At Yahoo India, product managers have created a variation on search results pages called Glue Pages. Instead of just search results, the idea is to put together a richer page of different kinds of info.
There's nothing particularly new in that. Companies like Ask, Mahalo, and... Google have experimented with how to present mixed or blended results pages.
It sounds somewhat exciting when you first hear about it, but there's really no evidence that such pages are in fact better, or what we as searchers are really looking for. So it's nice to hear that this will be a localized experiment. Experiments are great, but let's not get crazy and overestimate people's appetite for these kinds of pages.
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Saturday, February 02, 2008
According to a source at Techcrunch, News Corp. is trying to put together a syndicate to launch a bid for Yahoo. But I tend to agree with Paul Kedrosky's and Mathew Ingram's take, that Microsoft's high bid means it's already headed off potential rival bids. Yahoo is worth more to Microsoft than to any other company, and especially to hostile bids by opportunistic hedge funds.
Yesterday, I reminded you that I advocated a News Corp. bid for Yahoo in 2001. Back then, it would have been cheaper -- YHOO traded at a split-adjusted $9-10, in the depths of the dot com bust.
In related news, I agree with Louise Story's take in the NYT -- this deal would create more, not less, competition in search and display advertising. Recently, Google had been enjoying a situation whereby it had no serious competition. A Canadian ad buyer quoted in this Globe and Mail story, implying that three players currently makes it an ad buyer's market, is missing the point, which is that two players would be more competitive than three in this case, particularly given that Google is set to become even more powerful with the acquisition of DoubleClick.
Finally: check out the great piece in SEL where we get words right out of the MSFT horse's mouth as to the benefits of scale in this industry.
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Friday, February 01, 2008
Microsoft has offered to take over Yahoo again, a year after being quietly rebuffed. This time around, the very public offer comes in a context of swirling turmoil around the big Y!.
Of course, most pundits saw this deal coming, or at least have figured they have known what Yahoo should do next. We're all so smart! I've personally been telling Yahoo what to do for years. The advice changes from year to year.
My most recent attempts (the open letter to Jerry Yang, and followup) to advise the big Y! brought up the M-word, advising a partnership with Microsoft in search advertising and search generally, did not go so far as to advocate a merger (as some did). I think I just assumed Yahoo was strong enough not to need to merge entirely, and there are issues of cultural fit between Y and M. However, in a context of an unraveling financial picture and the imminent loss of (even more) Yahoos through departures and job cuts, suddenly, niceties like "fit" seem less germane.
Last night, a group of us Toronto-based search marketing folks had another informal social gathering. There was considerable talk about Google's power, but other than this, mostly small talk. The flipside of "what can competitors and players in the ecosystem do to survive in the context of Google's dominance" got lost in anecdotes about road rage and Caribbean vacations. But what should have been the next logical topic for discussion would have been to inquire if there was anything Microsoft might do in this regard. That hasn't been a common theme among the technorati, because many have spent years trashing Microsoft's products - and hoping for better.
My knee-jerk response so far to reports of this deal is, at first, "holy crap," quickly followed by the obligatory "yeah, I thought so," and then, "well, they don't have to accept the offer."
If the deal does go through, one clear wish will likely come true: no need to plumb the depths of two competing ad platforms to Google's. Yahoo can keep Panama, and borrow all kinds of little Microsoft innovations and advantages to build into the next version of the platform (such as MSN adLabs tools, demographic bid boosting, a robust new analytics platform that will give Google Analytics a run for its money, etc.). That, and the opportunity to buy more ads, more quickly, for less money, and with less overhead costs for the ad platform providers, is pretty much a win for all concerned; it's the kind of consolidation that makes (check that -- would make) sense, even if also there is some sadness and some potential disadvantages to subtracting players from the competitive landscape in search and online advertising.
On a concluding note, before I get back to the mundane details of the day, I'd like to thank Steve Ballmer for making this Friday a little more interesting for all!
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Unlike some analysts, I'm not a self-styled management consultant. I don't know beans about who should be given ownership over the P&L in a vertical, and so forth. I don't work at Yahoo. I don't claim to know how everything works.
I do understand the economic engine, however, especially on the search marketing side and platform advertising side.
You can print reams of speculation about layoffs, acquisitions, restructuring, and focus. But when it comes to advertising, you have to make it easy for people to buy.
Yahoo is almost there. Panama turned that part of the company around and is something to build on. Yahoo has a sales and service arm that is second only to Google's, and given the inflexibility of Google's bidding system, Yahoo seems like almost a sympathetic sales ear in spite of their low volume.
