18 May 2006 | Author: R. Green

Yahoo! advertising set to take on MSN and Google AdWords

With Google leading the $5 billion plus search engine keyword advertising wars, and the recent release of Microsoft's AdCentre system in the US, Yahoo! has some stiff competition to overcome. Tim Cadogan, vice president of Yahoo! Search, has admitted that: "There are areas where we needed to catch up; that is well-known."

Yahoo! hopes that the new pay-per-click system, which is due for US release in the third quarter, will appeal to online marketers and boost the company's take of the lucrative online advertising market. The new ad system by Yahoo! has been designed with the new services offered by Google and MSN firmly in mind.

Marketers using Yahoo! will be able pin-point prospective consumers through a series of different targeting methods. Yahoo! claim they will allow advertising delivery to be targeted not only by using search terms entered by users, but also by the user's behaviours across the Yahoo! network, their general demographics, and by their geographic location. In addition, advertisers are expected to be able to set the position of their ads based many different important factors, such as click-through rate, rather than simply just bid price.

Marketers using the system will also now be given more in-depth tools to indicate how the adverts are performing and the "quality of advertisers' listings".

Yahoo! intends to bring in information from multiple sources to fine tune the delivery of adverts to searchers. Usama Fayyad, chief data officer at Yahoo!, said: "Many things you do on the Yahoo! network tell us more about your intent...[and] let us allow the marketers to target their dollars better. This is a new kind of targeting."

Users in London searching on Yahoo! for sunglasses and Spanish resorts, might receive adverts relating to holidays and flights to Spain, as well as where to buy suntan lotion, summer clothing, etc, in the London area.

According to Lloyd Braun, head of the Yahoo! Media Group, the company plans to differentiate themselves from the likes of Google and MSN in the future by offering licensed, personalised, original and user-generated content.

Other stated target areas for Yahoo! are social search and community generation through the existing Flickr and Del.icio.us services, content aggregation throughout all Yahoo! services, in-line video for better consistency in advertising and content provision, easier advertising proliferation, and increased blogger enablement - alongside their core search facilities.

Allen Weiner of research and analysis firm, Gartner, said, "It's a statement to the business community and competitors that they are still No. 1."

Home | Careers | RSS | Contact Us | Newsletter

International sites: