Today, Twitter announced that it is using the DMARC technology with its emails, making it less likely that users will see any email pretneding to be from a Twitter.com address.

“We send out lots of emails every day to our users letting them know what’s happening on Twitter. But there’s no shortage of bad actors sending emails that appear to come from a Twitter.com address in order to trick you into giving away key details about your Twitter account, or other personal information, commonly called ‘phishing’,” said Twitter Postmaster Josh Aberant.

“Without getting too technical, DMARC solves a couple of long-standing operational, deployment, and reporting issues related to email authentication protocols,” he said. “It builds on established authentication protocols (DKIM and SPF) to give email providers a way to block email from forged domains popping up in inboxes. And that in turn lessens the risk users face of mistakenly giving away personal information.”

Twitter began using DMARC earlier this month. AOL, Gmail, Hotmail/Outlook and Yahoo Mail all take advantage of the technology.

DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance.

The companies involved include: Google, Facebook, LinkedIn AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, PayPal (eBay), Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, American Greetings, Agari, Cloudmark, eCert, Return Path and Trusted Domain Project.

In a post on Google’s Online Security Blog, product manager Adam Dawes writes:

Industry groups come and go, and it’s not always easy to tell at the beginning which ones are actually going to generate good solutions. When the right contributors come together to solve real problems, though, real things happen. That’s why we’re particularly optimistic abouttoday’s announcement of DMARC.org, a passionate collection of companies focused on significantly cutting down on email phishing and other malicious mail.

We’ve been active in the leadership of the DMARC group for almost two years, and now that Gmail and several other large mail senders and providers — namely Facebook, LinkedIn, and PayPal — are actively using the DMARC specification, the road is paved for more members of the email ecosystem to start getting a handle on phishing. Our recent data indicates that roughly 15% of non-spam messages in Gmail are already coming from domains protected by DMARC, which means Gmail users like you don’t need to worry about spoofed messages from these senders. The phishing potential plummets when the system just works, and that’s what DMARC provides.

“Email phishing defrauds millions of people and companies every year, resulting in a loss of consumer confidence in email and the Internet as a whole,” said Brett McDowell, Chair of DMARC.org and Senior Manager of Customer Security Initiatives at PayPal. “Industry cooperation – combined with technology and consumer education – is crucial to fight phishing.”

“BITS has been committed to defining and improving email authentication standards and practices to meet the financial services industry’s needs. DMARC’s evolutionary approach is critical in assuring these needs are met for years to come,” said Paul Smocer, President of BITS, the technology policy division of The Financial Services Roundtable.

DMARC is encouraging interested organizations to read the specification, join their mailing list and start testing and deploying standards, by learning the details at DMARC.org.

Google doesn’t control advertising online and DoubleClick won’t change that. It will simply give Google access to another segment (display, or graphical) advertising that they didn’t have direct access to previously. Just as Google’s Dmarc acquisition and the recent ClearChannel deal gives them access to radio advertising. If the DOJ denies the DoubleClick purchase, I’d be shocked.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and others are concerned, on a different front, about privacy issues – because Google will now be able to combine their own powerful tracking abilities (surfing and search query data, along with webmaster and advertiser account holder contact information) with the extensive behavioral targeting abilities and ad tracking details of DoubleClick.

Schmidt suggests simply that they’ll keep the information in separate silos. Why should anyone believe that? Stephen Colbert popularized a rarely used word – truthiness to suggest that something can feel true, whether it is or not. Truthiness may apply here – as well as another word that suggests that a company and its’ principals can have trustiness. They do. Google has earned that trust in several ways. More on that later.

DoubleClick ignited a firestorm of controversy back in 2000 when they announced plans to merge offline data with online surfing behavior data and email and contact information (physical addresses and phone numbers) of surfers who had viewed and/or clicked on their ads across the web. They resolved that issue by selling off the division of the company that held the "real-world" data.

This all got me thinking about why I trust Google with the information that I didn’t trust DoubleClick with. What it all comes down to is that Google has so far lived up to their unofficial corporate mantra of "Don’t Be Evil." While it takes more to live up to that motto than putting the words on a web page, Google has actually made moves to demonstrate true adherence to the concept.

Last month they announced that they would, after two years, slightly anonymize the IP addresses they currently use to track queries done through their search function. This followed Google’s refusal to turn over data for two months of user search query information to the Department of Justice, when the DOJ demanded that data from MSN, Yahoo, AOL and Google. The others relented – Google stood firm and refused – and won in court.

So even though I believe that Google has way too much information on me already, including search history, financial information (through my Google account), web site stats, physical address and contact info, my personal emails (through Gmail account), and so much more – I trust them so far.

So what’s to say they won’t some day turn on me, and you, and everyone else and use that extensive data they hold on all of us for evil purposes? Their track record so far says so. Schmidt even comments near the end of that Battelle video interview that Google believes in data portability, so that if we should decide for any reason that we no longer want to use Google services and prefer to take our history and data with us, that they are working on technology that would allow us to move that information from Google to anywhere we choose.