But the rollout of the Panama feature set is still too slow. There's the economic engine I know and understand. Take what is working, and continue with its basic execution.
A very important example is an agency console to make it easy for agencies and large companies to manage many accounts, from a single dashboard, like Google has. A second example would be continued strides on things like geotargeting. I guarantee that if you do stuff like that -- make it easier to buy and manage your ads -- the people on the ground who have to implement this stuff will start actually doing more buying, rather than paying lip service to, Yahoo's available inventory. Panama rolled out successfully, but it isn't done yet. Keep going, Yahoo!
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Monday, September 10, 2007
Valleywag believes Yahoo hasn't done much, a couple of months into the "100 day" plan put forward by new/interim CEO Jerry Yang. Maybe summer isn't the best time to start the clock on something like that, though. Labels: advertising, yahoo
Without second-guessing whether these were good ideas in the first place, here's the update on what Yahoo has or has not done from my list of random big ideas posted as An Open Letter to Jerry Yang on June 19:
* Yahoo has not acquired any hot little search startup;
* Yahoo has not acquired Yelp;
* Yahoo has not acquired GoDaddy;
* Yahoo has not acquired Research in Motion, but Microsoft was rumored to be interested;
* I am not aware of whether Yahoo has downsized inefficiencies in management -- I'll leave that to Valleywag. However, some key Yahoos have left for startups like Veoh. This probably means Yahoo will need to show it is serious about attracting good people, by showing the door to less effective managers, and recruiting some high-profile people. Jeremy Zawodny showed good initiative by jokingly attempting to recruit Matt Cutts through his blog. Matt was jovial enough to reply in comments.
* No sign of a partnership with Microsoft;
* The home page is as uninspiring as ever (if you like that sort of thing, MSN.com is better);
One key move has been to acquire an ad serving company, BlueLithium, to follow on the acquisition of Right Media. Although the latter is not a major deal, the trend is important.
As long as advertisers are disgruntled with current ad networks and "contextual ad platforms," this is an area that new product development needs to focus heavily on. That, plus gobbling up more inventory in a variety of verticals (personals, home, travel, social networking, etc.), will have to be the focus for Yahoo for the remaining few days of this 100-day segment, and the 100-day extension we'll have to give them, because the wheels grind slowly when it comes to turning around a multibillion-dollar company.
It'll be interesting to see if Yahoo can integrate new ad buying features (and more relevant inventory) into its Panama platform, or whether they'll create separate automated platforms for buying ads online based on the emerging "exchange" paradigm that will eventually largely eclipse the old networks and traditional media buying functions.
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Welcome aboard, Chief Yahoo. Labels: jerry yang, terry semel, yahoo
I did a little asking around, to some people that matter in the industry, people that care about your search division, and especially about your Panama rollout. What will happen next? Anything cool? Bold?
I've got some rough news for you: they don't think you'll do it. Maybe they don't think you can do it. Everybody's couching their language in lukewarm "we'll see" platitudes.
Well, it's good to get that out of the way. Low expectations mean at least you can beat them, I guess.
What would I like to see, personally? Off the top of my head?
I'd like to see Yahoo do enough silly things to try to contend in search in one form or another that Google actually gets scared. In this era, some of that will have to involve acquisitions of properties that have momentum, ad inventory, or cachet attached. There are a lot of ways you can still own more users and more search-like experiences. Acquiring them will be expensive, perhaps prohibitively so, but the alternative is to miss the boat. Oh, if only past acquisitions hadn't been so beside-the-point or overpriced, you'd be in so much better shape today.
Call me crazy, but:
* Get some momentum and leadership going by acquiring and fostering some of the available search startups. Powerset gets some buzz lately. Ergo, acquire Powerset.
* Ever heard of local search? Acquire Yelp.
* What's this business with Yahoo Domains and all the hosting and so forth? Could be a much more powerful business if you bit the bullet and acquired GoDaddy. That's right, the Big Enchilada. Go Big, Daddy, or Go Home. This is not a rocket science play, but an inventory and business customer play.
