Advertisers to benefit from Nectar, Yahoo partnership

One of the U.K.'s largest supermarket chains, Sainsbury's, has partnered with Yahoo to enable online advertisers to target consumers according to purchases made using their Nectar loyalty card.

by Helen Leggatt

Around 16.8 million Brits own a Sainsbury's Nectar loyalty card, and it is estimated that 23 million people use Yahoo, so the coming together of these two huge databases will greatly enhance online advertisers' ability to target consumers effectively and with less ad waste.

Around 20,000 Nectar and Yahoo customers have opted-in to act as a sample group for the plan, according to the Financial Times, and six brands are involved, one of which is reported to be Cadbury.

Called Consumer Connect, the opt-in plan is very similar to Consumer Direct which Yahoo has been running in the U.S for several years.

So how does the partnership work? In essence, the Nectar and Yahoo databases will be linked in such a way that information on a consumer's Nectar card influences the behavioral ad system Yahoo uses to determine which ads they are presented with online. Also of great value, advertisers will be able to measure the effectiveness of their online campaigns by analyzing subsequent retail sales.

"The implication of today's product launch for FMCG companies is huge. Our customers depend on Yahoo to bring together their world and the world around them, and our advertising clients expect the same," said Mark Rabe, MD and VP of sales, Yahoo U.K. & Ireland.

EU Expected to Approve Yahoo-Microsoft Search Deal This Week

Deal is expected to be approved with no concessions

For a long time now, the big three search engines in the American market have been Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Google is the top search destination by far with over 65% of the U.S. search market. Microsoft has been working hard to catch up to Yahoo and Google in the search market, and is trying to grab a larger share of the huge online advertising market.

EWeek reports that the European Commission is expected to approve the Microsoft and Yahoo search deal that was first announced back in July 2009 later this week. The deal will see Microsoft's Bing search engine replace the Yahoo search engine on the Yahoo website.

Under the deal, Yahoo would retain its look and feel with Microsoft serving all search results behind the scenes. The deal would see Microsoft pay Yahoo 88% of what it costs to acquire traffic that is generated on the Yahoo site for the first five years of the ten-year search deal. In November 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo announced that they intended to take the partnership to Europe as well. If the EC approves the deal this week, it might put new pressure on the DOJ in the U.S. to approve the deal as well.

The self-imposed deadline for the EC to approve or deny the Yahoo-Microsoft deal in Europe is February 19. However, the EC could elect to extend its inquiry if it feels the deal might harm rivals in the search market.

If the deal goes through as expected, the combined Yahoo-Microsoft search engine will hold 28% of the search market making it a distant second place to Google.

The DOJ is reportedly looking at Microsoft's investments in Bing and details of the search deal including pricing for advertising. The Association of National Advertisers has issued a letter supporting the Yahoo/Microsoft deal. The association hopes that increased competition will result in lower advertising costs on Google and other online advertising programs.

Yahoo Rolling Out Mobile Effort For Yahoo Finance

During Yahoo's fourth quarter conference call last month, CEO Carol Bartz said the portal was shifting its $100 million rebranding campaign to a new phase focusing on specific properties like Yahoo Sports, Finance and search. Bartz didn't offer any details but it appears mobile will play a role in the effort.

According to a mobile ad network executive, Yahoo is looking to promote its Finance section across the mobile sites of national and affinity Web brands including CNN Money, The New York Times, Cost Cutter, iStock Manager, NPR and Cashwerkz. Yahoo's mobile budget for Yahoo the for February is estimated at $100,000.

Bartz said last month the initial phase of the Yahoo promotional campaign had helped increase engagement and traffic and traffic growth, especially internationally. She added that it was still too early to judge the effectiveness of the company's planned 15-month marketing push launched last September.

Yahoo Innovates Search Ads In Fight For Survival

While Yahoo continues to slip in search share - by 0.3% in January, according to recent numbers released by comScore -- the company refuses to stop fighting for survival. The seeming weapon of choice: innovation. Yahoo has begun testing new ways to put ads in front of consumers with two projects -- Your Ads, and Search Assist Ads.

David Pann, Yahoo vice president and general manager of Yahoo search marketing, tells me that about half the searches consumers do on yahoo.com don't return an ad on the page. So the company started to analyze consumer search history and behavior. Rather than serve up those search pages without ads, Yahoo tapped into its behavioral targeting tools to serve up ads in search results through the Your Ads tool, based on content the Web browser may have had contact with in the past across Yahoo's network.

Although the ads may not contextually match the search results in the Your Ads test, the ads would likely have relevance to the person searching on the keyword terms, given they had been the person using the same browser in the past.

The advertisements that serve up in the Your Ads test pull into Yahoo's search engine from its contextual-match database. Depending on the results from the tests, Yahoo will roll out or scale back the project.

Yahoo has filed, and recently updated, several of its patents on behavioral targeting technology.


