BusinessWeek looks at the new efforts by Yahoo and MSN to try and take market share away from Google’s paid search business.
They look at Yahoo’s “Pananma” initiative, which we disclosed a couple of weeks back. They also look at whether adCenter’s demographic targeting will be enough to win it some of the multi-billion dollar pie.
However, analysts aren’t expecting Google to see much impact from Yahoo’s and MSN’s efforts.
…expect Google to continue gaining share even after its rivals adjust, albeit at a slower pace. One big reason: Even after overhauling their search ad mechanics, Yahoo and MSN won’t come close to matching Google’s total number of advertisers. Analysts believe Google has north of 400,000 ad clients, twice as many as Yahoo.
So while Yahoo tries to more closely mimic Google, and MSN bets on demographic targeting, what is Google focusing on?
…company officials like the long-term prospects of a fledgling personalized search offering…understanding the intent of a user from just two or three words typed into a search box. “The final 20% of targeting takes 80% to 90% of the work,” says Google group product manager Brian Axe.
So what is the best strategy for gaining market share? I say forget trying to convince individual advertisers and instead focus on us agencies. Convince us that we should be directing more client dollars into Yahoo or MSN and we’ll convince the rest of the audience – after all, many individual advertisers still look to expert advice online for guidance on how to optimize their PPC campaigns, and most of those “experts” work at agencies of some kind.
Technorati:
Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.
You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.
