A Norwegian-based company has launched a new product designed to help newspaper publishers increase their online revenues - without having to use the leading search engines to do it.FAST Media, a creation of Fast Search & Transfer ASA (FAST), allows users to optimise their visibility without paying advertising fees.
Users are charged a one-time fee for the software and then, after that, no further fees pass between FAST and the client.
Analyst Tom Foremski welcomed FAST Media and commented that current arrangements between large search engines are one-sided.
"Not only do media companies give up a big share of the revenues but the price of online advertising is kept low because the media partners have to compete with what Google and Yahoo! charge for advertising on their own sites," Mr Foremski wrote for ZDNet.
This, he claimed, "means that unless media companies can reduce their operating costs to the same level as the search giants, revenues from online advertising through the search engine ad networks will never be enough to cover their costs".
Nick Patience, a business software analyst at the 451 Group, told Reuters that FAST Media is "a way for media companies to create and manage their own advertising networks without using Google or Yahoo!."
FAST Media's new product is likely to be a rival service to established paid search technologies. As a result, many businesses may wish to it take up in addition to the existing offerings from Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. If it can generate enough visibility for the network, and provide good user functionality, then this new software could be a beneficial niche product.
Earlier this month, FAST was named in KMWorld's 100 Companies That Matter In Knowledge Management list for the fourth consecutive year.
