Google Economist Sees a More Measurable Future

AdWeek's Brian Morrisey spoke to Google's chief economist Hal Varian about, not surprisingly, search marketing. The real nugget from Varian comes towards the end when he says, "Marketing is the new finance ... Just as finance has become more quantitative because of what happened in the 1970s, you'll see marketing do that." I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I think he's absolutely right. I keep trying to write all the reasons why, but I'm feeling particularly inarticulate today, so it will need to wait until another day.