Search Engine and Marketing News Roundup
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There is always something going on in the search engine field, whether it's new acquisitions, new studies, or new approaches to marketing and advertising. This article takes a look at four recent stories: purchases by Yahoo and AOL, Facebook's new transparency to search engines, and a potentially distressing report from Jupiter Research about viral marketing.
We'll look at Yahoo first. About midway through Jerry Yang's 100-day reassessment and overhaul of the search engine, the company went shopping. It came back with ad network BlueLithium in its cart, for a cool $300 million. Given Yahoo's historic problems with monetizing its service as well as arch rival Google, the deal could turn out to be a bargain.
The company has high hopes for the acquisition. It is hoping that BlueLithium's technology will improve its ability to serve behavioral and contextual ads, and help build up its Smart Ads service. In fact, some within the company are portraying it as the last piece of a puzzle that is finally coming together. Todd Teresi, senior vice president of the Yahoo Publisher Network, notes of his company's latest actions that "We have methodically identified where we need to move and move quickly. The strong, off-network deals with companies like eBay, Comcast, and the newspaper consortium were the first steps, acquiring Right Media was the second step, and now increasing direct marketing and performance expertise with BlueLithium is the third."
Yahoo has a massive network, and probably needs all of these tools to get the most out of it. The purchase of BlueLithium in particular looks like it will play well on Wall Street, since it is exactly the kind of move that financial analysts have been hoping to see Yahoo make. It's also not a surprise; BlueLithium has been looking like an attractive acquisition for a while, it was only a matter of who would pick it up. It's even possible, and Mike Cassidy, CEO of Undertone Networks speculates, that Yahoo made the purchase to keep BlueLithium out of Google's hands. At the very least, it will help keep Yahoo competitive with Google and MSN.
This probably won't be the last purchase of an advertising network by a search company we see this year. "Yahoo bought two, AOL bought two. The category has shown it's got a lot of value, and I'm pretty sure we'll see at least two more [acquisitions] before the end of the year," said Cassidy. "They can double BlueLithium's business in a few years, and it complements the Right Media purchase, which was valuable, but not a full solution." Bringing together the technologies from its in-house platforms and its recent purchases just might give Yahoo the full solution it was looking for.
Next: AOL Acquires Tacoda >>
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