Yahoo will allow users to turn off targeted ads on it site beginning at the end of August, according to a post on the New York Times Bits Blog. Yahoo already allows users to turn off targeting for ads it serves other company’s websites. So far the option appears to have not been widely used, with only 75,000 users having visited the opt-out page according to Yahoo. Yahoo said that it could not estimate how many of those users had opted-out.
Category: Online Advertising
Categorization Technology Added to Yahoo’s Right Media Exchange
Yahoo has partnered with LucidMedia to add categorization technology to Yahoo’s Right Media Exchange according to an article by CNET News. Using LucidMedia’s Clicksense contextual advertising engine to categorize publisher’s advertising inventory into more than 60 vertical categories, such as automotive, finance, and sports. In as statement, Right Media’s general manager Bill Wise claimed that the “technology will significantly help increase the prospective yield of a publisher’s available inventory and improve an advertiser’s ability to contextually target ads to relevant content and categories through the Right Media Exchange.”
Click Fraud Increases Slightly Over Year Ago Period
Click Forensics reported that the overall industry average click fraud rate was 16.2 percent in the second quarter of 2008, up from 15.8 percent in the second quarter of 2007. The rate was 16.3 percent in the first quarter of 2008. The rate of click fraud for PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks was significantly higher than the overall, representing 27.6 percent of clicks during the second quarter of 2008. Botnets made up over 25 of the click fraud during the quarter. Click Forensics gathers the data from a network of more than 4,000 online advertisers and agencies.
FTC Director Of Consumer Protection Supports Self Regulation of Online Advertising
In an interview with the New York Times Bits Blog, the director of the Federal Trade Commission’s bureau of consumer protection Lydia Parnes said that she support self regulation of online advertising. Parnes is concerned that any legislation would be based “taking a snapshot of the way the market works at a specific time,” and would be quickly outdated by pace of change in online advertising. She also questioned how much consumers understand the connection between tracking and relevant advertising, saying: “If you ask people whether they want to be trace when they are online they generally say they do not. But if you ask them whether they want a free Internet they say yes. And if you ask them if they want relevant advertising, they say yes.” She also said that she felt that the FTC could be very persuasive in getting companies to follow general principles that the FTC proposes without requiring legislation.
Microsoft Testing Expanded Publisher Advertising Network
Microsoft has started a pilot program to expand its adCenter contextual advertising network, similar to Google’s AdSense and Yahoo’s publisher network, to smaller publishers. Microsoft told CNET News the program began earlier this year and that “Microsoft’s self-serve advertising offering for publishers is still under development and is currently in a private pilot phase, being tested by select publishers who met the participation requirement.” Microsoft already places contextual advertising on large publishers including the Wall Street Journal and Rodale.
Google Increases Share of Search-Ad Revenue
Google increased it share of US search-ad revenue to 77.4 in the second quarter of 2008, up 2 percent from the year ago period, according to search marketing firm Efficient Frontier. From the year ago period, Yahoo dropped 2 percent to 17.8 percent and Microsoft stayed even at 4.8 percent. Google average cost per click increased 13.8 percent, Yahoo’s dropped 7.3 percent, and Microsoft’s increased 5.6 percent.
Source: CNET News
Congressional Hearings Held for Google-Yahoo Partnership
Yesterday, the U.S. House and Senate Judiciary committees held hearings into the Google-Yahoo partnership. The chief legal counsels for Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft testified during the hearings. During the hearings members of congress expressed concern about effect of the partnership on competition and the amount personal data Google would have on individuals. The biggest moment in the hearings came when Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel Brad Smith claimed that during a meeting Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang: “Look, the search market today is basically a bipolar market. On one pole there’s Google, and on the other pole there is Yahoo and Microsoft both competing with Google. If we do this deal with Google, Yahoo will become part of Google’s pole. And Microsoft, he said, would not be strong enough in this market to remain a pole of its own.” Yahoo general counsel Michael Callahan first refused to address the claim and later stated he had attending the meeting and recalled the conversation as being different.
Source: New York Times
Report Predicts Increased Cost for Advertisers From Google-Yahoo Partnership
A report by search marketing manager SearchIgnite claims that the cost of a click on Yahoo! search will go up 22 percent if Google sells the ad according to post on the New York Times Bits Blog. SearchIgnite compared the of cost of clicks at the same position on Yahoo! and Google for 15,000 keywords in 12 million clicks paid. They found that for popular searches terms Yahoo! cost more for the first three results and Google for the rest. For less popular search terms, the kind that would likely be filled by Google, Google cost 14 percent more for the first result and for the fifth through tenth it cost 52 percent more.
Click Fraud Tool Adds Automatic Notification to Yahoo
Click Forensics, a click fraud auditor, will provide automatic notification of detected click-fraud in search advertising to Yahoo under a new partnership according to a CNET News report. Currently, filing a inquiry into suspected click fraud requires a tedious manual process. Steve O’Brien, Click Forensics’ vice president of marketing, told CNET News that Click Forensics’ were in conversation with Google about providing the same service, but that so far “Google has taken a different attitude toward click fraud, assuring advertisers that it has a fail-safe means of tracking rogue clicks and that it doesn’t charge for it.”
Google Adds Search Volume Data to AdWords Keyword Tool
Google has added search volume data to the AdWords Keyword Tool. The new data provides the approximate number of searches on Google and their search network for last month and the monthly average for the last twelve months. The tool already provided graphical representation of search volume trends for a twelve-month period and the month that the keyword received its highest volume.
Source: Inside AdWords