ContextTarget. I spoke today with Lance Podell, president of Kanoodle.com's contextual advertising division, ContextTarget. He most recently worked for Sprinks, which Google bought this past October.

To understand Google's blunder at having lost Lance to Kanoodle you have to first take a look at his history with About.com.

The History. Lance helped About.com develop the Sprinks property, which was the first service that allowed advertisers to place their ads contextually across the About.com network of sites.

Google followed Sprinks with AdSense, but could not offer the flexibility that Sprinks offered. With Sprinks there were no blundering placements, like the now infamous ad for suitcases on an article page about a murderer who put body parts in a suitcase. Sprinks offered ad sales by time of day, as well as the ability to block competitor's ads.

And, of course, Sprinks offered the ability to buy search ads separately from contextual ads.

Google, in an effort to protect their AdSense pricing, bought Sprinks. Two months later the brains behind Sprinks started working for Kanoodle.

Why Google Bought Sprinks. In our interview I asked Lance why he thought Google bought Sprinks. "Google got nervous because they realized the market preferred Sprinks. They bought Sprinks so they could shut the door."

What they didn't buy is the Sprinks concept of contextual advertising, and they sure didn't hang onto the crew that's going to make it happen for Kanoodle.

Why Did Google Lose Lance? My big question is if Lance was integral to the development of Sprinks then why did Google let him go? If they let the innovators slip away are they really serious about contextual advertising?

Lance started at Kanoodle on the 15th of December. In the first two weeks they secured MarketWatch as a partner (MarketWatch was in negotiations with Google at the time), and already have 300 advertisers. I asked him who else is coming on board and he said in three or four weeks we'll hear about a few others.

Separate Sales. I asked him his thoughts on why Google isn't separating AdSense from AdWords.

"What if contextual advertising is really better? Then where would Google be? Their brand is built on search."

Big Plays, Big Buys? Watch for big plays from Kanoodle in the contextual advertising area... and watch for another big Google buy.

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Garrett French
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So Garrett, what are you saying here? That even though Kanoodle is growing at a rapid rate - probably faster than any other PPC - that Google is planning to buy them out? Why would Kanoodle still continue their expansion and development knowing that Google would buy Kanoodle just to kill them off like they did to Sprinks?

I agree too that Google did not buy Sprinks, Kanoodle did. And Kanoodle was even smarter because whereas Google paid millions for Sprinks - Kanoodle got it for Lance's salary....funny, Google screwed themselves like that!

Google will not continually purchase companies to kill software and lose the employees.

Eventually Google will role out many of the same features the other companies have.

Kanoodle is growing because that is what businesses like to do. If they were not growing they would have no value and there would be no reason for anyone to want to buy them out.

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Well, if they already bought Sprinks to squelch Podell's project, why wouldn't they buy Kanoodle too? Then again, it would be cheaper to hire Lance back...

I would not be surprised if Google made an offer for either Kanoodle or Lance here in the near future.

Kanoodle execs must know it's a possibility that Google will try to buy their company, considering that Google bought Sprinks, which offered a similar service as Content Target.

Google's primary competitor in contextual advertising is Overture, and I don't see Yahoo letting them go any time soon.

Inktomi's continuing to expand and develop because they're a fresh, driven company.

Would Kanoodle's owners sell? That I don't know (though I'll admit my original post indicated that I thought they would).

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Garrett French
Editor, WebProNews.com
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although they were friendly and somewhat had a good user interface, they didn't produce anything close, not even 2% of what Overture PPC gave us.

So, my point, is why bother with Sprinks???

I advertised with them from the very start, till the very end. They were my experiment PPC. I'd ghost everything I had on Overture exactly on Sprinks. Over years of collecting this data, I found they weren't worth using anymore...but still continued in case things changed.

Not sure what all the hype is about Sprinks, especially if you haven't done any live testing against other PPC with the exact same terms, KWs, descriptions, and titles.... that is the only true way to test out one PPC against the other.... not an overall "theatre" test though.

So, nothing bad to Sprinks, they just never had the power...

Live from Idaho...

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Google bought Sprinks in part for its contextual technology and other programs they had... plus they gained more places to put their contextual ads, places a lot better than the fly by night ad sense customers they were having problems with.
Plus Sprinks had a good rep for providing quality traffic....
Kanoodle may have good staff... their results are a little lacking....

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