* Ensure that defaults on mobile devices are Yahoo-leaning. I had a Yahoo guy demo me the Yahoo One Search for mobile on a Blackberry last month at Mesh in Toronto. Right on! But will I use it? Google icons are all over my Blackberry, making me forget about the Yahoo ones. I get the feeling you could lean more folks to the Yahoo options on their Blackberry if you just acquired Research in Motion. I know, it's tempting to merely partner and it's expensive to buy a firm like RIM if they aren't interested in selling, but look at the potential. All this bullish talk about all of these mobile partnerships you can ink globally mean nothing if all they mean is the opportunity to be someone's second choice on their mobile device, behind Google. Next, innovate with some of the features/keys on the devices to make it even easier for users to access emerging services like free 411, and so forth. Integrate the Yelp reviews into things. Bob's your uncle.
* As our frequent correspondent John K keeps saying, you'll have to fire a lot of management types that accreted over the years. Get rid of clutter, and geek up. Now's your chance! Don't be shy.
* And yes, to this wish list I'd certainly add an interesting new partnership with Microsoft, or inking a deal to re-partner with Microsoft for search and search marketing. We're hearing rumors in this area. It would simplify our jobs if it came to pass, and give Google a little something to worry about.
* Finally, I'm still waiting for you to implement my suggestion to make the home page just the plain search box for a month. What a great publicity stunt this would be. The world's largest search company pulled that stunt starting in 1998. C'mon Jerry! August is Search Month for Yahoo! You can do it! You're the Chief!
Good luck, Jerry. You helped build much of the web as we know it. I'm one of those momentum, inertia users that loves some of what your company has to offer. I still use Yahoo Finance at least half the time (better SEC filings format); Yahoo Mail (some of the time); and My Yahoo (for feeds and such, yep I'm a real ungeek). I even used Upcoming.org recently; and who doesn't love Flickr. You get the feeling Yahoo is very, very close to the position of global dominance and street cred that it could be in.
There's also your advertiser ecosystem, specifically in search, to consider. That's an area I care about for a living. My firm does paid search marketing full time, so we have a stake in seeing your search market share, and search marketing platform, grow. Mona Elesseily, my colleague, has just completed a 105-pg.+ Panama how-to guide that will be finally out on the market in a week or two (like Panama itself, it was delayed). Poring over every word just reminds me of what a massive effort it was to turn that vital part of Yahoo around. And it also pains me to imagine that Terry Semel pretended like the project didn't exist, and certainly never seemed to take much detailed interest in the absolutely pitiful state of the former ad platform. Almost like he didn't get it. I know that one of your big cheeses on the Overture side (maybe even THE big cheese on the Overture side) got it, because he was one of the first buyers of my Google AdWords Handbook back in 2002. So, if some people got that AdWords was better back then, and didn't fix Overture until 2007... well... how do I put this delicately? Is there a problem with communication at your company? How are you going to overcome that? I mean, of course, internal communications. From 2003-, your PR was actually excellent: many folks continued to write and speak about how terrific Yahoo's search marketing platform was... even though it wasn't. Mission accomplished? Be careful what glowing PR you wish for, because PR doesn't build a better product.
It would be a shame, of course, to give up now on the promise Yahoo still holds. It's brave of you to take the helm at this juncture. And I hope those who won't go out on a limb predicting success will soon have to change their tune. But if we don't see some action in the vein of the suggestions above, we'll be disappointed.
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Saturday, June 02, 2007
Peter Hershberg offers a nice reminder to Jason Calacanis' Mahalo that there might have been a few other search plays in history that used an "energetic group of Guides." In addition to About.com and Ask Jeeves (nice catch there, Peter and Danny), I'd cite, er, Go Guides, this list of mostly-defunct "Expert Sites," and of course the former Zeal community. Not to mention Squidoo. Yahoo Answers. Digg, et al. People, people, everywhere; and in some cases, unique technology to leverage their contributions. Labels: ask jeeves, mahalo, odp, search engines, yahoo
Humans do scale, of course, in the sense that there are billions of user behavior decisions every month, and a smaller universe of editorial judgments being made. From PageRank to Wikipedia to Usenet to Slashdot to the Yahoo Directory, search engines, vertical communities, and widely-based human-edited web plays [see Traffick article "Are These Verticals Too Horizontal? The Slow Death of Mega-Guide Sites] have always tried to leverage editorial judgments, communities of meaning, and the value of expertise and passions.
I think a really good question for any startup to ask today has to be: in spirit, how much more sophisticated or useful is your plan than Jerry Yang's collection of favorite links in 1994?
Mahalo will become part of a huge trend that's been ongoing since the dawn of web search tools and web directories. Is it any better or even as good as the many mentioned above? If it turns out to be, it'll be because it reached a critical mass of users, and found better ways to ferret out the problem of "smuggled spam" -- the gradual deterioration in editorial standards that happens to unrigorously-edited web properties in a world that respects editorial integrity so little that Pay-Per-Post is seen as mainstream. If all goes well, it will succeed in some verticals only because of their uncommon quality.
