your continued support of DoubleClick Performics.

About Carsten Cumbrowski

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