Penn also says Yahoo began testing contextually relevant sponsored ads in its Search Assist feature on yahoo.com. In the Search Assist Ads test, people could begin to see sponsored ads in suggested search queries. For instance, start typing A-m-e-r-i-c-a-n-E-x-p-r-e-s-s and you could see an American Express sponsored search ad at the bottom of the Search Assist suggestions. Scottrade has begun testing this feature, according to ClickZ, who provides a screen shot of how the ad should appear. But I couldn't get Yahoo's Search Assist feature to duplicate the action.

Penn says Yahoo began testing the sponsored ad about two weeks ago. Today, you will find it on approximately 15,000 to 20,000 terms. These sponsored search ads in Search Assist serve up from Yahoo's sponsored search database. If the service rolls out, it could become an opt-in/opt-out feature in the content network.

Yahoo Led the Pack in Display Ads in 2009

U.S. Internet users saw an eye-popping 4.3 trillion display ads last year, with one company standing apart from the crowd as the runaway leader in graphic advertising.

Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) held a commanding lead over the next-closest display advertising network, serving up 521.2 billion ads on its sites, according to a new report from online metrics firm comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR).

Fox Interactive Media, the division of News Corp. that includes MySpace, checked in at No. 2 with 367.6 billion ads, followed by Facebook, which served up 329.6 billion placements.

In total, comScore reported a 21 percent increase in the number of display ads served on U.S. sites in 2009. In measuring the category, comScore counts both static and rich-media graphics, but does not include video ads.

For Yahoo, the display segment figures to play a central role in the company's ongoing turnaround mission as it looks to build out its content verticals and boost sales of premium inventory for branded messages.

On comScore's list, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) was the fourth-largest advertising hub, serving 218.1 billion display ads on its network of sites, followed by AOL, with 192.2 placements.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) checked in at a distant sixth on the list, with 69.9 billion display ads.

Among advertisers, three of the 10 biggest spenders were telecom providers. AT&T (NYSE: T) shelled out for 84.3 billion impressions, followed by Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), which bought up 56.8 billion spots. Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) was tenth on that list with 26.2 billion ad impressions.

The Social Networking Horse Race
Looking at other segments of the digital world, comScore described 2009 as a "landmark year" for social networking. In December, comScore found that nearly 80 percent of Internet users visited a social networking site, and that social activities now account for 11 percent of people's time spent online.

The leading storylines in 2009 were Facebook and Twitter, which both enjoyed triple-digit percentage growth in their user bases, with Facebook surging past MySpace by measure of U.S. visitors in May, after having overtaken its rival globally the previous August.

For Twitter, the rapid growth came in the first half of the year, while in the later months the microblogging site saw its traffic hit a plateau. Still, Twitter began 2009 with just 2 million users, ending the year with nearly 20 million.

For MySpace, 2009 was a rebuilding year. The one-time leader in the space shuffled its executive leadership, installing Facebook veteran Owen Van Natta as CEO after the departure of co-founder Chris DeWolfe.

MySpace executives have signaled that they are no longer trying to beat Facebook at its own game. Instead, they have focused on building out the site's entertainment platform, a strategy that comScore said is off to a promising start.

"MySpace has experienced some softening in its audience," the company said in its report. "However, a new strategic focus on entertainment content is exhibiting signs of success with MySpace Music having grown 92 percent in the past year."

But comScore's litany of usage statistics on social networking sites tells the story of Facebook's increasing prominence in people's online lives. In categories like total visits, minutes spent on the site and average daily visitors, Facebook enjoyed triple-digit percentage growth. The only metric in which Facebook saw a decline was in average minutes per visit, which comScore said was the likely result of the "increasing frequency with which people are visiting the site."

Yahoo! says that firms need to improve SEO campaigns

The search marketing team of Yahoo! says that firms need to upgrade their search engine optimization (SEO) campaign to make sure they get better return investments.

In the search engine’s blog, marketers were advised to do proper keyword selections, saying that this area is important especially when a company starts using professional SEO services.

Depending on the goal of an SEO campaign, sites will need to focus on high-volume search terms or product-specific phrases.

It is also important for an SEO campaign to respond to consumer behavior.

The Yahoo! marketing team explained: “Users are more sophisticated in their searches now, and we’ve seen that up to 20 per cent of searches in any given month can be search queries never seen before by a search engine.”

AP Renews Licensing Deal With Yahoo, Not Yet With Google

Yahoo has renewed its licensing deal with the Associated Press to post articles from the global wire service on Yahoo Web sites, the companies said on Monday.

The agreement contrasts with the state of similar negotiations between the AP and Google, which have apparently either stalled or not progressed according to schedule, leading Google to stop hosting AP stories on its Google News Web site.

"Yahoo has been an excellent partner for 12 years and has always recognized the value and importance of original, authoritative news. We are pleased Yahoo and AP will continue that valued relationship," AP spokesman Paul Colford said in an e-mailed statement.

"AP looks forward to deepening its partnership with Yahoo as we and our members explore new opportunities and new ways to engage with audiences," Colford added.

Meanwhile, Yahoo said AP articles are "an important part" of its effort to provide Yahoo visitors with comprehensive and relevant content. "We look forward to continuing our long-standing partnership with AP for many years to come," Yahoo spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek said via e-mail.

