Jeremiah Budzik, Asscociate Director, Digital, writes:

A couple of months ago a lot of press given recently to the release of Chrome, Google’s web browser, and the reception of the browser, to say the least, has been mixed. However, what has not been addressed well in all of the coverage is what Chrome means to marketers.

I believe there are three distinct areas where Google’s Chrome will have an impact on online marketing. I also believe that Chrome can feed Google’s existing revenue streams. First of all, there will be an immediate impact on your most important online marketing tool, your website. If your site doesn’t work in the popular browsers, it is all too easy for your consumers to flit away to your competitor’s site that does work with the user’s browser. Even though Google claims to have tested Chrome with over 1 million websites, do not assume that all will be well with your own website.

For just one example, look at http://www.comcast.com in Firefox or Internet Explorer (the two most popular browsers). Now look at it in Chrome. At the time of writing, this site of one of the largest cable companies in the United States does not work in Chrome. Some users have seen errors prompting them to upgrade to the latest browser version, the Comcast site mistakenly identifying Chrome as an old, out-of-date browser, but I have only been able to receive a large blank page and no website at all. Imagine what would happen if Sky or the BBC were suddenly inaccessible to thousands of users on a new browser. What if your site suddenly disappeared from view to thousands of potential customers? Test your website now and keep testing all new versions of your site with Chrome. It is better to be prepared now than suffer a Comcast-style outage when your new functionality just breaks.

This brings me onto the second form of online marketing which feel the impact of Chrome – Rich Media display advertising. Flash is the platform for Rich Media on the web - Eyeblaster, Pointroll, DoubleClick Rich Media (formerly Tango Zebra) are all based on Flash. Much of the video online is also run through Flash. YouTube leveraged the ubiquity of the Flash browser plugin to facilitate video display to millions of people almost overnight and companies like Hulu and Stickam use similar Flash-based technologies to stream TV and live ‘web-chats’ or video blogs/video podcasts respectively. Unfortunately, Flash support in Chrome is a hit-and-miss affair. Sometimes it works, like on YouTube, and sometimes it doesn’t like on Hulu. Expect your creative agencies put your online creative treatments through some heavy testing with Chrome shortly. A creative refresh might well be in order.

Finally there is paid search and what, if any impact Chrome will have on PPC. Google has the lion’s share of search worldwide and according to Hitwise over 84% of the UK search market. So why introduce a web browser? Google makes a point of stating their constant work to improve their quality of servies and improving the relevancy of search so it should not come as a surprise that Chrome has some ‘features’ that could dramatically reshape search marketing on Google.

With Chrome, Google has replaced the standard search box and address bar of standard browsers and built upon the functionality of the so-called ‘Awesome Bar’ in the latest version of Firefox. The Awesome Bar is simply the address bar of a normal browser that remembers sites you frequently visit. As you start typing in the Awesome Bar, Firefox begins to display a list of your oft visited web destinations based on what you are typing. It’s a great time saver and allows you to find your favourite sites quite easily without needing to bookmark them.

Chrome takes all of this functionality and combines it with the Search box found on most browsers into what they call the ‘Omnibox’. Not only is the list of sites in Chrome’s ‘Omnibox’ built on the sites you have visited before, Chrome will start listing all popular websites matching the text as you enter it. Essentially Chrome treats everything you type into the Omnibox as a search. The Omnibox sends all of the information you type back to Google as you type it, giving you a real-time list of potentially relevant websites. If you only know part of the name of a website, just typing you will be presented with a list of matching sites enabling you to quickly find what you’re looking for. While Google will be capturing all data entered into the Omnibox, including all website addresses and search queries along with the IP address of the user, it should be noted that Google claims they will only store about 2% of the total amount of data collected via the Omnibox.

According to Google, this data will be used to improve their services including search. I predict further refinements to the Google algorithms based on the data collected from thousands of Chrome users across the world. Imagine enhancing the relevancy of paid and natural search results based not only on what the current user has entered, click through rates from past AdWords ads, but also coupled with actual web surfing behaviour from thousands of Chrome users.

Imagine if they could actually pair that with all of the other data they collect about you – potentially from Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets - Google Calendar, their Toolbar, your Google maps and your Googlemail. They already programmatically scan (or read) your email to serve AdWords results along side your Googlemail messages. All of this data could radically transform search results as we know them. I see improvements to both ‘standard’ and Google Universal Search, where a single results page may include video results, shopping, maps, images along with AdWords and ‘natural’ website results as where this all could go.

However such ‘improvements’ are not without a dark side. Consumers already mistrust marketers and fear that we use third party ad serving to follow them around the web and that cookies will steal their NHS number and read their HMRC self-assessment form. It is not so hard to believe that this same degree of privacy control demanded of advertisers by consumers will come back to Google as well. Whilst I could be wrong, I foresee strong consumer backlash once they become more aware of just how much data Google is collecting on them. Sir Martin Sorrell says that Google is still a ‘frenemy’ of the advertising industry and I must agree. Google needs to be quite careful with what it does with its mountain of data on individual web users. A small misstep could have dramatic implications for us all.

Useful link: www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/09/03/dlchrome103.xml