This is another example of why I trust Google and why others do too. They have gone far above and beyond what is necessary and reasonable, to what is right. They are also painfully aware of how fragile their business model is, and that continued profits rely on the trust and support of their users – who can and will easily move elsewhere (now with Google’s help apparently) if they lose that trust. The entire business would simply implode on itself. Truthiness is, they can’t afford to lose that trustiness. And you can quote me on that!

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Mike Valentine is an SEO Specialist offering occassional commentary on Search Engine Developments through his Reality SEO Blog and developed WebSite101 Small Business Ecommerce Tutorial in 1999 to help educate the little guy to the intricacies of online business.

To find out, Google needs content, in this case willing advertisers, to participate in audio advertising beta tests. They have made the case on the Inside AdWords blog that all has proceeded well so far, and Google would be delighted to have more participants:

In terms of feedback, the Audio Ads team has heard that beta testers like the simple and clean user interface and the targeting and reporting options. Beta testers also find the audio ad creation process easy and fast since it only takes them a few days to create their ads and launch their first campaigns (as compared to potentially weeks for traditional radio ads).

New participants can signup online to give radio advertising a try. Google says ad clients can choose when and where ads will be played; targeting options let marketers focus on targets like demographics, location, station type, and day and time to air.

dMarc has experienced a little turmoil and executive upheaval in the time since its January 2006 acquisition. At the end of January, a source tipped off Valleywag that Google’s love of automation ran counter to the glad-handing practices and personal touch of radio sales:

Google has not wanted to roll-out human sales folks to pitch, explain and train the automated radio buying tools to advertisers and radio buyers, believing instead that the self-service tools will sell themselves and the buyers will just come.

Google’s ‘product is king’ philosophy is that sales people just pick up checks and service customers, they are not really needed to generate the business, products do that. This has significantly suppressed the sales that the dMarc folks had expected to be able to generate.

Both of dMarc’s founders, brothers Ryan and Chad Steelberg, left dMarc shortly afterwards.

Such a situation would explain Google’s call for more AdWords client participation. The dMarc purchase may end up turning the spoken word into gold. It doesn’t look like that will happen at as rapidly a clip as Google may like.

From my own experience, I’m personally starting to question Google’s acquisition strategy. Now, I have no inside information, but I can relate their actions to what I went thru as part of Think Partnership (parent of the now defunct WebSourced).

The old management of THK decided the best way to grow the company was to acquire as many marketing and technology companies they could, show the market they were on the cutting edge and hopefully, grow the bottom line. Unfortunately, Think Partnership didn’t give much thought to how exactly they were going to make all of these acquired companies work with each other. Before I left in 2005, there was no direction and many of the acquired companies started grumbling that they felt as if they had been brought on with great promises, but then discovered no real strategy to the acquisition – does that sound like dMarc to you?

Anyway, fast forward a couple of years, and thankfully, THK has a new management group that is focusing on actually integrating the acquired companies – to what success, I don’t know – and appears to be back on track. Google might want to take a look at THK and learn from its lesson. Simply buying cool companies – because you can – means nothing, unless you actually take the time to figure out what you’re going to do with them.

Disclaimer – I guess I should point out that I do still own some THK shares and I also have one share of Google stock.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

What went wrong? Obviously, people at both dMarc and Google felt dMarc’s technology was capable of reaching those revenue targets, and the fact that they didn’t was a failure on someone’s part. The fact that it took most of the last year to even launch a pilot program didn’t help, and dMarc’s founders blame Google’s single-minded focus on automating everything.

In the ad business, while automating has made Google a lot of money on cheap ads, more expensive ads are typically sold by a sales force, which pitches to companies and gets them to deliver the check. dMarc believed its sales force could have been extremely successful, but Google wanted everything automated, and they never really had a chance. I guess Google’s okay with hiring thousands of people per quarter, so long as those people don’t have to do specific sales work.

Anyway, the question facing Google in the future is whether companies will be willing to deal with Google after this. It’s silly to suggest that companies will stop selling themselves to Google, since most people like money, but I bet it will be a long time before a deal is again based 90% on revenue goals. In the future, Google will have to buy companies for perceived worth, paying upfront, since no one is going to trust them to actually turn the acquisition into a success.

Don’t be surprised if most of the deals Google makes in the future are speculative deals like the YouTube deal, where the company being bought has a lot of potential and a huge price tag. Google could have bought YouTube for $100 million plus $2 billion based on revenue goals, but the YouTube guys would have been idiots to take a deal like that. After this dMarc thing, no one is going to take a deal with a lot of revenue goals, because no one thinks Google can make them.

One last thing: Is Google developing their products like Microsoft now? All of their new-medium-type ads, from radio to print to video, all are plodding along. Is their product development process already as slow and mired in indecision as Windows Vista’s was? If that is true, it basically means Google is aging more three times faster than Microsoft did, and that doesn’t bode well for the future.

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

Today, however, the proverbial shoe is on Google’s other foot.

Valleywag broke the story earlier today that the founders of dMarc Broadcasting would be leaving their positions at Google, reportedly citing disagreements with the search giant’s automated sales tactics and disappointment in their respective compensation packages.

