Google invests in a PPC agency how does that work and what is Trada anyway?
It was announced by NYTimes and on Trada’s own blog that Google ventures has made an investment in the crowd sourced ppc agency Trada.com. Trada closed a US$5.75 million Series C round of financing led by Google Ventures and Foundry Group to increase its cash balances and working capital to continuing expanding its network of ppc specialists beyond 500. The money raised in the latest funding round will be spent on international expansion to covers markets such as Canada, UK and Australia. It will improve support for Trada campaigns in multiple time zones, currency support and banking details such as credit cards that currently make running some campaigns outside the US less efficient.
According to the press release, Trada plans to expand its platform to cover new types of advertising such as text ads on blogs, banner display, mobile and video ads. The next expansion is planned around Facebook Ads but also what they can do with the Trada platform on other social platforms such as Twitter.
Does Trada get preferential treatment in Google?
The company argues that it will actually be under more scrutiny by Google because of the nature of their relationship, Google and Google Ventures are separate entities but still questions maybe asked by other technology platforms. The obvious benefit of the Series C funding means Trada can scrap any plans or requests for what Google may consider grey areas of marketing. The company will potentially slow the growth in some markets who are looking to bend or twist the search engines ppc rules. similar to the ITA Software purchase by Google recently it does place Trada in an interesting position with Microsoft/Bing. While Trada has plans to expand its platform it’s too early to see how the investment may change their business models if Google makes a decision to purchase more shares.
Surely this is slightly dodgy? Google buying in to third party distributors of its own service?
So can I trust Trada, like I trust Google then?
John,
Well its a personal choice, there are people out there that can’t even trust their neighbor but to have a successful relationship with an agency or someone like Trada you need to accept some risk will always be associated with trust.
David
Thanks for your reply. I will do a little research on Trada and get back to you…