I've watched as the Internet has increasing become controlled by 1 person, Matt Cuts at Google. It's all done in the name of providing a fair search algorithm, but it's really cover for anti-competitive practices.
The entire basis for Google's success is that its buyers (advertisers) have very low intrinsic bargaining power.
This is the major factor that sets Google apart from other aggregators of Internet advertising, like Advertising.com.
It's Google's direct relationship with thousands of small advertisers through its Adwords system that is its trump card.
There are other networks that can deliever customers at a much lower advertising cost whether measured by CPM, CPC or CPA; however Google maximizes it's effective CPM because the small advertisers don't have the pricing power big advertisers enjoy when approaching a display ad network.
Google's biggest competitve threat is that another entity will come along with a direct relationship with small advertisers and offer a viable lower cost alternative way to gain prominence in search results.
Google's algorithm is based heavily on link popularity. Google cannot afford to have an company offer advertisers an AUTOMATED way to participate in search results other than Adwords. That's why if I donate to a charity and the charity puts me on their sponsor page, I will get link popularity, but develop an automated way to offer charities the ability to exchange links for donations and Google will shut it down. Paid editorial has existed forever, but Google took strong action against Pay Per Post for this very reason.
Bottom line is Matt Cutts is out there searching for threats to Google's competitive stranglehold on its buyers and he does it in the name of 'do no evil' which is truly a RIP OFF to thousands of advertisers who don't realize that overtime their profits will go away. That's a fact unless you disagree with basic economic theory that says in a perfectly competitve market, marginal revenue = marginal cost and profit is zero. That's what everything at Google is based on — creating the perfectly competive market for advertising and ripping off advertisers by destroying their profits. Google is a monopoly and its buyers have no power. Matt Cutts is Google's Sith Lord.
Here is an exerpt from Michael Porter's classic competitive strategy, Google's playbook for maintaining it's monopoly power.
These will be good buyers for purposes of buyer selection:
They purchase small quantites relative to the sales of sellers.
Why Google like small businesses and will fight against automated ways of working into search results.
They lack qualified alternative sources.
Why Google has tried so hard to aggregate publishers through Adsense.
The fact high shopping, transactions, or negotiating costs.
Small business can't negotiate the way Toyota could with a display provider like Advertising.com.
The lack credible threat of backwards integration.
No small business can bypass Google for qualified traffic online. Also why Google is cutting out affiliates, and found so hard against commercial email, adware and other non-search channels.
They face high fixed costs of switching suppliers.
This is why Google has offered free analytics, multivariate testing and other tools through the adwords interface.
Bottom line: Matt Cutts; admit it. You're using the cover of integrety of search results for you're overt campaign against any method that might offer advertisers an alternative lower-cost platform of automation to participate in the search results.
Your auction model in Adwords maximizes effective CPM for you and in a perfect world with all advertisers using multivariate testing to optimize landing pages, will drive all advertiser profits to 0.
Any automated way of participating in the search results ruins your day because it offers an alternative to your monopoly.
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