By Caragh McKenna
Account Manager, Online Marketing
Looking back on 2003 we saw a number of significant changes in the Pay-Per-Click (PPC)/Google Adwords environment, some perhaps more predictable than others.
The start of the year saw the purchase of Inktomi, and it's crawler technology by Yahoo. This was to be the first of Yahoo's significant purchases in a year long shopping spree.
However, probably the biggest PPC news of the year, and Yahoo's most strategic move, was the purchase of Overture in June. This $1.6 billion (cash & stock) acquisition allowed Yahoo to purchase a PPC system rather than developing an internal system, as was expected. Following this purchase, Overture.com results now appear on MSN.com, Yahoo.com, AltaVista.com and InfoSpace.
Many Yahoo engines, including Yahoo UK, are now showing Overture.com's paid results ahead of Google's organic listings. The remaining regional versions of Yahoo are expected to migrate to Overture's paid results in 2004. Whilst Yahoo's organic listings are still showing Google's results, this is likely to change to Inktomi results in the near future. And as Overture had previously bought AltaVista and AlltheWeb, both engines are now part of the increasing Yahoo search engine empire.
Google also created a number of strategic alliances in 2003. By the end of the year Google Adwords were appearing on many engines that had previously displayed Overture's paid listings. These engines included Lycos.com, AskJeeves.com and Hotbot.com.
In June Google and Lycos Europe announced that Google Adwords (content-targeted ads) would appear on the member pages of Europe's largest homepage building community, Lycos Tripod. This agreement extended the reach for Google advertisers to a potential of four million member pages of Lycos Tripod.
Autumn 2003 saw Lycos filing a lawsuit against Overture (Yahoo). In the complaint filed in October, Lycos accused Overture of breach of service agreement, which required Overture to gain Lycos' consent if control of their relationship were to be turned over to any competitor, in this case Yahoo.
Elsewhere, Espotting unfortunately lost its deal with Yahoo UK following the Overture acquisition. Yahoo UK is now also showing Overture UK results. Espotting also lost a partnership with Ask Jeeves UK, which now displays Google Adwords and Teoma's organic results. At this point Espotting has very much lost the battle for the European UK market.
Looksmart also announced a number of changes adding three new partners to its bid-for-placement distribution network: SearchFeed, myGeek and ABCSearch. These engines will join existing sites such as CNET, Road Runner, Mamma.com in Looksmart's bid placement program
With Google, Yahoo and MSN the top three search engines, the market is very much controlled by Overture and Google's paid placement programs. Both Overture.com and Google Adwords are introducing further enhancements to their services this year. Is the best yet to come?
Also MSN continues to dispel the rumour that it will be replacing Overture's PPC results with it's own PPC model, but this may be one to watch in 2004.
Finally with Yahoo owning Overture, Inktomi, AlltheWeb and AltaVista, and Inktomi results replacing Google as the main listings on Yahoo, will 2004 see a new king in town?
Back to January's Newsletter
