New Moves in Search Engine Advertising - Yahoo! Targets Behavior
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And speaking of search engines that are competing with Google, Yahoo! is changing its approach to advertising in an effort to boost its effectiveness. It plans to serve up ads to users based on their surfing behavior on its site. In short, it will be using more than keywords.
"The new, new thing at Yahoo, even though we've had variations of this, is getting much more into behavioral targeting," explained Yahoo! executive VP Greg Coleman in a talk with Reuters.
The behavior the company plans to target includes search queries, movement through Yahoo! sites, and the specific ads clicked. This represents a change from Yahoo!’s usual approach, which targeted advertising based on customer demographics or geographical location instead of behavior.
One nice aspect of the new system is that it lets Yahoo! decide on the fly what ads would be most appropriate to serve to any particular user as he or she works their way through the site. For example, a user searching for information on cars might be sent an auto ad, according to Coleman. While monitoring of this kind can raise privacy concerns, Coleman emphasized that the targeting would be done anonymously based on behavior.
Of course, for advertisers, there is a catch. This kind of placement will cost more. That shouldn’t be surprising; the right ad at the right time and the right place is much more valuable – in a sense, it is the real estate seller’s equivalent of “location, location, location.”
While Google has been in the spotlight more than Yahoo! for its innovative efforts, this move by Yahoo! makes a lot of sense. It is likely to be watched closely by the other search engines. I would not be at all surprised to see it imitated, once it has proven successful.
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