Getting Results from Crowdsourcing

One of the companies we have come across since we created the Beta version of our Crowdsourcing Landscape is Trada, which crowdsources search engine marketing expertise.

Now Google Ventures has led a $5.75 million investment round in Trada, legitimizing the business for many potential customers, and showing the power of specialist crowdsourcing ventures.

Above is a video explaining the Trada model. In short, certified search engine marketing experts work in groups to select keywords and design paid search campaigns. They (and Trada) take part of the improved performance created for the customer in terms of cost or performance.

This is a great crowdsourcing application. Companies need help, don’t have the expertise themselves, and may well be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut if they get their advertising agency of record to do this (perhaps not a good analogy since the agencies quite possibly don’t have the expertise but are still prepared to charge healthily for doing it). There are plenty of experts who can be brought together to create efficiencies and value creation that can be readily measured. I am sure many more similar focused crowdsourcing markets will develop.