Post by Bozur on Jul 4, 2005 1:41:54 GMT -5
Ad agents for the search engines
Search engines like Google and Yahoo have become so proficient at attracting advertising that even competitors, like newspapers and yellow pages publishers, are now selling ads on their behalf, according to a New York Times Repoprt (2 May).
The NYT says that newspapers like The Houston Chronicle, which is owned by the Hearst Corporation, and yellow pages publishers like the BellSouth Corporation and SBC Communications have recently turned themselves into de facto agents for the search engines in the small-business market, where the internet companies have had limited success.
The paper says that businesses like yellow pages publishers, which exist solely to serve the local advertiser that Google and Yahoo covet, may appear to be cutting their own throats by passing those customers onto the search engines. But the publishers argue that they are taking advantage of the chance to make additional money, while also studying the search engines closely enough to determine a long-term strategy to compete with them, the NYT adds.
According to the NYT., last month, the Chronicle's web site began helping clients put text ads on Google, Yahoo and other search engines whenever an internet user searched for words related to the clients' business.
The NYT reports that analysts say that local advertising is among the most important business opportunities left to be exploited online. Roughly six million small businesses in the US spend about US$30 billion on offline ads each year, according to the Kelsey Group, a consulting firm that specialises in local advertising. They are only now turning to internet marketing - partly because many consumers are just now beginning to look for such information online.
The paper says that according to the internet research firm comScore Media Metrix, the number of times users conducted web searches for local information more than doubled from January 2004 to February 2005, the latest month for which data are available. (more than 421 million local web searches were conducted in February.) The NYT says that the research firm said that internet yellow pages sites have also experienced increased demand, to 188 million searches in February 2005, from 87 million searches in January 2004.
www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/technology/02ecom.html?ex=1272686400&en=33252538e641ad14&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Search engines like Google and Yahoo have become so proficient at attracting advertising that even competitors, like newspapers and yellow pages publishers, are now selling ads on their behalf, according to a New York Times Repoprt (2 May).
The NYT says that newspapers like The Houston Chronicle, which is owned by the Hearst Corporation, and yellow pages publishers like the BellSouth Corporation and SBC Communications have recently turned themselves into de facto agents for the search engines in the small-business market, where the internet companies have had limited success.
The paper says that businesses like yellow pages publishers, which exist solely to serve the local advertiser that Google and Yahoo covet, may appear to be cutting their own throats by passing those customers onto the search engines. But the publishers argue that they are taking advantage of the chance to make additional money, while also studying the search engines closely enough to determine a long-term strategy to compete with them, the NYT adds.
According to the NYT., last month, the Chronicle's web site began helping clients put text ads on Google, Yahoo and other search engines whenever an internet user searched for words related to the clients' business.
The NYT reports that analysts say that local advertising is among the most important business opportunities left to be exploited online. Roughly six million small businesses in the US spend about US$30 billion on offline ads each year, according to the Kelsey Group, a consulting firm that specialises in local advertising. They are only now turning to internet marketing - partly because many consumers are just now beginning to look for such information online.
The paper says that according to the internet research firm comScore Media Metrix, the number of times users conducted web searches for local information more than doubled from January 2004 to February 2005, the latest month for which data are available. (more than 421 million local web searches were conducted in February.) The NYT says that the research firm said that internet yellow pages sites have also experienced increased demand, to 188 million searches in February 2005, from 87 million searches in January 2004.
www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/technology/02ecom.html?ex=1272686400&en=33252538e641ad14&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss