Gmail News Links Threaten Email Marketers

Gmail, perhaps more than any other service that Google currently offers, poses a big threat to email marketing ROI (as if they didn't have enough to worry about with spam). This is because Google displays not only contextual ads, but related news stories from Google News. The average user will probably think these are also ads. Consider the following example and note the red boxes in the screen grab below.

My regular readers know that I am a huge Apple fan. I look forward to receiving my email newsletters from Apple because they are infrequent and often filled with valuable information, such as tips and discounts. So last night I received an email from Apple advertising the new Intel iMacs. However, in the “related pages” links (on the right hand side) you will find links to consumer-generated and mainstream media news stories that Apple is discounting the prior line (the iMac G5) by $200. If I were interested in buying an iMac, I might follow these links and buy a completely different model than the one Apple intended to sell me.

Now you could argue that a sale is a sale is a sale and that all dollars go to Apple anyway. However, the flip side is that this email campaign is wasted marketing. At a minimum Google really should label these so-called “related pages” what they are - Google News editorial. Instead, they still look like ads.

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Apple, Email, Gmail, Google