How can Yahoo team up with Google? Think international.
News reports suggest Yahoo’s two week trial running Google ads is going very well. So well, in fact, that the companies are discussing expanding the relationship. That news should scare anyone in the domain name industry and any publisher that uses Google Adsense. If Yahoo exits the stage, look for payout percentages to decrease.
But there is one partnership deal Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG) could strike that would benefit advertising partners: an international deal. The basis for Yahoo’s weak international pay-per-click standing is historical. GoTo (the original incarnation of Yahoo’s search marketing platform) started in the U.S. When it expanded to other countries, advertisers had to create new accounts in those countries. Google learned from GoTo’s experience and created a unified international platform. It also serves ads in many more countries than Yahoo does because only one account was necessary.
There used to a be a work around for Yahoo-based parking companies such as Parked.com. They were able to get a Google feed through Ask.com to run ads for countries that Yahoo didn’t support. But that went away last month. Although it depends on your portfolio, losing the ability to serve ads to some of these international destinations can shave 20% off domain parkers’ bottom lines. (Parked.com lets you send this traffic to a different domain parking company if it can’t monetize it.)
So as detrimental as a full outsourcing of paid search to Google would be, there is a partnership that will help Yahoo, Google, and their advertising partners alike: an international partnership.
Am I the only person who wants to see a Microsoft Yahoo merger. I don’t like monopolies and I love competition. Choice is what I want and I need more options than Google Search.
I second Troy input. I prefer some business competition so we are flexible to choose and they can give us better $ in return.
cheers,
em
Yes, Troy; you appear to be alone on that one…or virtually so. 😉
Also; at least for the US market, I don’t see the fed & state regulators going along with allowing Google to completely–or even largely (say, 25%+)–serve up their ads on Yahoo.
Given the deleterious effect to their portfolios should it happen, might even be worth the big domain boys getting together to file a suit over.
You can be sure Microsoft will.
“Coopetition” – MSN/Google/Yahoo all in competition and cooperation would be ideal to solve many of these problems.
It may just happen; at least for awhile – unless MS wants to cut off its nose to spite its face.
I was originally opposed to Yahoo/MSFT. But now that Google is getting in bed with YHOO I’d love to see YHOO/MSFT.
Of course, my first choice would be Google, Yahoo, and a viable Microsoft all with their own ad networks.