Yahoo to partner with Overture... also in Europe?

Yahoo / Overture partnership

[webby2001]

"Pmac" in the PPC forum just received the following from Overture per email and posted it in the PPC forum. it makes for depressing reading.

"Overture has signed an agreement to become the Pay-For-Performance™ search
provider
to Yahoo!'s millions of users. As a result of this deal and the holiday
season,
Overture's Premium Listings™ advertisers can anticipate a significant
increase
in high quality traffic. To get the benefit of additional targeted leads for
your business, you must be listed in Premium Listings™ (the top three
positions),
and you should increase the charge amount for your payment plan."

[webmasterworld.com...] ...
for the full thread.

What this all apparently means is that Yahoo is giving Overture 5 results per serp page. 3 at the top and 2 at the bottom. Apparently marked as "sponsored listings". The deal is to run until April where Yahoo are highly likely to go it alone with PPC. A sad day for relevancy and a sad day for the mom and pop business. Consider it.. $299 to get a review and then to get a high listing you also have to bid on Goto. Unless you have an obscure search term, as a small company you simply arent going to be able to afford to play the game.

It is not entirely clear whether the deal is international. If so, it would mean in Germany that FAST supply the SE results for Yahoo whilst Overture take care of the top 3 positions. How clearly the "sponsored listings" will be marked in contrast to the regular serps is yet to be seen.

And here I am about to launch an SEO company. I think I better start looking into PPC bid management software.. fast!

Regards

Alan

[heini]

Will Overture results appear on european Y! sites?
I don´t think so. Overture has not even started out in Germany, let alone other Euro countries. Yahoo in Europe works without any paid submissions in any form.
Also the way results are displayed, the old Y! way, is inappropriate for such listings. Yahoo.com has declared the Overture partnership is limited until April.
I´m pretty sure we will see changes in Euro Yahoo sites to paid listings. The new way of displaying serps will eventually arrive here. Who then will provide "sponsored listings", Overture or a new Yahoo programme, is an open question, I think.
Also on the table is a possible switch from Google to Inktomi - perhaps at that time Yahoo will introduce a PPC model in Europe. But that´s all speculations.

[Rumbas]

> in Germany that FAST supply the SE results for Yahoo

I'm not quite sure Alan. Didn't you mean Google?

And yes, Yahoo has been very slow at adopting paid review at their European sites. They are all free as of now. Getting their listings into Yahoo Europe would be a way for to Overture to get a feel for PPC in Europe.

[webby2001]

Rumbas..

Yes I meant Google of course. I got the recent news on t-online mixed up with current events.

Alan

[heini]

>...also in Europe?

Definitely not. Y! Europe has confirmed the Overture relates only to Yahoo.com and is restricted to 6 months.
No changes on European sites - for the moment at least.