And that's no different than many that have come before. An open web platform allows quality stuff to get out there, whether or not it's found on a particular secondary layer that purports to do a better job of sorting it. Mahalo might become as well known as LookSmart, or The Drudge Report. Either way, as Hershberg argues, it's going to be scrapping hard over 1% market share.
If there's any takeaway from the launch of Mahalo, it's a reminder that without any humans at all exercising editorial judgments but also judgments on how to structure the look and feel of results pages, you get a jumbled mess in response to a search query. Google and other leading search engines a combination of user experience producers and algorithmic methods of determining query intent. One of the best things about companies like AOL and MSN (and in its unique way, Yahoo) for the mainstream user, was always the sense of "consumer editorial responsibility" on common queries. Mahalo is a reminder to these companies that they should be actively recruiting editorial personnel, and continuing to heavily produce the portions of useful search query result pages on popular queries that are family friendly, consumer friendly, educational, useful, etc. More packaged answer sets, less jumble and clutter, is a great way to stand out in the subset of society that prefers these.
Huge opportunity: such results sets are also mobile-friendly. More on this later...
Perhaps then, when Ask allowed the "algorithm to kill Jeeves," it zigged when it should have zagged. If you're going to be scrapping over 1% market share, with the potential for growth if you hit a real nerve out there, why not go out in style? If I were Mahalo, in addition to working on technological innovation and community-building, I'd use at least some of the lavish funding to attract marquee writers and journalists for high-profile editorial oversight. This would give them a chance to beat the NYT-owned About.com at its own game.
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Thursday, May 31, 2007
In the twisted minds of some business journalists, business is all about charismatic leadership. In the minds of some business school curricula, business is all about leadership, period. So because Yahoo's CTO is leaving, we're supposed to believe that the company is now in turmoil and facing a "leadership void." Labels: yahoo
But Zod Nazem has been with the company for 11 years! Just imagine what that must be like at a company that was pretty much synonymous with the growth of the Internet.
Every company's got issues. But I wouldn't rule out the continued success of a company with a range of digital businesses that are profitable, and a brand known globally in mostly positive terms.
I think the problem is, half the world is an armchair manager, possibly even an armchair "C level exec." Even some folks at Yahoo are armchair managers! (but I digress)
But ideally, great companies will run pretty well without a rock star CEO, without a rock star CTO, and definitely without anyone from the press understanding what's under the hood. It's about execution on one hand, and sound fundamental business units on the other. And hopefully a quiet, Level Five leader or two.
Nazem's work with the Panama rollout would be a great example of working on creating a make-money-automatically business that works so well that even top management cannot screw it up. "Playing catchup with Google" isn't the sin it is being made out to be: it was the responsible thing to do!
This just in: Google is doing better than Yahoo. :) In turn, Yahoo is doing better than a million other companies, including some of the biggest and best.
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Monday, April 30, 2007
In Canada, the fast-growing Yahoo office on Front Street has in fact overflowed and it'll be awhile before they move into their new digs on Queens Quay. In the meantime, a satellite office on a high floor in BCE Place has been established. That means some national sales reps from Yahoo and the same from Google see each other on the same floor. Can you imagine?
Maybe the worst part for both is the name of the building. Combined, Google and Yahoo sport a market capitalization about 7X BCE's.
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Friday, April 13, 2007
The latest Hitwise figures show Google increasing its monthly share of searches again in March, at the expense of Yahoo (down slightly), and Microsoft (down slightly). Labels: ask.com, google, hitwise, metrics, netratings, yahoo
Microsoft's numbers can be attributed to a few glitches, depending on who you talk to. A rebrand of the search offering (bad, confusing idea, I think) or difficulties with Hitwise's methodology.
Netratings estimates a slightly lower number for Google, 55.8% for February. Unlike Hitwise, they seem to assign 5% share to AOL Search. Whichever ratings agency you trust, it's clear (again) that Yahoo is in real trouble of losing its status as any kind of default search box for anyone. That would spell big trouble for the organization as a whole.
So I'd like to focus a bit further on the danger Yahoo faces if they let these numbers slip any further.
* First, they've spent too much on search to abandon it.
* Related to that, they've invested too much in Panama, which was built *primarily* to monetize Yahoo Search and only secondarily as a platform to bid on content, to lose any more search share.
* Third, search is good.