Here’s the information passed along via a Valleywag tipster:

Google purchased dMarc last year as part of its effort to break into the realm of radio advertising. So far, the venture has been met with average results and not much fanfare, probably another reason why the Founders decided to call it quits.

Steve Bryant at Google Watch elaborates a little further as to why Google has thus far been relatively unsuccessful in penetrating the radio advertising market:

[A] simple understanding of human nature–not to mention familiarity with Google’s hubris–leads me to suspect that the radio industry doesn’t appreciate Google’s ham-handed approach to its market. And while I believe Google’s methodical, algo-based approach to ad sales is likely to be more efficient than other methods, I have no doubt the search giant could benefit from a human touch.

Hmm, perhaps AdSense isn’t the answer to everyone’s marketing needs after all.

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Giselle Abramovich floated out a rumor post on Tuesday, the steady crescendo of which has expanded to discussion on at least five other well-known blogs.

According to Abramovich, Google “is a bout to set up an IBM-like structure. What this means is that there would be one global account director per account, that pulls in resources to sell as needed – PPC, Print, Radio, Video, Display, etc.”

And the blogosphere went flashback-squiggly, hearkening back to Google’s acquisitions of dMarc and YouTube. That was a dawning for some, but for the others, it became a cat’s-out-of-the bag situation. Abramovich’s little leak became a spilling of guts, moving bloggers to tell what they know.

ThoughtShapers.com’s Jeff Molander was quick to quote three credible sources as the benefactor of what appear to be planned Google leaks. As David Utter reported, these leaks have been more prevalent in the past week, an apparent new Google strategy to gauge reaction before official release. Molander then expounds on the audio component of Google’s master plan.

AdSense for Audio would place contextual ads alongside podcasts, and perhaps other streaming media (like that found on YouTube), all the wayperhaps, perhaps, perhapsto radio and television. MTV is already on board.

Just to add to the speculation, I’m submitting Google has a killer audio-recognition technology that won’t rely on spidered transcripts. Remember the application that can listen to your television and serve up advertising?

Molander uncovers also, the well-turned phrase of the week, courtesy of Revenews’s Wayne Porter:

eWeek’s Steve Bryant says he’s been holding out for months, but in light of Molander’s post, felt he needed to come clean.

There may also be an mp3 player in the works, but that could be the most speculative of all. But Bryant’s thoughts that this podcast search and ad technology could be integrated into mobile services, Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Desktop is probably right on the money.

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AdWords Coming To A TV Near You?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has discussed his distaste for untargeted advertising in other places. Recently, he expounded about the topic during his chat with Danny Sullivan at SES 2006 in San Jose:

Google has already taken steps toward inserting ads in radio. The search advertising company purchased dMarc Broadcasting and announced plans to use it to tuck AdWords into radio broadcasts.

ZDNet blogger Garett Rogers posted about the Google domains unearthed by Research Shelf. Google registered Googleadsensetvsite.com/net/org recently. Rogers also referenced a suggestion attributed to Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products & user experience: “Television should consider Google a friend, not a foe.”

Video advertisements have been making their way around Google’s network of websites that display AdSense. Google began selling video ad inventory in May. At launch it was available to advertisers in the US, Canada, and Japan.

That has been a purely web-based endeavor. For Google to make the transition to television, it seems logical that they will choose a smaller network initially to test out the technology. We think we can make a guess at who they might choose: Current TV.

There are a few reasons for making this guess. First, Al Gore is one of the people behind Current TV; Google has invested in the channel as well. Gore served as a senior advisor to Google, and Schmidt hosted a fundraiser for Gore during his presidential campaign.

Current TV also features Google Current every thirty minutes. That short feature focuses on the searches people have been making through Google on a given topic.

Google and Current have the connections at the highest levels, and it would be more surprising if any Google television advertising effort did not start with old pals Gore and Schmidt working together.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Google Ads To Appear On XM Radio

Advertisers on Google will be able to reach XM’s non-music listeners as part of a new agreement between the two companies. They have been testing the solution for several months.

Those advertising clients will have an automated method of placing audio ads via dMarc, a media ad network Google purchased in January 2006. AdWords clients should see general availability of the service in the fourth quarter of 2006.

Google plans to integrate the dMarc platform into AdWords. Clients can place audio ads for delivery to satellite and terrestrial radio listeners. Current dMarc customers can do so already.

Google also noted that dMarc simplifies the process of sales, scheduling, delivery, and reporting for radio ads. On XM, Google’s technology “automatically schedules and inserts advertising across XM’s non-music commercial channels, helping to increase revenue with a wealth of new advertisers, while decreasing the costs previously associated with processing advertisements.”

The technology will be tested in the marketplace as Google and its advertisers monitor how effectively Google can target ads to a listening audience. A successful run will benefit XM with much-needed additional revenue, while Google can count the deal as a substantial broadening of its existing advertising network.

The announcement today marks another step toward more focused advertising methods. Google’s wild success with contextually-targeted paid search advertising that is measurable and effective has yet to be duplicated across broadcast media. If they can accomplish this with radio, perhaps television will be the next stop for Google and its ad network.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.