Why Yahoo Likes Newspapers November 28, 2006
Posted by Bill in Behaviorial Marketing, online marketing, Search Marketing, traditional advertising, Yahoo Search Marketing.add a comment
November ‘06 will go down as the month the search giants got serious about newspaper plays. Google has unveiled plans to enter ad management for newspaper classifieds across 50 papers; last week, Yahoo countered by entering strategic partnerships–starting with collaboration on job classifieds, but set to expand into Yahoo help with newspapers’ maps and search presences–for 176 newspapers’ online divisions.
When you think about it, the Yahoo move seems surprising. Newspaper moves make sense for Google, which has long expressed plans for expanding into traditional media; and which, besides, goes for over $500 a share and has money to burn on new initiatives. But Yahoo’s poor Q3 performance, probable eminent downsizing, and “Peanut Butter Manifesto” that looks to streamline Yahoo’s activities, rather than expand them, makes a sudden shift into newspapers seems odd. It’s especially odd in light of the tough times that newspapers currently face, making Yahoo’s move into newspapers a change of course right into an ailing industry.
So my question for this week is: What does a troubled Yahoo see in a beleaguered newspaper business? The answer to that question, of course, lies in local advertising.
It’s not surprising that Yahoo would feel itself lagging in local. From its roots, Yahoo has been a leader in the general online world, from search to e-mail to online content. But leadership in general online services is very different from leadership in the local markets. Consider search: while Google nearly doubles Yahoo’s share of overall search (Google has roughly 50% of all searches, to Yahoo’s 25%), Google leads Yahoo by only a slim lead in share of local searches (according to an e-Marketer study from earlier this year, Google holds about 29.8% of all local searches to Yahoo’s 29.2%).
That general search/local search split makes a good deal of sense, as broader channels operate in nearly opposite ways from local media. Most of the Internet–including search–is used to bring a wide, unknown world a little bit closer to you. That includes finding the Web site you don’t know about through search; it also includes letting you e-mail a friend you can’t speak to because you’re not in front of her. Services for the general Web focus on building better, smarter communication pathways to make a big world smaller.
Local advertising is something entirely different. Local channels focus on enhancing audiences’ participation in a corner of the world that’s already, quite literally, very close to home. Local media isn’t about making a big world small; it’s about entrenching people’s relationships with a world that already is very small. And so while winning in most Internet services relies on excelling at bridge-building across different locations and types of information, winning in local channels relies on becoming an extension of your particular locale. Google’s a powerhouse in global information-bridging, allowing it to take the lead in general search; but it’s Yahoo, which offers rich local information on its portal, that becomes a portion of users’ local experience, thereby reaping the rewards in share of online searches.
Yahoo understands this. And it also seems to understand that, at the end of the day, it’s newspapers that have the infrastructure to make themselves a part of the local scene in a way that globally-focused online players–including Yahoo itself–simply can’t. Newspapers have what Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group (which is partnering with Yahoo), refers to as “a huge sales force involving thousands of sales professionals”; they also have lots of local reporters creating enormous amounts of online locally-focused content. By tapping into those thousands of ad salespeople, Yahoo is able to capture local advertising markets it’s not built to capture on its own; meanwhile, by helping with the search presence of newspapers’ online content, it’s able to enhance the local results on Yahoo search (where that local content is now more likely to appear), without needing to create its own small army of local beat reporters.
In other words, Yahoo understands that it’s got two choices for expanding its local reach. It can either deliver more of its own local offerings–which will mean defying the Peanut Butter Manifesto by building a workforce to create more local content–or it can outsource its local workforce to the local experts (the newspapers), while doing what it does best as a global online service: serving as the network that takes information from the world’s many locations, and delivers that information to its users. By opting for the second choice, Yahoo’s managing to expand its local reach, while working less. Which is why Yahoo’s move into newspapers may look like it’s taking on more; but it’s actually a way to become more efficient by honing in on its core competencies. Far from being a dangerous expansion, that’s smart business.
