Mobile search developments

worldofsearch — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:25:39 +0000

There wer a couple of developments yesterday in the world of mobile marketing which could be seen as pretty significant. Firstly came the use that T-mobile had awarded its mobile search contract to Yahoo! following their heavy investment in mobile technology. This further adds to Yahoo!s weight in the mobile sector as they already power the search for 3 and have mobile advertising available through the Vodafone live network. Yahoo! have obviously bought in heavily to mobile marketing and are pushing hard to make it work. They possibly see it as one area where they can get one up on Google away from the search arena. 2008 could be a big year for mobile and as always, the early bird will catch the worm and if Yahoo! can become the front runner in this field they could reap the rewards.

On the same day it was announced that five of the big mobile operators are joining forces to create a measurement system for mobile advertising. Vodafone, O2, T-Mobile, Orange and 3 have formed a working group aimed at “helping ensure that mobile advertising realises its potential for the benefit of all the players involved”. What exactly this means I am not sure but Im guessing they are plannign at setting some industry standards for advertising models and options but more importantly the technology behind it. Obviously each will have their way of implementing the models and will keep some of their ideas and technologies to themselves but from an advertisers point of view it can only be a good thing as it should speed up the developments in mobile and help it actually become the viable advertising channel it has been threatening to become for the last couple of years.

Yahoo! rejects Microsoft bid

worldofsearch — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:01:47 +0000

Yahoo!’s board have unanimously voted to reject Microsoft’s astronomical bid of $44.6bn (£22.4bn) claiming the offer significantly underalued the company! Rich considering the offer was 61% up on their closing share price from the previous day. Yahoo!’s explanation is that the bid undervalued the strength of the Yahoo! brand, user base and recenty investment in advertising technology. My take is that they arent too keen on becoming a Microsoft company and having a consolidated position in the market as they already have a larger share of the lucrative search marketplace and a comparitive stance in other areas of online as well. I wonder whether this will open the door for a bid from Google as had been rumoured last week or whether Yahoo! would rather continue the fight on their own against the big G. This probably wont be the last we hear about alliances and a consolidating market but Im not sure any future deals will be on the same scale.

NMA article here

Microsoft buying Yahoo – what does it mean?

worldofsearch — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 14:07:11 +0000

Ive finally gotten round to having a little think about the big news story of the week, Microsoft tabling a bid of $44.6 Billion in cash and stock to buy its rival Yahoo. There has been no official comment from Yahoo on the reports but I thought Id document my thoughts on the impace this could have.

The portal market

Yahoo and MSN are the two big players in the portal market, the one stop shop for all you web needs, search engine, web mail, news feed, weather reports, all in one place. This is where Microsoft will gain a massive advantage and pretty much gain complete dominance. Aside from the ISP sites, which gain their visitors through having a default homepage setting in the ISP setup process, Microsoft will have a dominance in this field comparable to Google’s in the search market (more of that in a minute!). So what does this mean to MSN? Well instantly they will take on board the lions share of the portal advertising revenues around the world. Yahoo has built an advertising model which is highly lucrative and brings in a huge amount of revenue each year, utilising the latest behavioural targeting technology to keep online advertising moving forward. MSN obviously has its own advertising model and ideas on how the market is going to advance but they will automatically boost their ad revenues with the purchase. It also sets them up well for the predicted rise in online ad spend over the next few years, from $40 billion to $80 billion if you believe the predictions, dominance in a market this size is a mouth watering prospect.

The search market

This is where it gets really interesting. Microsft has struggled to gain a foothold in the search market since it launched its own PPC model in 2006 and I forecasted in a previous post (Microsoft sets its sights on 40% market share) that a purchase may be on the cards if they were to achieve their targets. The purchase of Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM), if part of the deal, would possibly take their market share into the double figures in the paid search arena. Their system is good at present, the quality of their traffic is good, its just the volume they have been missing. YSM would help boost this and make them a legitimate number 2 in this arena and they undoubtedly have the fire power to make dents in Google’s dominance (see their response here). It does raise the question, what does this mean to search agencies? the market which was due to fragment with the launch of wikia search, AOL breaking out in the US, Ask hinting at the same, is now significantly consolidated if this deal does actually go through. Does this make SEM simpler? Not really but it could be perceived that way, a post for another time I think.

