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A lucrative move that makes so much sense that it almost seems inevitable.
MSN is slowly moving in that direction as well.
Both Looksmart and Overture are seeing their acquisition costs rising. Looksmart's costs [prnewswire.com] are anticipated to rise to 55% from 50 and Overture's costs are in the 60's.
What is happening here?
It looks as if the PPC's and PFI's are getting shaken down for all they have.
When will it stop?
When Yahoo and MSN have developed/purchased their own proprietary services.
Where does this leave Overture and Looksmart?
In a diminished capacity. On their way out. If you listen to the analysts and the sounds of investors heading for the door, Overture and Looksmart are ending up in intesive care, prognosis not good.
Cnet search, CNN search, ESPN search etc. will only take you so far, and probably not far enough to sustain them (and us, the advertisers).
Where does this leave us, the advertiser?
I think that this is going to end up costing us more, at least for gaining exposure on Yahoo and MSN.
In the long run, I can see that a move toward proprietary PPC will benefit Google because the exposure per dollar at Google will be greater than the exposure at a divided Yahoo/MSN market.
It will take time and an investment to do this and skill but they have a chance.
Things look bleak for Looksmart.
Im not too optimistic about OV's chances given that you really DO need a massive user base for your SEs now before PPC really pays off for you. OVs policies of late also are sending smaller advertisers to the door, meaning Adwords, as long as it can control its steady and sometimes fast increase in PPC costs for advertisers, can deliver a far more diverse selection of ads and advertisers. To them, with the right system, its not so important to get rid of smaller, low-margin clients/advertisers. If OV loses Y! it may well be the end, as Brad says - delivering to a lot of relatively small SE's just does not give you a large enough exposure base.
I cant comment too much on the second rung PPC's like FindWhat, etc unless they can niche very intelligently, which is probably their only survival option.
The joker in the pack is MSN. Again it depends on the user base they are able to attract to their SE, but indications are its getting much better for relevance and less sneaky commercial inserts.
In almost all contingencies, LS is in big trouble unless it is acquired or finds itself in one of the networks, or a massive new one.
Once Google takes over the internet search, internet PPC, and internet shopping, and Overture, LookSmart, Yahoo, and MSN are long forgotten,
how many pages will these Google Update threads run to?
Heh, heh. Which thread was that martinibuster, the pre, pre, pre thread or the post, post, hey-com'on-post thread?
I do hope OV has a good strategy, but i cant see it - dosent mean they dont of course - hopefully they are keeping it under wraps.
Hopefully anotehr competitor will come up, but it would be major investment to become a big player even for those major second rung PPC's.
>>I do hope OV has a good strategy, but i cant see it - dosent mean they dont of course - hopefully they are keeping it under wraps.
Good point chiyo, I have had the same doubts about OV actually having a strategy. However it looks like they have no long term choice other than to build either AV or ATW into a real /popular/ search destination with PPC. Build their own or get squeezed out, seems like the forecast for OV.
L$ obviously is planning something with Wisenut and the purchase of that distributed spidering do-hickey, but it seems like a longshot.
Other than that there might be some second tier PPC action on a regional level.
MSN will build something. I'm not sure what but with their money it will shake the market. Remember, MS always undercuts the competition by price and giveaways to establish market share. I expect them to do the same if and when they roll out their own PPC scheme. Short term that migh force prices down.
