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"We needed to become an agent in certain ways -- at a minimum we needed to own the technology," Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel said in the day's opening remarks...[Jeff Weiner, the company's senior vice president of search and marketplace] said Yahoo! would probably expand its paid-listings business. Recently, it began testing adding extra paid listings on its search results page. Another way to do this would be to include paid listings on Yahoo! vertical areas, even if they haven't been searched. For example, Weiner said Yahoo! could easily serve relevant paid listings to a user going to the portal's real estate section.
Yahoo! expects to move the innovations to its international sites as well, he said.
When asked if Yahoo! could continue to rely on a third-party provider like Overture for a strategic part of its business, Weiner said Yahoo! always looked at whether it was best to build a technology, buy it, or outsource it. For now, the company has concluded that contracting with Overture makes the most sense for the business.
More Yahoo in the NY Times [nytimes.com]
In the meeting yesterday, at Yahoo's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company spent much of its time outlining plans for new premium services it intends to introduce to its Web portal later this year. These include a mix of new services — like video programming to be watched on computer screens, and expanded versions of its core offerings like e-mail.
Interesting - pay PPC search listing prices for non-search clicks. hmmmm.
