Ice.com CEO Disses Google, Yahoo; Suggests Cut In Online Ad Spend

The chief executive officer of Ice.com is shoveling coal on some of the Web's biggest advertising services. Shmuel Gniwisch was so disappointed with business sent his way by Google and Yahoo that he went out of his way to send an e-mail faulting them.

"They both proved to be extremely poor marketing tools for ICE.com and many of our retail friends," Gniwisch said. "This was most evident during this most crucial time of the year, the holiday shopping season. Traffic from these portals were up cpc’s (cost per ad click) were up but conversions were way down."

By contrast, the jewelry merchant said, his own Web sites did fabulously. He said ICE.com saw sales rise 70%, "without the help of Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), or Overture! In fact, they failed quite miserably."

Gniwisch hints that he and other online retailers may cut back ad spending with Google in 2007. "Just my two cents," he said.

Disclaimer: I own shares of Google.

Comments

[JeffMolander]

Mr. Gniwisch works in jewelry -- a highly "shopped" (by price) sector. What led him to believe that buying "traffic" from a search engine would net him anything else?

Answer: (?)
As Esther Dyson recently said, <strong>“There is way too much obsession with search, as if it were the end of the world. Google equals money equals search equals search advertising; it all gets combined as if this is the last great business model.” </strong>

[AlanRimm-Kaufman]

We saw strong results during holiday 06 -- clicks, conversion, sales, profitability -- across our client base across the engines, particularly Google.

www.rimmkaufman.com/rk.../

and

www.rimmkaufman.com/rk.../

A different experience, it seems.

Alan