Is Yahoo`s Smart Ads a Smart Idea? - Search Schizophrenia
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Gord Hotchkiss has correctly pointed out that the Holy Grail of search, if it is to move ahead, is disambiguating intent. He has also observed, when talking about search becoming more personalized, that “Whatever happens on the organic site will roll over to the sponsored side…It will drive everything.” Though behavioral targeting has been around for a while, in the light of Yahoo’s latest move – and the fact that Hotchkiss pointed this out about a month before Yahoo came out with Smart Ads – those words look almost prescient.
But disambiguating search is a Holy Grail for a reason. Mark Simon makes that point when he wonders whether Yahoo’s Smart Ads are really efficient. “A good number of the online searches I do – perhaps even the majority – are about search. But I’m not looking to hire a search firm. And that’s a real problem for behavioral targeting programs like Yahoo’s new Smart Ads,” he points out.
In other words, just because a user is searching for something online doesn’t mean they’re interested in buying something related to their search. Simon gives one example of this, but it’s actually much worse than that. It’s very easy to be logged into Yahoo at home and at work -- after all, who hasn’t checked their personal web email at work? But do you perform the same kinds of searches in both places?
If you’re anything like me, I’m guessing you don’t. For example, at work, I do research for articles related to our SEO Chat, Dev Hardware, and Web Hosting web sites. I also look up computer books on Amazon.com for tasks related to the publishing of chapter reprints on three of our other sites. That’s all well and good – but once I get off work, I don’t want to hear anything about computer programming, and I could do with a little less discussion of SEO and computer hardware, thank you very much. I have many interests that are in no way related to my work; as the T-shirt quote goes, “I have many talents, but I only get paid for three of them.”
It gets even worse when two people share the same account. I’d never share an account with anyone, but I know one couple that does share a Yahoo email account, and their interests strongly diverge in certain areas. At the risk of sounding clichéd, I couldn’t imagine him showing an interest in knitting, and I couldn’t imagine her showing an interest in power tools – except maybe as a gift. Of course, that shows yet another area where behavioral targeting can fail, which is when a user shops for a gift for a friend or loved one with very different interests from their own. If I look for an advanced book on genealogy for my friend, I do not want to keep seeing ads for books on the same or similar subjects when I’m doing other things online.
Next: Yahoo in a Bind >>
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