Mathias Dopfner, the CEO of Axel Springer, raised the issue about the uneasy relationship between Google and publishing companies.
Axel Springer, a German media powerhouse, publishes over 200 newspapers and magazines; and derives 62% of their profits from their digital business. As you can imagine, Axel Springer depends heavily on the traffic supplied by search engines, most notably Google. Mathias (quite rightly) points out that the search results and ads serving algorithms are not transparent; and anyone with a business that relies on Internet traffic should be equally concerned.
This is why it is very important to broaden the number of your communication channels, and why social media should be an integral part of any marketing strategy. Social media provides the opportunity to bypass Google’s monopoly and engage directly with your customers.
You can have conversation, provide valuable information, and obtain far better analytics than even Google can provide; all at much lower price then spending money on a monopoly with no transparency.
