The big news all over search land is the just-inked deal between Microsoft and Yahoo to combine search delivery and ad-selling forces in order to combat Google.
The deal makes sense for all parties. Yahoo gets better search technology by powering their web search properties with the Bing algorithms, and Microsoft taps into a network that is many multiples larger than its own.
From our point of view this is mostly good news. Better, more relevant search results will make the Yahoo/MSN ad network that much more valuable, and hopefully provide a better qualified audience, especially in markets like high tech, where the valuable portion of the audience has tended to use Google. More volume in the network also means we can perform faster performance assessment and testing, and more rapid optimization.
The only worrisome note is the talk of centralizing ad sales on the Microsoft AdCenter platform. AdCenter has always been much more difficult to manage than AdWords, or Yahoo’s Panama platform, however API-driven tools may largely make these differences moot for agencies (aside from their development teams). Should AdCenter be the ad management platform of choice, expect to see small and local advertisers alienated by any migration away from the Panama platform. We would strongly suggest that Yahoo/Microsoft integrate Panama as the ad management platform of choice for the combined network.
With an estimated 24 months of integration to execute this almost-a-merger, we don’t see any rapid changes in daily management, but the road ahead will be interesting as Yahoo and Microsoft address the thorny details implicit in this deal.