How do they manage it?

This will be interesting, does Yahoo become Microsoft branded? or is it just another property of the technology giant? Does it become Microhoo? Yasoft? Mahoo? or does it become Yahoo – a Microsoft company? and more importantly for internet marketers do they keep the two infrastructures separate, the advertising interfaces, the search algorithms, the display advertising models. This is what will be the key determinant of what this means to the industry and what it means to digital agencies.

Whether the deal goes through remains to be seen, when it goes through is another question yet to be answered. What is undeniable is that it is going to influence the online advertising market significantly, in what way, remains to be seen.

Breaking news: Microsoft table bid to buy Yahoo

worldofsearch — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:50:28 +0000

Exciting news in the world of search engine marketing, more thoughts and comments to come when I have the time!

Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo

By Franklin Paul and Tiffany Wu – Reuters

February 01 2008

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp said on Friday it has offered to buy Yahoo Inc, the popular Web portal, for $44.6 billion in cash and stock, seeking to join forces against Google Inc in what would be the biggest Internet deal since the Time Warner-AOL merger.

Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for $31 per share, a 62 percent premium over Yahoo’s closing stock price on Nasdaq Thursday. Yahoo shares jumped to $30.75 in premarket trading.

Yahoo said the online advertising market is growing rapidly and expected to reach nearly $80 billion by 2010 from over $40 billion in 2007. Yahoo added it is “increasingly dominated by one player,” referring to Web search leader Google.

“We have great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market,” Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in a statement.

Yahoo was not immediately available for comment.

The company has been losing market share to Google and warned earlier this week that it faced “headwinds” in 2008, forecasting revenue below Wall Street estimates.

On Thursday, Yahoo disclosed that nonexecutive Chairman Terry Semel was leaving the board, ending its formal ties with the former chief executive, who is credited with reviving the company and then losing touch.

Semel, replaced as CEO last June, had faced heavy criticism for failing to move faster to meet both rival Google’s challenge in Web search and advertising and, more recently, the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

U.S. stock futures jumped on the Microsoft news, which offset a disappointing earnings report from Google late Thursday.

Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services, said a deal made sense.

“Yahoo is having a really tough time competing against Google. Whether it’s a good price, I can’t see anybody else who is going to outbid Microsoft,” Mendelsohn said.

Microsoft said it had identified four areas that would generate at least $1 billion in annual synergies for the combined entity.

Tim Smalls, head of U.S. stock trading at brokerage firm Execution LLC, was less enthusiastic about the benefits of a tie-up.

“Shocking! To me, the premium seems exorbitant, for what is a dwindling business. I personally don’t see how the synergies of Microsoft-Yahoo is going to take on Google,” Smalls said.

(Reporting by Franklin Paul and Tiffany Wu; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn/Jeffrey Benkoe)

Google & Publicis transfer programme – is it wrong?

worldofsearch — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:49:57 +0000

It was announced on brand republic last week that Google and Publicis have been working closely together for the past year and plan to step up their alliance with a proposed staff swapping system which could see “possibly hundreds of Google employees” taking placements with the huge media giant. This strikes me as being slightly wrong, seen as Publicis owns Digitas, ZenithOptimedia, Zed and Starcom, all of whom work with the Google system for their clients, trying to get the best from paid and natural search results.

Surely there is something wrong with such an alliance which could potentially mean Google staff giving favourable treatment and inside information to agencies who operate in the search sphere, therefore giving them an advantage on the competition. And if they did, it surely gives the Publicis owned agencies an unfair advantage in their market place. Im sure the parties invovled are going to claim it is just to learn from each others strategies, processes procedures etc etc but theres has got to be more too it than that. Am I the only one who is worried by this?

