Over at Battelle’s House ‘o Search info he’s summarized Google Zeitgeist conference, where Google’s big news appears to be “We will NOT do content” and “We WILL do offline media advertising”.

I don’t agree with John that this means the YouTube purchase is a good idea. In fact I think Google will see the light of the dimly flickering videos and realize that monetizing this type of content won’t be worth the trouble of publishing it. But I wouldn’t bet much on my prediction they’ll pass on the deal since the cost of publishing video is dropping very fast, and Google probably has a great idea of the bottom point in terms of these costs, they may see something I can’t. Also, so much is currently wasted on traditional TV campaigns that there is a lot of “dumb money” floating around. If even a fraction of this flows to YouTube it might make that company worth it to Google.

As those of us making a living online know well the money comes from optimal monetization of content rather than the creation of the content. Google, as usual and brilliantly, is working to keep themselves in the driver’s seat as the premier way to monetize content online and moving to offline optimization.

They have the technology to optimize ROI on offline spends that (hopefully and probably) will blow many agencies out of the water. Traditional media campaigns and traditional ad agencies are a garbage dump of bad decisions and no research fueled by the ignorance of math-illiterate clients. Google has the power to change that and I’m glad they are looking in that direction.