Over the coming days, weeks and months plenty will be written about what happened today.  Yahoo has officially entered an agreement to turn over their search engine (and all of the monetization of search results) to be handled by Microsoft using their relatively new Bing technology.

I watched Carol Bartz’s offiicial address this morning.  Although her demeanor was certainly polished and confident, I did sense a bit of resignation.  Afterall, Yahoo stood firm against Microsoft believing that the company was undervalued.  Now, it would seem, Yahoo has been distilled into what I have been saying it has always been— the most powerful destination site on the web.

But, there’s a second part to what I have been saying all along— and that is that no matter how good of a destination site Yahoo is, the revenue that comes with being a content site and not an advertiser platform is significantly smaller.  Thus, I expect it won’t be long before we see a leaner Yahoo altogether.  I feel for the staff who works to support search products, and the stress this must be causing you.

On a lighter note, in typical Yahoo versus Microsoft style, the homepages of each do seem reflective of the different takes on what is transpiring:

This morning, Bing features a bridge spanning two majestic and beautiful mountains (in Geneva, nonetheless).  I have no thoughts on what the dam might represent, except possibly Google:

While Yahoo has a lighter presentation on their homepage.  The image and story I was greeted with (sure it varies depending on the layout of your new Yahoo homepage) is about ‘armswinging’.  Saying that scientists have finally solved the mystery of why people swing their arms when they walk.  Well, Yahoo, that speaks volumes of the situation, in my opinion.  Microsoft is connecting mountains, and Yahoo is swinging arms.  I guess that would support what I thought I read as resignation in Carol Bartz’s presentation.

Alright, so nobody is actually projecting a gloomy Christmas for babies.  Things are bad, but not that bad.  Can you imagine?  I just wanted an excuse to post this photo of my girl Daisy’s recent “Santa Tantrum”.

Ecommerce, however, is truly suffering as a result of the current economy.  eMarketer released their latest numbers, revising their online sales growth projections for the critical holiday shopping season to cut anticipated growth in half. 

That’s not nearly as gloomy as the data recently released by Comscore which reported a year-over-year decline of 4% for the same period in November.  That represents the very first time that ecommerce sales declined over the same period for a previous year. 

If there’s a brighter side, and there usually is, it is that the slowdown means deeper discounts might be available online.  My inbox has already filled with “pre-Black Friday Sale” emails.  I’ve seen some great prices.  Maybe, if sale prices are good enough, the overall volume of commerce conducted over this critical period can somewhat recover.  But, profits by etailers are bound to be down either way, and this whole thing is sure to have significant impact on the online marketing world. 

Two things caught my eye in the news today:

1) Yahoo is reporting that man has eaten a 15 pound hamburger:

A related search turned up some interesting facts.  A regular 100 gram hamburger patty has 259 calories and 16.3 grams of fat.  Now, I’m no math expert, but it seems to me that 15 pounds of the stuff contains roughly 17,612 calories and 1,108 grams of fat.  That’s more than a large movie theater popcorn.

 2) Google has launched a new WYSIWYG Display Ad Builder:

Yes, this is far more on topic for this blog.  But, come on, that hamburger was pretty impressive, wasn’t it? 

The new Display Ad Builder comes at an interesting time when the perceived value of online display inventory is on a huge upswing.  Typically a branding move with expected low rates of directly resulting conversions, banner ads are nevertheless coming back into vogue. 

In my opinion, this is only further evidence of the declining value of vanity websites for commerce.  Let’s face it, most internet users are past falling for a fancy web design, a flashy animation, or a sparkling logo.  They want information.  For small businesses in particular, the more concise that information is displayed the better.  Look at Google/Yahoo to see that this is true.  Up to 50% of a search results page for most every local business search is occupied by local business ads.  That’s because this is primo inventory.  It gets clicked (makes the search engines money) and converts (makes the advertiser money, too).  That’s partially because it is so local in nature, and specific to the search query.  But, it is also because the resulting pages are well formatted for conversion— prominently featuring the phone number, email address, etc.  Vanity websites typically aren’t so well formatted for conversion, that’s for sure.

So, with less emphasis being put on developing fancy websites, more budget is becoming available for other marketing.  There are only so many explicit searches happening for “Seattle Electrician”, but there are literally thousands of contextually relevant sites where a banner ad might display to get some extra eyes on your business.  It may not convert all that well, but it may have long term benefits including driving up your CTR and conversion rates from other media.