The "typing stuff into a box" thing is too important a category to cede, no matter how navigation may shift in the future. It is not good enough to say that Yahoo has a great diversified model that will make them money from all kinds of ad formats and fees. True, but it's not powerful enough to compete "unfairly" as a real heavyweight, if users stop using their properties to search.
So how to acquire enough of those searches? Big ideas grown internally aren't necessarily the way to win people over from their Google habit. So how to acquire enough momentum to re-establish it as people's habit to search on a Yahoo property for at least some of their needs?
* One way to get some of this back would be to acquire local search properties - like the very hot Yelp. You don't have to get into unfathomable social search or expensive Facebook acquisitions, under that scenario. There are some growing, fairly conventional, properties with a slight cachet of cool that are doing quite well. Get them now, before the price doubles.
* Next, keep building out those verticals. If your leading properties are losing to upstarts, acquire the upstarts purely for traffic. Then get the AdSense ads off them.
* As stated above. Acquire specially selected content sites purely because they're AdSense sites. Revamp the monetization plans of those sites.
* Make sure to internationalize your search for these acquirable properties, of course. Yahoo has certain major international holdings, but they need more.
* Biggest of all: Ask is clinging to some market share, and would immediately add several "type it in a box" type properties to Yahoo's stable. Moreover, IAC owns other vertical properties that would work to reinforce other things Yahoo is doing. Although it could be painful, there's nothing that says Yahoo couldn't launch a bid for all of IAC, sell what doesn't fit, and keep what does. Yahoo's valuation is currently about 4X IAC's. People worry about Yahoo's executive bloat, but the best way to reduce the bloat ratio is in fact to grow your overall top line and overall traffic, as long as it's strategic and as long as a lot of it is scalable search type stuff.
* Try to absorb a handful of departing, cashed-out Googlers who are somehow going to be convinced that this is a really cool challenge.
* Least likely, but a good idea for both companies: convince Microsoft to give up on search and paid search platform building. Re-partner on both fronts.
* Piss off Wall Street somewhere around Q1 of 2008, by implementing a short-term de-monetization plan across all properties to increase user satisfaction and traffic growth. Basically, spend the rest of this year studying how you can monetize your traffic *less*. In verticals, in search, in apps, etc. I know that's already happened in a lot of places, but try to hive off a little more - your effective CPM probably bounces back anyway if you're patient. (See Godin, Seth. The Dip.) Don't think Google didn't just spend the last couple of years doing that after beginning life obsessed with it. The paradox of Google's gentle de-monetization initiatives is that it made them money hand over fist in the long run.
* Finally -- though it didn't work so well for Lycos, consider leaving acquired brands intact. (It works for IAC.) If you acquire Yelp, don't fold it into your overall plan but rather let it maintain its identity for the most part. Use your leverage to distribute it more widely and improve the product.
This post brought to you by the philosophy that launched this site in 1999: while the search & traffic ownership game is not quite winner-take-all, it is something close to that. Monopolistic-type advantages will make it more likely for people to default to your offering. When you own the traffic 100%, profit margin on monetization is superb. Profit margin on brokering media is highly squeezable. There are some searches out there that neither Yahoo nor Google own. It would make a lot of sense for Yahoo to swallow the price tag now, and begin owning them.
Go big or go home!
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Monday, February 26, 2007
Seth Godin wonders whether media buyers are right to pull ads off Google's and Yahoo's contextual networks because of how loosey-goosey they are with their approach to placement -- they match ads to pages, rather than allowing the advertiser "channel control." Labels: content targeting, contextual ads, google, google adsense, long tail, quigo, seth godin, yahoo
While it's true that Y!&Goog would benefit from better sites joining their networks, I agree with Seth that being so afraid to show your ads on "Joe Schmo's Sports site" could be doing the client a disservice.
I thought we already had this debate. In the early going, lot of us were critical of the contextual ad programs for a number of reasons - mine was simply the poor performance, fraudulent or crapulent publisher partners, etc. Others in the biz, with more of an agency bent (and most likely to cheer for Quigo, Sprinks, etc.), demanded that Google's content targeting allow more direct control of what websites ads show up on, as opposed to forcing advertisers to accept the open-ended "smart matching" concept that used semantic technology to match ads with content.
So... first Google responded with site exclusion. Then, they released a site-targeted flavor of content targeting, in a parallel program. That as a direct response to these agency-style demands. Site targeting allows you to browse a menu of sites, add them to your list, and only show your ads on them.
