Yahoo! has fired the latest salvo in the search marketing wars with the announcement of the Q3 launch of a new search marketing platform in the UK.
The new service, like that announced by MSN last week has enhanced targeting capabilities allowing advertisers to use Yahoo!’s WhereonEarth technology to target and match users to content. Google announced a demographic enhancement to its service in April.
Other new features include added campaign testing and evaluation tools as well as a goal based optimisation service that Yahoo! says will allow you to control campaigns based on goals such as cost per acquisition.
Stephen Taylor, Regional Vice President - Yahoo! Search said that the move was all about ‘putting the advertiser in control of the medium’.
This is the way that the whole industry is moving in the UK and globally. MSN adCenter is designed to be very agency and advertiser friendly and SEM’s have commented that MSN have been a ‘breath of fresh air’ in their approach to the market. Yahoo! like MSN is also looking beyond the traditional paid search market, with Taylor identifying ‘huge opportunity’ in how it will work with graphical media, mobile, IPTV and with enhanced geo-targeting.
Both Yahoo! and MSN have strong audiences and will both be exploiting advertising across all aspects of their networks, MSN across properties including Windows Live and Xbox and Yahoo! with a social search focus using its properties including Flickr.
Google does not have the audience that both Yahoo! and MSN have. Sure, it is a first stop for most Web users when they search online, but it is a conduit to get somewhere else.
Whether advertisers remain thinking that the value is in the delivery of traffic, or whether this will evolve into how they interact with the traffic, will have a large bearing on who comes out on top in the search wars.
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