Will E-Media Make It? November 20, 2006
Posted by Bill in Broadcast, Google, MSN Search, Online Auction Tips, online marketing, Search Marketing, traditional advertising, Yahoo Search Marketing.add a comment
Last week, advertisers got their first glimpse of the e-Media Exchange, the auction-based TV (and other traditional media) ad-buying exchange initiated by blue-chip advertisers like Wal-Mart, and powered by e-Bay. The Exchange is said to be ready to roll in Q2 ‘07; the advertisers involved got their first sneak preview last week. And as I’ve said many times before, the Exchange is a revolution whose time has clearly come.
But at the same time, it still isn’t clear whether the e-Media Exchange will actually thrive. That’a an open question; there are forces acting both against and in favor of the Exchange’s long-term survival.
Let’s start with the forces against. To begin with, the networks don’t like the Exchange very much; and if the networks themselves don’t go along, the Exchange won’t work (it’s the networks’ inventory that the Exchange is selling). The networks’ reaction isn’t surprising, as the Exchange was created out of advertiser suspicion of network double-dealing when it comes to ad pricing: auctions, the Exchange members feel, are a more accountable and transparent way to buy media. Meanwhile, something else the networks have a strong reason to dislike is the fact that an auction would wrest pricing controls out of the hands of the networks, placing it in the hands of advertisers.
Then there’s institutional culture. The Exchange is an attempt to replace the traditional networks’ culture of lavish upfronts and martini lunches during ad buys. But while martini lunches might not foster transparent pricing, they’re an important aspect of networks’ tradition and corporate culture–and old traditions die hard. That’s especially true amongst large corporations, and the traditional networks happen to be large corporations (or pieces of large corporations).
Of course, martini lunches really do serve a valuable purpose. Television advertisers are spending enormous sums of money; and there’s a strong argument that large purchases are best done face-to-face. Even in the search world, the engines have reps who handle ad spend for larger clients, despite the fact that the actual ad purchases are made via online auction. And if there’s a need for a human interaction in the online auction of search, there’s no reason the same wouldn’t be true of online TV ad buys.
Finally, those behind the Exchange may have made a tactical mistake in declaring that they’ll start the Exchange as a place to buy remnant inventory. That makes sense politically, as the networks would never have agreed to let the Exchange start out by managing anything bigger that remnant. But the move also ignores a basic principle of how auctions work, and that’s a problem. To paraphrase what I’ve said many times, auctions are competitions over specific items–and to create a viable arena for those competitions, you have to offer something that people are interested in fighting over. But remnant inventory is definitionally the inventory that nobody wants; that’s not the kind of stuff that creates bidding wars, and so it’s not the stuff that makes for viable auction marketplaces.
OK, now why should the e-Media Exchange work? Because the auction networks have a record of creating clear and fair pricing. That kind of environment for buying TV spots would be an attractive change for advertisers who crave greater transparency in their ad buys. And if the advertisers are willing to fight hard enough for it, there’s definitely a chance that the networks will go along with the advertisers’ wish.
Meanwhile, the Exchange has made a smart move in deciding to start the program on cable TV. Cable TV is subscriber-based, which means that cable networks have demographic, geographic, and/or psychographic information that the standard networks don’t. That kind of data creates opportunities for the networks to slice and dice ad inventory in ways that clearly showcase each slot’s value. That, in turn, allows networks to charge more for the given slot, which is good for them; and it will also be able to drive more bidding wars over any given slot, which is good for the longevity of the Exchange, which is good for the advertisers. And initial success in a cable TV run will make the Exchange an easier sell to the larger networks, too.
One final note here: There’s no reason to assume that the Exchange is a guaranteed home run, just because it provides auctioned ad buys. Google and Yahoo have clearly shown that auction-based advertising can be a highly viable ad model; but there are plenty of auction media outlets that you haven’t heard of, simply because they died along the way. And whether the Exchange will become TV’s Google, or the next cutting-edge idea that lost because it was too ahead of its time, remains to be seen.
Why Yahoo Won’t Face Google In Traditional Media November 13, 2006
Posted by Bill in Google, Search Marketing, traditional advertising, Yahoo Search Marketing.add a comment
With Google announcing that it’s launching both a newspaper advertising program and contextual radio ads, I’m left wondering if Yahoo will ever follow suit, rolling out a traditional media arm of its own.
For now, obviously, Yahoo in traditional media is out of the question. Yahoo’s facing tough times after poor Q3 performance, and it’s not in a position to extend its reach as dramatically as Google has. But that doesn’t mean traditional will be out of the question forever, and it’s a worthwhile question to ask.
