Go Daddy Innovates an Online Advertising Minitrend

by Steve O'Keefe on October 20, 2010

Last week, I used the online advertising market to illustrate the difference between megatrends and Minitrends. Google has prospered tremendously from the mega-shift in advertising away from print and broadcast media. In doing so, Google has pioneered many Minitrends, including inserting fresh ads into old content.

Google isn’t the only one innovating in this space. Last week, domain registrar and host Go Daddy announced a clever new service called AdSpace that makes online advertising more accessible to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Go Daddy’s AdSpace allows entrepreneurs to fill out a simple form about their business, and Go Daddy takes it from there. The company’s online advertising experts follow this fascinating chain of activities:

1. They create a web page based on the info you provide.
2. Their keyword specialists then select keyphrases for your business.
3. Next, they purchase search ads on Google to drive visitors to the site.
4. Then they provide phone numbers and email addresses for customers to contact you.
5. Finally, they track all the inquiries, including recording all phone calls and storing all emails.

Go Daddy’s AdSpace program takes advantage of expertise and technology to provide quick, inexpensive access to sophisticated online advertising tools. Go Daddy founder and CEO Bob Parsons describes the new program:

AdSpace was designed for small businesses wanting to leverage the power of the Internet — businesses that know they need to advertise online, but don’t have big budgets or tech experts to feel comfortable taking financial risks.

Jake Widman, a longtime tech writer who himself has followed the trend away from print magazines to online journalism, covered the story for InformationWeek‘s SMB blog. Widman explains how Go Daddy’s unique dashboard works:

The service also provides a dashboard for tracking the email and phone leads generated by the ad page. Phone calls are recorded and can be played back later — before a followup sales call, for example. The Dashboard also provides time-based tracking functions, so the company can see if the ad campaign is increasing leads or sales and by how much.

Go Daddy’s AdSpace service starts at just $50/month. Who would have thought that you could get a custom-built website for free with the purchase of a modest search advertising program? This is just one more novel example of entrepreneurs such as Bob Parsons teasing new innovations out of advances in technology. Go Daddy, Go!

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “AdSpace Innovation Puts SMBs in the Online Advertising Game,” Go Daddy News Release, 10/11/10
Source: “Go Daddy Launches SMB Online Advertising Tool,” InformationWeek SMB Blog, 10/13/10

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