And, don’t forget, Google has long been looking for ways to better utilize all of this available inventory.  Content match has had a terrible reputation— mostly because advertisers failed to understand the idea of it being “CPC-priced CPM inventory” rather than more typical click-to-conversion trackable traffic. 

So, what do you think?  Would you use it?  Google’s betting on it and will do everything in their power to help you get around any roadblocks preventing you from trying.  Too cheap to pay a graphic designer?  Try the banner builder.  I did, and it is pretty cool.

Google Display Ad Builder

For anyone that doesn’t live under a rock, buildup to November’s presidential election has reached a fever pitch in all media.  Television commercials, whole-page ads in newspapers and magazines, as well as incessant news coverage (yes, I’m lumping that in with other commercial media) are impossible to avoid or ignore.  

This year, the most successful candidates are finally near fully embracing (although, perhaps still not fully understanding) the internet as a truly leveragable media outlet.  Of course, the internet has played a growing role in the past few presidential elections.  Here are some internet memories of elections past:

• 2000 - Ralph Nader gets good viral buzz
• 2000 - Bloggers and the other “free” media make election irregularities more widely known than previously possible
• 2004 - Support rallies for Al Gore organized through meetup.com
• 2004 - Blogs rule
• 2000 & 2004 - Anyone heard of a little political action committee called MoveOn.org?

So, what are the candidates doing online to promote themselves so far this time around?  Here are a few of the biggest candidate internet marketing pushes of 2008 (so far):

• 24% of people report regularly learning something about the election from the internet, up from 13% in 2004 (and compared to 40% for TV news)
• Perhaps this is why the average age of voters continues to decline (arguably creditable to a more informed, more motivated voting-age populace).  In Illinois (where I live), Barack Obama wins the 18-24 age group nearly 2:1 in the democratic primary versus Hillary Clinton
• “Yes We Can” is released as a musical remix of Obama’s motivating speech, tops Youtube ratings and inspires some humorous parodies (including one called “No You Can’t“)
• A ClickZ column points some of the blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss in the primaries to lower Google Adwords spending (the same article suggests that candidates relied much more heavily on search distribution than content network placement)

So, now the primary season is finally over and we have our major-party candidates.  What will the internet change this time through?  Hopefully, a lot.  I expect to see much more as the national election season gets underway. 

Don’t think that the internet will be a big factor in this year’s contest?  Barack Obama sure does, his campaign is hiring internet marketing professionals.

Merely a few short weeks after Microsoft officially withdrew it’s bid to purchase Yahoo, Google has come into the picture with a corporate mashup that is sure to peak the interest of Capital Hill’s antitrust legions. 

June 12th, Yahoo put out a press release stating its intention to “strengthen [it's] competitive position in online advertising through [a] non-exclusive agreement with Google”.  By the terms of the agreement, Yahoo will now serve Google Adwords advertisements alongside their own, both in search results and on Yahoo’s thousands of highly-trafficked (but poorly monetized) content pages. 

Ads will also be shows on member’s sites within Yahoo’s Publisher Network, which has never seen the adoption of Google’s Adsense program, but still gives Google a boost in content ad placement inventory. 

This agreement is non-exclusive.  Meaning, Yahoo is free to pursue similar deals with other ad providers.  They are even still free to pursue acquisition by Microsoft, although that would carry a $250 million penalty (termination fee).

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo claims that by better monetizing searches and other page views on their properties, they are projecting an extra $800 million in annual revenue.  And, that’s just the beginning— integrating other Google ad serving technologies on to Yahoo’s vast (and widely-used) user pages would certainly mean other opportunities.

It is all good news for Yahoo, whose leadership (Jerry Yang) have come under intense scrutiny from Wall Street, investors and Carl Icahn for missing an opportunity to sell the company for top dollar and subsequently causing a dramatic drop in market cap.  The deal is a positive move to add revenue security in an uncertain time for the internet sector.

Certainly, this deal is going to be reviewed under an electron microscope by fair-trade officials and monopoly watchdogs at the Justice Department.  In fact, Yahoo has claimed that the deal will not go into effect for as long as three and a half months to permit time for thorough regulatory investigation.  Likely threatened by a Google-Yahoo partnership, Microsoft is expected to apply significant political pressure to add further hardship to making the execution of the deal a reality.

So, as a Google/Yahoo mashup appears to be in our near future, I propose the following names:

• Yahoogle
• Goohoo