I’ll save you the anticipation and get to the answer right away: the answer is no, absolutely not, Yahoo will never enter the traditional advertising space. I’ll explain why that’s so, but I’ll need to take a detour through the very non-traditional channel of the mobile Internet.
Along with Google’s new traditional ventures, recently both Google and Yahoo made advancements in mobile. Through Gmail Mobile, Google launched its e-mail service into the mobilesphere. Google also joined forces with Samsung and wireless provider Helio; together, the three now provide a satellite-powered Google Maps that helps you locate people. Meanwhile, Yahoo was pushing mobile ahead in a different direction: you can now deliver display advertisements via Yahoo Mobile.
These are very different paths to making mobile better. Yahoo’s mobile display ads will help mobile directly, immediately making it more valuable for advertisers and for Yahoo itself. Google’s mobile advancements, on the other hand, are more indirect; they’re focused on using mobile to get more value out of other channels-specifically, e-mail and social networking technology.
That distinction is consistent with the overall Google and Yahoo mobile strategies. A visit to google.mobile.com shows that Google Mobile services are essentially Google’s core online offerings (Google Search, Gmail, Google SMS, Google News and Google Maps) served up to your mobile device. That’s very different from mobile.yahoo.com, through which Yahoo Mobile provides online standards like e-mail and search, but also offers very mobile-specific items like mobile screensavers and ringtones. Again, Google’s using the mobile medium to get more use out of preexisting non-mobile channels; Yahoo, meanwhile, is embracing the mobile channel directly.
That’s a difference that reaches far beyond mobile. Actually, it’s a difference that runs as deep as each company’s mission statements. Google says it exists to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” What that means in practice becomes clear when you look to Google’s oldest and most popular product: Google Search. Search organizes information and makes it accessible; more important, though, it creates that accessibility and organization by using a new channel (search) to improve the accessibility of an older one (the Internet). Which is the same strategy that we see Google using in Google Mobile.
Yahoo’s stated goal is different from Google’s. Yahoo aims “to be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses”; it’s looking to be the world’s most powerful new-media empire. That goal makes each new media channel valuable in its own right, as it’s one more potential piece of the empire that Yahoo is trying to build. That emphasis on the channel itself is why Yahoo’s mobile strategy focuses directly on the mobile sphere by offering ringtones, and why Yahoo has built its own enormous publisher network–while Google’s publisher-related activities are limited to searching publisher sites and advertising on them.
And it’s this difference in goals that explains why Google’s a natural fit for the newspaper business, and why Yahoo isn’t. Running newspaper ads might be a divergence from Google’s stated goals of organizing information, but Google-managed print media is very much in keeping with using newer media models to enhance older ones. There’s really not much of a leap from using search engines to make the Internet work better, to using search thinking to make traditional advertising work better. Both tactics are about using one channel to improve the next.
But Yahoo isn’t interested in improving older media. Yahoo is focused on dominating in newer media. Which is why Yahoo would really have no interest in traditional advertising, even if the option were open to it. And it’s why Yahoo won’t enter the traditional space, even after it gets its house back in order. And finally, it’s why the underlying differences between Yahoo and Google are starting to cause the old online rivals to drift further and further apart–and why Google and Yahoo might not be rivals anymore in Web 3.0.
How Microhoo Could Beat Google November 7, 2006
Posted by Bill in Google, MSN Search, Online Advertising, Search Marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing.add a comment
LAST WEEK, MERRILL LYNCH ANALYST Justin Post revived a suggestion that he had first brought up in June: Microsoft, Post argued, ought to buy Yahoo. Post pointed to reasons why Yahoo might be worth more than its current so-so earnings suggest; he also observed that a Yahoo purchase would let Microsoft gain serious search revenue, even before MSN AdCenter gets up to speed in growing its advertiser base. Obviously, the proposed Microhoo would be a threat to Google. Part of the reason is the major share of search that the new entity would gobble up. According to comScore numbers released in May, MSN and Yahoo hold a combined 41% of all search traffic, which is just shy of Google’s 43%. But the threat from Microhoo would only partially come from search. The real threat to Google would be in Microhoo’s ability to adapt to a continuously-converging media world–a world that MSN and Yahoo are ready for, but that Google still might not be as ready for as it needs to be. All of this goes back to each business’s core focus. For Google, everything is search; Yahoo and MSN, by contrast, work in many channels at once and look to integrate them. And because MSN and Yahoo are already thinking about integration now, they’ll be far better prepared when integration really get underway.
