How marketers working with Google monetize our discomfort

The first part of the article

Today, three out of four smartphone owners, when they have any need for immediate satisfaction, first go to Google . Accordingly, marketers working with Google (including me) survive by their ability to play on your impatience and impulsiveness, which manifest themselves when using a mobile device. We have to be right there and give you an advertisement exactly at the “micro moment” - that is, at the second when you decided to resort to a smartphone in order to eliminate the discomfort from not being able to receive something. This something can be anything - a burning sale, a route to the store, which is about to close, information about courses, where the amount of space is quickly snapped up.

As Google representatives explain in simple terms: “Micromoments are moments that are filled with intent when decisions are made and preferences are formed.” But such a formulation does not fit in with the fact that they cannot openly express: the “I want to right now!” Mood usually gives rise to unpleasant feelings of fear and anxiety in us. When you look at something in a similar mood (here it is not necessarily a question of goods), these emotions undermine your composure. Your urgent need - for information, navigation, transactions, whatever - begins to mix with the desire to somehow get rid of a heavy feeling.

In reality, the goal of Google (and of all the marketers associated with it) is to get as much money out of you during those moments when you are not able to reason sensibly - and we achieve this through advertising. Micro-moments are so crucial for Google that in May 2016, their Keynotes were dedicated to teaching marketers how to squeeze the most out of them. The point is not to miss any of these moments, and in each case to show an ad that best suits the relevant type of impulse. In the ideal world, marketers would be taught to help users work intelligently with Google in those seconds when they can easily be influenced by. In fact, they are training us to wrap your confusion in their favor.
')
Every day we experience about 150 micromoments, often imperceptibly. Most of them are accompanied by advertising. These ads are sharpened by what you are looking for, tailored to your age, gender, income level, location, browsing history (as well as all other targeting parameters I mentioned in the first part). Marketers who are not able to show an advertisement at lightning speed in these elusive moments of spiritual confusion will not survive long in the market.

Speculation on despair and desperate desires for the consumer society is not new. In fact, it is based on that. But over the past few years, the ability to respond quickly to despair with targeted advertising has reached unprecedented heights. Three factors contributed to this:

• The number of devices that consumers have reached a critical mass.
• Our attitude towards smartphones has changed.
• Our relationship with Google has changed too.

Here is a textbook example of a micro moment for which any marketer is ready to kill: you, the buyer, are standing in a shoe store that is about to close. You absolutely know that there is a new model of Air Max, on which you have long laid eyes, but you have not had time to read the reviews. For these sneakers, you have to pay a tidy sum, so it's definitely worth seeing what people say before paying the money. But you do not catch the eye of the seller, who could ask a question about the model. Or, more likely, the seller is two steps away from you, but you will more believe what you read in the phone than what you hear from it (by this we all sin).

“Dear customers,” they say on the speakerphone, “our shop closes in five minutes. Please go through with the selected items at the box office. ”

At this moment of despair, you are accessing Google. Score “Nike Air Max Reviews” into the search bar. The results page is loaded, all our ads scatter.

While Google is “thinking”, every marketer who is targeting your location, your request (“Nike Air Max Testimonials”), your gender, age, income level, and so on, is working feverishly in your AdWords account. The savvy marketers whom you approach on all counts will not spare money at the auction for first place on the mobile screen (mobile marketing values ​​first and second positions in the results, because only from them is the use - the vast majority of users will not scroll page).

The advertisement is loading.

“We're closing now,” the seller tells you. You continue to ignore him, poor fellow.

You are ready to click on the ad to read the reviews that it promises to you, and at this very moment your look snatches the price in the text. The same model costs 25 dollars less. That's all, now you have decided. Conversion took place. Trying not to meet with anyone's eyes, you are heading straight for the exit. Then, chilling in the car, you go through the ad and buy sneakers through the site.

Somewhere in the world, some kind of marketer has just won your moment. As a reward for the victory, they received not only your money, but also a much more valuable trophy - conversion. AdWords is marked with a +1 in their income book. Now they can always come back to this moment, see with what leverage they brought you to the purchase, and make the necessary adjustments so that in the future of your micro moments their client’s advertising comes first.

Marketers benefit from micro-moments in the interests of advertisers (in our example, the Nike corporation) in almost all niche markets, both B2B and B2C. It doesn't matter what exactly the ad sells: sneakers, loans, surety, a file with documentation or a free e-book. If there is an action that the marketer is seeking from you, there will always be the appropriate moment when your desperate desire is taken advantage of.

*

In some cases, the despair that we use against you in micro-moments arises naturally, as in the example of a shoe store. But sometimes it is cultivated by us artificially. Countdown advertising and sales, which are allegedly held only today, are only a small part of the methods we use to provoke the loss of profit syndrome and play on fear, anxiety and doubt.

There are industries that initially offer services aimed at the urgent need inherent in micro moments - a mobile device in such cases turns into a panacea for the user. Here you can remember locksmith enterprises that have misused Google advertising for many years to fuck people more when they cannot get into their home.

For example: a successful marketer working with such companies knows that for women who are looking for online help from their phone after the end of the standard working day, prices should be shown higher. Marketers understand that these women, who accidentally left the house without keys, are likely to be exhausted from fatigue, that they may have children with them and it’s not a fact that they have another way out. In other words, these women will do anything to stop this agony, and their price will not scare them away.

After the client clicks on the advertisement and contacts the unscrupulous advertiser, he can sell the call to the offshore center while she is waiting for help. When rescuers finally arrive, they will require ten times more than what was stated in the ad. Fraudsters do not hesitate in the means to get a full calculation on the spot. One common practice is to break the lock and refuse to let the client into the house until it is paid off.

*

Experienced marketers know: it is not enough just to be on hand when you feel the feeling “I want right now!” For some specific reason. Sometimes it happens that you are looking for something ephemeral, but the benefit from it is no more difficult to extract. In the world of continuous micro-moments, at the top there is one who realizes that we are turning to the telephone in a restless state, not only in those cases when we want to go somewhere, buy or do something.

Today, the average consumer spends on the phone about 4.7 hours every day . And I’m ready to argue that for most of this time, he doesn’t have a particular desire to buy something on sale, get to the store before closing, or sign up for training courses. Of course, many minutes from these hours fall on those temporary intervals when you are exhausted from boredom: sit in the toilet, listen to your wife tell what happened today, or drive along a quiet street. Anyone who has mastered the art of manipulating micro-moments well will not see the point of giving you advertisements in moments of boredom - you do not have any underlying intentions and you will not be led by emotions.

But there is another kind of “empty” time, when you are overwhelmed by strong feelings and announcements come in very handy: these are the moments when you are in some awkward social situation. All of us, people, find ourselves in similar situations a hundred times a day: in the elevator, in the queue at Starbucks, when someone sits opposite the train or when a colleague asks how the weekend was. There is no such adult who would not be familiar with this unique feeling deep inside, arising from such meetings in the modern way of life, would not feel that somehow it is absurd to buy coffee, sit at a table and just sit with him, or which is not distracted. When you need only one thing from the market - so that it will save you from oppressive discomfort, the phone becomes a real salvation.

It is not necessary to even open Google itself to play into his hands. If you go to Gmail, Youtube, or just browse the web, you’ll be shown an ad. Although click, though not, the show will take place and will be counted; you entered the conversion path and sooner or later, many days and clicks later, it will bring you to the climax.

When you are looking for relief, no matter what kind and on what occasion, on any of the channels Google operates with, there is always a suitable ad. Google shares methods that allow you to convert when you are unable to resist, and marketers are actively, and often irresponsibly, using them. We are constantly thrown the best practices.