Full article here

Google & Publicis transfer programme – is it wrong?

worldofsearch — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:49:57 +0000

Full article here

Adwords to Launch Demographic Targeting

worldofsearch — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:55:21 +0000

The adwords blog has announced the launch of a demographic bidding beta test and is offering the chance for advertisers in the UK and the US to sign up for the trial. Reading into the release the targeting is only going to be available on the content network placement network and is dependent on the publisher site having the capability to provide the information on the users. If the site has this information, more often than not through a sign in system, then it will be shared anonymously to Google and the appropriate ads.

From the detail in this article the benefits of this system over MSN’s own demographic targeting system is that the system will allow you to up weight your bids by a higher percentage (MSN’s limit is 150%) and that you will also be able to choose not to show your ads to certain audiences. This is certainly an advance on MSN but the impact of it will be limited by the reliance on the publisher site and the fact that the targeting wont apply to the main Google search results, where it could have most benefit. This is obviously due to the fact that you dont need to be signed in to Google to use it although they could have implemented it for those people who have a Google account and perform searches whilst signed in. Maybe that will be in the next release, I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.

Cadbury plans the Gorilla follow up

worldofsearch — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:56:44 +0000

As part of its record breaking 2008 marketing budget Cadbury are planning a follow up to their much loved drumming gorilla advert. According to the latest edition of Marketing the new ad will also feature an animal playing an instrument. The original advert was a major viral success achieving numerous blog postings, massive word of mouth and many a parody on Youtube (you can see some of them here). So the follow up has a hard task following in its footsteps, as do he agency charged with creating the ad. The original one worked well due to the human like actions of a gorilla but I cant see many other animals having the same impact without looking too comical. Answers on a postcard what you think the new animal and instrument will be and heres the original again just for fun!

EA to launch ad supported online game

worldofsearch — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:56:06 +0000

EA have announced that they are going to release a free web only version of its Battlefield title (marketing, 22nd Jan). The version, to be known as Battlefield Heroes will only be available online and will not be sold in stores and will be supported online by advertising within the game and its interface. This is the first major launch in the western market of such a model and the title will spearhead EA’s “play 4 free” model as it moves away from the traditional retail environment.

This could be the first in a long line of initiatives by the big gaming manufacturers to produce ad supported gaming environments and reduce the cost of video games. In game advertising is already heavily behind the rise in online gaming through the games consoles markets but this is the first attempt to launch a web based system. It is going to be interesting how they include the ads into the environment as it will be difficult to keep them in the context of the game, as this is key to its success. But the fact that it is a web interface gives it an advantage over the console based online games. Firstly I would imagine there is a page display which uses a border for elements of the game controls, this provides some space, outside of the game environment which they can sell to advertisers without spoiling the experience too much. Also, there will be log in screens and menu’s they can use for advertising partners.

It will be interesting to see how this works and from a marketers perspective, what response is generating from the ads and whether users pay them any attention at all.

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The battle for stickiness

worldofsearch — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:05:32 +0000

Search engine land reported today the release of some new functional by ask which allows a user to upload their own personal background image for the search engine. The functionality to add a skin to the background has been available since last year but this was only for predetermined images and wasn’t customisable. I like the idea of customising the results page and this is a much simpler solution than Google’s which involves xml information rather than a simple image upload. It is also much more flexible and interesting than msn and yahoo’s offerings which only allow the selection of different colour palletes for the page.

This functionality is just another stage in the battle for search engine supremacy but also for loyalty within internet users through added value. Yahoo had this a long time ago through positioning itself as an information portal and one stop shop for your internet needs (email, news, sport, search…) a similar position taken by MSN. Then Google smashed this with its simplicity and accuracy of results. But even the big G has recognised the need to give people more and through iGoogle struck a balance between information on the page and usability by allowing the user to choose which information feeds they received. The issue at the bottom of all of this is keeping people using your page/engine, setting it as their homepage, and a base for all their online activities. If they can use your site for everything they need online whey would they go elsewhere? The longer a user in on your site, the more searches they do, the more ads they view, the more ads they click, the more money you make! Simple. Expect a lot more releases like in this in the next 12 months as the battle continues.

It’ll take a lot more functionality for Yahoo, Ask or MSN to catch Google but I do know people who now use the Yahoo homepage as they prefer it to Google so there is some movement going on. You can check out the Ask function on the US site here, it is not yet available in the UK.