You can see that philosophical divergence in the way each entity picks up search traffic. Google’s name is synonymous with search, and it’s the search engine itself that drives the bulk of Google’s search traffic base. Yahoo also gets plenty of direct-to-search visitors; but an awful lot of Yahoo search traffic arrives off of search bars on Yahoo’s enormous publisher network. The same is true for MSN and its publisher network-and MSN searchers even arrive via help buttons on Microsoft software. Google is popular for search in its own right; Yahoo and MSN Search owe much of their popularity to the way each business draws users from its enormous, diverse universe of user interfaces.
The different philosophies also come out in how each business applies search thinking to non-search channels. To take one example, consider search-influenced solutions for content/publisher sites. Google’s big accomplishment here is AdSense, which syndicates actual search ads onto content pages. Yahoo’s Publisher Network isn’t so different from AdSense; but Yahoo has also bought into the Right Media Exchange–which will let the Yahoo publisher network sell display ads by auction, just as Yahoo already does for search ads. Meanwhile, MSN’s publisher network is beginning to offer targeting on a level that’s clearly inspired by the thinking behind AdCenter, MSN’s super-targeted search platform.
These are very different approaches to how search might help publishers and content sites. Google’s AdSense effectively recreates the world in the image of search. MSN and Yahoo, by contrast, truly integrate very different models, combining elements of text-based search advertising with image-based publisher advertising to make something new.
Which approach–Google’s search-centric approach or MSN/Yahoo’s integrative one–is better? A snapshot of today’s online market would give a resounding win to Google, which pulls in roughly 25% of all online ad revenue, the vast majority of which comes from search. Google’s win is strengthened by Yahoo’s poor Q3 performance, especially given the fact that analysts agree that it’s Yahoo publisher network, not its search network, that’s giving Yahoo trouble.
But a present-day snapshot is misleading. That’s because the information world of today is siloed in a way that tomorrow’s world won’t be. Full-length TV content that lives online, and iTunes for your cell phone, are just the beginning of the new convergence–and as channels continue to converge, the ability to work in many universes at once will be increasingly critical. Which is why the multichannel model, and not the search-only model, might just be the long-term winner.
There’s even some indication that the tide’s already turning. That indication comes from online video, which is effectively the merger of the Internet and TV. Just two days after the YouTube acquisition, an Oct. 11 Businessweek article ranked Google Video as the fifth-most popular video destination on the Web–with MSN Video as No. 4, and Yahoo Video at No. 1. Online video is the merger of different media models, and it’s the integrators, not the dominators in search, who took the lead.
Of course, Google may have solved its video problems by purchasing YouTube. But if Google’s video problems come from too narrow a focus on search, then one needs to wonder how many billion-dollar fixes Google can buy just to stay on top as the landscape shifts. Which is why if Google can’t develop a more convergence-minded view of the world, it could face real trouble from a new Microhoo that’s convergence-minded enough, and large enough, to win in Web 3.0.
Future Tense: Public Radio’s daily journal of the digital age… November 3, 2006
Posted by Bill in Google.add a comment
Listen to my Radio Interview on the failure (or is it success…) of Google’s new product development…
http://www.publicradio.org/columns/futuretense/2006/11/02.shtml
Do Google’s failures equal success?
Google is expanding again. It’s just announced a new e-mail service for mobile phones, and has acquired a California startup that develops online collaboration tools known as wikis. Wikis let users create, modify and even delete information on items that others in a group have produced.
Google is still known for search, but it has dozens of products and services, including an online calendar, a shopping comparison service, an instant messaging program, a spreadsheet application, and a Web-based word processor. Each new Google tool generates buzz, but many of them languish in relative obscurity after they’re unveiled.
That’s not a problem for Google, according to Bill Wise, CEO of search engine marketing firm Did-It.
A Wise Search & Online Marketing Insider Tells All... 