Lycos Launches their own PPC Service!

New "InSite" services are launched

[Hawkgirl]

Lycos Launches Auction-Based Keyword Advertising Platform, Driving Qualified Traffic For Web Site Owners [prnewswire.com]

Pithy product name - "InSite." Love it.

[TomWaits]

And yet when you try to sign up, it's just a screen to be notified when they are launched [insite.lycos.com...]

[heini]

Hawkgirl that's amazing!
The paid inclusion part is in fact rather old news, but the "new services" you mention mean nothing less than Lycos starting their own PPC service!

It's labeled Lycos InSite AdBuyer.

Technical platform is provided by Findwhat.

So, what's going to happen to that Overture contract?

[Rumbas]

WHAT?! This is real news for sure!

I am like heini wondering about their relationship with Overture in he US and the just launched partnership with Espotting in Europe [webmasterworld.com]?

[Mike_Mackin]

From FindWhat:

"As a FindWhat.com advertiser, you will have the ability to sign up for Lycos's new service before the service even launches!.......We will, in essence, copy over all or part of your account ......... With the account-copy functionality your approved relevant advertisements (listings), keywords, and credit card information will be pre-approved for immediate activation on the Lycos and HotBot sites. "

[Brad]

This puts FindWhat back on the map. But does Lycos (US) and Hotbot combined pull enough traffic to make a difference?

[rubble88]

A bit more in this Internet.Com article.

Lycos to Develop Own Paid Placement Listings
[boston.internet.com ]

From the article,
-----
Additionally, the portal said it plans to continue syndicating listings from Overture -- from which it receives a share of cost-per-click revenue -- so that Terra Lycos search returns will include both InSite AdBuyer and Overture listings, in addition to returns generated from the older InSite paid inclusion practice, and Lycos' own spidered listings.

Wilde said the company would start promoting the new service to advertisers this week, with the goal of collecting a "critical mass" of users by the end of the month, when it plans to begin allowing advertisers to bid on keywords. Paid-placement ads should appear for the first time in mid-September, he said.

Lycos will require a minimum initial spend of $100 for AdBuyer ads, while bidding for each keyword will start $0.05 per click.

[markd]

Seems to be my 'mantra' to ask on these occasions...

Does this apply to all Lycos network search portals (.com, .co.uk and others) or just .com?

[JustTrying]

a unique keyword suggestion tool...

THAT seems like the most exciting part of the news release to me. If this keyword tool is equal to or better than the Overture and Google tools, then that is a good thing for more cross-sectional keyword research.

[skibum]

That's going to make for an awful lot of advertising on the Lycos site.

[heini]

>suggestion tool
yup. the question is how dependant/independant from the Findwhat stuff is this going to be?

[Orion]

It looks like with Overture and Google dominating the ppc search market, FindWhat has had to resort to becoming an infrastructure player. This typically has lower margins, and is hard work.

So in the beginning, Lycos gets all of FindWhat's customers (who want to sign up for Lycos), but then Lycos controls the advertiser relationships and FindWhat does the grunt work in the back. At the end of the contract, Lycos has the valuable advertisers (who they can cross-sell other marketing), Lycos has had the time to build their own systems based on their experience working with FindWhat, and Lycos is in a better negotiating position vs. Overture.

Smart deal for Lycos, but their traffic is almost irrelevant.

[Racecar78]

Whenever this gets going, I must say, I don't expect the PPC rates to be that high. In my own experience, it's not like there's an abundance of referrals coming from these guys.

RC78

[Martin_H]

Are they offering a UK version? I understand espotting are powering their (lycos.co.uk) sponsored listings from September.

[heini]

Lycos.Europe operates rather independantly from Lycos.com. Then there's Lycos.Asia, and of course the spanish portals from Terra/Lycos. They all are under slightly different ownership.

If and how those entities will follow and put up AdBuyer I don't know.
With the PFI it was US, German and British Lycos initially.
Considering the market situations in the different countries Lycos operates in I think those along with France would be the most likely candidates for AdBuyer.

Espotting
ES has just been replaced by Overture on the serps of Lycos.Europe.
Espotting will return, but be present on the channel and directory pages.