chrisnrae - 5:48 am on Aug 6, 2004 (gmt 0)

The article didn't state if the relationship was exclusive? Can AJ bury google's ads in 2006 if they have their own PPC program to replace it with at that time (along the lines of what Yahoo did with Google)?

Bottomline is that AJ needs more market share. At this point, their focus is porbably on making the money they need to do that and on improving their results to capture the loyalty of the new visitors they put themselves in front of.

By accquiring market share now, they can always develop their own PPC program later. But spending the resources to develop a PPC program now won't do them a lick of good if they can't spend the money they need to increase their market share and searcher loyalty.

Seems the "why" question was asked of Scott Garell [clickz.com] and he replied:

It's a great partnership. Our volume drives more people into their network, and we think it's better to be building our site around the user experience, so that when people come, they're getting what we consider to be a better and different experience. It's good for advertisers and good for users.