Salesforce.com teams with Google for advertising

Salesforce.com has agreed to purchase Kieden, a company that makes software to purchase and manage Google AdWords for customers. This will give Salesforce.com the capability to offer Google AdWords campaigns alongside its web-based salesforce and marketing management service. The service allows marketing and advertising managers to analyze ongoing campaigns by viewing which people who clicked on Google AdWords keywords became sales leads.

This gives a completed sales-lead closed-end loop to track sales that result in actual revenue but which originate from Google AdWords. The Kieden software presents a dashboard of information that displays the Google AdWords that were clicked on, along with whether those clicks led to shopping sessions as well as an actual sale.

Salesforce.com, according to CEO Marc Benioff, is trying to bridge the gap between customer relationship management (CRM) and Google's AdWords program. There is a disconnect now, since leads are provided but the proverbial travel path a customer takes from first viewing an ad to completing a purchase is still a shaky trail. The more you understand your customer's behavior and online "travel pattern," the more you can acclimate to the needs of that customer and produce more actual sales, right? This is a good thing for Salesforce.com -- the acquisition makes sense and fits into the company's vision.

Brian White has worked in various executive positions in technology and telecommunications and now focuses on editing and writing.