Sunday, May 04, 2008

Yahoo Says No

Lust, Greed, Intrigue and high drama worthy of a spy novel. These were all in the courtship of Yahoo by Microsoft. Their dance ended shortly before the alter. This deal generated lots of news coverage and buzz, buy why should you care?

The collapse of this deal leaves Google, perhaps more than ever, the undisputed king of on-line advertising. If you want one source to place pay per click, banner, or web video ads, it’s Google. Yes, you can cobble together on-line ad programs with Microsoft Ad Center and Yahoo Search Marketing. However, they don’t have the features, flexibility, analytics, and above all the audience of Google’s AdWords platform. And this doesn’t even include Google’s ad brokerage through its Double Click subsidiary.

So what’s not to like? We use AdWords more than Yahoo or Microsoft, because of its features and because it often yields better conversion and higher ROI. Google also continues to invest in and enhance it ad capabilities more rapidly than its competition.

But campaigns don’t always go well. If you are a small or medium sized business spending a few hundred to a few thousand a month and you have a question, problem, or issue – good luck. Google likes the self service model of support via automated reports, blogs, grudging email, and even more grudging account reps. For clients spending thousands not hundreds of thousands monthly they can be surprisingly unhelpful.

Competition or rather lack of credible competition may be the problem. A Yahoo acquisition, if successful, offered the hope of a rival, which would make Google more responsive and improve the on-line channel for all marketers. In the meantime, we’ll have to search for something else.

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