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This week the Department of Justice and 11 state Attorney’s General filed a long-awaited but reportedly hurried antitrust suit against Google, alleging a variety of monopolistic and anticompetitive practices. Google called the lawsuit “deeply flawed” and arguing it “would do nothing to help consumers.” One of Microsoft’s defenses in the similar lawsuit brought against it in 2001 was that its practices tended to benefit consumers.

One key question in the litigation is about the health and viability of competition in Google’s markets. Google has marginalized or neutralized it, says the DOJ, citing Google’s search market share. But Google counters that the law isn’t for the benefit of competitors but consumers.

The DOJ argues that Google’s exclusionary contracts have helped lock up distribution and capture “nearly 90 percent of all general-search-engine queries in the United States, and almost 95 percent of queries on mobile devices.”

Google claims the DOJ is too narrowly focused on a few rivals: Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo. Google says this is myopic and submits, in addition to “search engines,” it competes with many specialized sites such as Amazon, Yelp, Kayak and TripAdvisor. Google also mentions Pinterest as a competitor, among others. On its call with journalists, to show that Google isn’t always winning, the company referenced research showing that a majority (60%) of product searches begin on Amazon.

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With over 8,000 martech tools in Scott Brinker’s landscape, harnessing data for business can be a challenge. But there are some key ways you can maximize resources between marketing and IT teams to leverage insights for better marketing and business outcomes. Join this webinar and learn how to build partnerships between Marketing and IT teams to manage martech tools and connect martech data to reporting tools for improved real-time insights.

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Automation is great… when applied as one part of a more strategic approach to solving needs in our society. But automation isn’t foolproof. It’s not perfect. And it doesn’t fully take into account all variables, particularly intangibles.

Humans possess the essential traits of intuition, intellect, improvisational flair and insight. The human still plays the pivotal role in paid search. Sure, it’s possible to create functional, competent PPC by putting things essentially on autopilot. But who wants to just be functional?

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“If your team or organization struggles with long project cycle times, limited opportunities for learning and adjustment, then agile may be the answer,” said Zach Wolfe, Senior Strategic Customer Success Manager for Wrike, a project management software vendor, at MarTech. “Agile is a flexible methodology that can ultimately be used in any large scale project in any industry, market or company.” 

Although the roots of agile marketing were born in the software development industry two decades ago, over time it has been adapted by project managers across functions because of its ability to identify and resolve potential roadblocks. “Today, agile is used far beyond software teams,” said Wolfe. “[Agile has an] ability to get immediate feedback without hurting the development cycle or project pace. It is good for projects with delivery dates set in concrete.” 

The implementation of agile in a marketing department allows for prioritization of tasks within the project and allows departments to remain strictly focused on essential project components. Brief daily meetings, and customized workflows and dashboards, allow for full project visibility to both internal and external stakeholders to assist with transparency in maintaining deadlines.

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Register now for free access to 80+ tactic-rich sessions, case studies, demos, and keynotes — everything you missed October 6-8 at MarTech!

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Act-On Software, the marketing automation and growth platform, has announced a new webinar integration with Zoom to help marketers conduct business in the socially distanced environment. The integration automatically tracks click-through rates, invitation opens, registration and attendance. 

Enhanced branding capability is also provided so marketers can brand campaign communications with templated or customized webinar messaging. The integration is aimed at optimizing behavioral scoring within webinars, and supporting broader marketing strategies.

Why we care. As events continue to be virtual, the ability to understand attendee behavior at a granular level, and execute in response, will be increasingly valuable.

“Of all the questions to ask in marketing, I’ve determined that the most powerful one is not who (as in, who are our customers?) and it’s not what (as in, what do our customers want to buy?). The most powerful question to ask is … WHY?” Dionne Buckingham-Brown, marketing consultant.