I monitored ads running in both flavors for several months. A funny thing happened: the old "flawed" content targeting program got better, and my approach to managing those campaigns improved. The ROI came in line with search. Meanwhile, nothing on the "site targeting" side was converting. The performance was much worse.
At a couple of conference presentations I guessed that this is in part because computers do a lot better job of matching my ads against a million potential candidate pages than I possibly can in scanning down a list of 50 so-so potential publisher targets. You settle on 20 or so of these sites, then become obsessed with spending the full budget on just those. They convert poorly, so you've overspent on this handful of websites. That's a fairly typical scenario.
In short, because of computers aiding in the matching, classic content targeting offers more efficiency, as the systems get perfected.
Seth, both the intuition and the data point towards there being nothing inherently wrong with Google's approach to matching ads with content. No, the program isn't perfect, but placing high-CPM ads on big brand sites just because I want to appear respectable isn't exactly a challenge. It's more of the same: take too much of the client's money, and waste it, and claim the blue-chippiness of that approach as a benefit.
Both approaches -- the finicky put-me-only-here approach, and the "ROI-or-else" approach -- work in the marketplace. For very different reasons. Funnily enough, Google now offers two parallel programs to suit different ad buying constituencies, and are working on rolling out multiple ad products down the road, to keep everyone happy.
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Monday, February 05, 2007
Last week I attended the Yahoo Search Marketing launch event in downtown Toronto (held at Kai Lounge). It's intended to confirm to Canadian advertisers that yes, now you can use the full suite of search marketing tools to target just Canadian searchers; you can geotarget; and you can do all of this using the new Panama platform. This is now live with a full complement of support reps available to provide support and assistance. My company hasn't worked with a huge number of Canada-only campaigns in the past, but coincidentally demand for it is now picking up and questions about Yahoo are increasingly common now that companies are aware of it as a second option after AdWords. An example of a field where you pretty much won't be marketing "across the board" to the U.S. and Canada would be a highly regulated area like drug trials or pharmaceuticals. As another example, a major Canada-only ecommerce site I'm pitching right now will benefit immediately from the Yahoo rollout. Money will no longer be left on the table due to platform limitations. What were companies doing in the past? Well, nothing. You couldn't buy PPC just for Canada through Yahoo. Labels: canada, panama, yahoo, yahoo search marketing, ysm
For those who are confused by this latest launch event - because it's the second time Yahoo has held a launch event for YSM in Toronto in the past few months - I think this latest was more of a "we're flipping the switch" reminder to a selection of businesses who are particularly plugged into the scene. The previous event was broader-based and intended to gain media attention and to introduce the local advertising community to a range of Yahoo execs.
Of course for oldtimers in the industry there was little new here, but the agency community and larger advertisers should take note that Yahoo consistently refers to the extensible nature of the Panama platform. Eventually (similar to Google's trajectory), you'll be able to bid on a range of media through the auction. That consolidation is healthy but it's going to be awhile before it reaches critical mass.
I'm not sure how accurate this is, but at a dinner following the event I was told that the Yahoo Canada team has grown to well over 100, currently all crammed into the Front Street office (though they're still on track to move to a more spacious location sometime this year). The team specifically devoted to search marketing is smaller, of course - Yahoo's a diversified company so that explains the "well over 100" number.
I haven't seen much coverage of this event, other than Sulemann Ahmed's brief overview. What Sulemann didn't cover was the door prizes. In keeping with the company's fun image they had a few giveaways for those who handed in business cards. After the first ho-hum drawing, all eyes were on the next prize: the video iPod. I apologized to the friend standing next to me, warning her that "I always win the door prizes at these things." The next thing you know, her name was being called as the owner of a new iPod! So much for me being evil. :)
The final door prize, dinner and Raptors tickets, was going to be a great way for me to treat some of my buddies, so I was really looking forward to winning that one. Unfortunately, Martin Byrne (Director of YSM Canada), the MC, called me over to do the drawing, so I was ruled out! A guy from Lavalife won it. I apologize for having trouble reading his name (small white print on a bright red business card). Or maybe this was because I still had my eyes shut from the random drawing process.
It is just good to see that due to an influx of full time Yahoo people in Toronto, there are more search-savvy people to discuss customer targeting with and to generally advance the cause. Some staff have been lured back from sojourns in the UK and continental Europe - call it Canada's brain gain. Yahoo plans a full slate of events to evangelize search to marketers in Canada, beginning with some introductory level academy type courses (by a third party company) at a very reasonable cost.
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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