The AP and Google apparently are having a harder time coming to an agreement to renew their deal, which was announced in August 2006 but signed several months earlier. On Jan. 12, a Google spokesman said via e-mail that Google still had a licensing agreement with the AP but that it had stopped publishing AP stories on Google sites. On Monday, the spokesman said the situation remained the same.

News reports have speculated that the Google-AP deal is winding down and the renewal negotiations have stalled. The AP didn't respond to a request for comment about its negotiations with Google. An AP story on Monday stated that the news wire is in ongoing negotiations not only with Google but also with Microsoft.

The AP deal has allowed Google to post the full text of AP articles in Google News, instead of simply linking to AP stories on other Web sites.

Google's relationship with news organizations has often been tense. Publishers regularly grumble that Google is a parasite, indexing their content and linking to it from its regular search results and from Google News, without paying and without permission, while benefitting financially.

Google defends its practice of publishing headlines linked to news articles on external Web sites by saying that the fair use principle allows it. Google also often publishes short text snippets and thumbnail images along with the linked headlines.

Some publishers see great value in having their content linked to in Google News, because they can benefit from the Web traffic and monetize it through online ads.

However, the ad revenue of newspapers and magazines has dropped dramatically in recent years as marketers shift significant portions of their budgets to the Web and specifically to Google, creating resentment in the publishing industry.

In particular, wire services such as the AP and Agence France Presse see much less value in news aggregation sites like Google News. Wire services aren't as interested in having people visit their Web sites. The AP and AFP make money from licensing their content to publishers, so they are very protective of how their stories are used.

In fact, the AFP sued Google for copyright infringement in 2005 over Google's practice of linking to AFP stories published by other Web sites, namely newspapers that subscribe to the AFP content.

The case was settled out of court two years later, when Google agreed to sign a formal licensing agreement with the AFP that allows Google to post the full text of the French news agency's stories, similar to its deal with AP.

Acacia Awarded $12.4 Million In Patent Infringement Case Against Yahoo

Nice timing, Acacia Research Corporation. The mother of all patent trolls patent acquisition, development and licensing company, which was profiled in depth by BusinessWeek just two days ago, this morning announced that it has been awarded a total of $12.4 million in a patent infringement case against Yahoo.

On May 15th, 2009, a federal court jury decided that Yahoo's messenger program with IMVironments ¿ which revolves around interactive backgrounds that users can add to IM conversations ¿ infringes US Patent Number 6,205,432, filed by a trio of inventors and published back in 2001.

The patent was described as follows:

An advertisement system and method are provided for inserting into an end user communication message a background reference to an advertisement. In some embodiments, the background reference causes an advertisement image to be tiled, or watermarked, across an end user screen behind the text of an e-mail message or public posting.

According to today's statement, Acacia subsidiary Creative Internet Advertising Corporation received a $12.4 million final judgment stemming from its May 2009 trial verdict (PDF) and corresponding $6.6 million damages award in its patent lawsuit.

In addition, the District Court?s judgment awarded a post-verdict ongoing royalty rate of 23% for all of Yahoo?s IMVironments sales.

To learn more about Acacia Research Corporation and its business, I suggest you read up on the company by heading to the BusinessWeek profile.

To give you an idea: Acacia essentially buys patents from inventors and then seeks fees from companies that it says infringe on those patents. It's in the business of suing companies rather than producing products or services; the company is said to have filed at least 337 patent-related lawsuits since its inception in 1992.

Buys Yahoo's HotJobs Site for $225M

The piecemeal sell off of Yahoo continued this week as Monster picked up Yahoo's HotJobs site for $225 million. The deal between the two companies will make Monster the default job listing provider in the U.S. and Canada for the next three years.

"The transaction with Monster enables us to continue to provide an important service to our users through the traffic agreement," Yahoo's executive vice president Hillary Schnieder said in a press release issued Wednesday. "Yahoo remains focused on its core businesses and delivering exceptional experiences to users, partners and advertisers."

HotJobs has been a part of Yahoo since 2002, when the company acquired the site for $432 million.

Does Monster's Acquisition Of Yahoo! HotJobs Matter If The Internet Is The Job Board

Monsters acquisition of Yahoo HotJobs signals a significant landscape change for a job board industry facing significant economic pressure and I believe the deal also marks a ?new normal? in how companies are hiring talent. Online recruiting is transitioning away from ?the Big Three? job boards. The Internet is becoming the job board.

Of course, unloading and closing properties that are not part of Yahoo?s strategy going forward is smart. (Though selling a job advertising board smack in the middle of this downturn and extreme unemployment must have been as hard as selling an empty, foreclosed home in Las Vegas right now.)

But more importantly, this acquisition is an indicator of a rapid evolution as more hiring takes place online. Venture-backed startups are transforming this industry as new technologies begin to change how companies find and attract talent. The elephant in the room is that the economic jolt of September 2008 has permanently altered the job market and dramatically accelerated labor trends underway for many years, such as the growth in job turnover throughout a person's career.

Increases in unemployment, under-employment and turnover are boosting traffic to nearly all job boards and job search engines ? and the number of online applications to resource-depleted recruiting departments. Companies are spending more money sifting through unqualified applications, so they are naturally spending less on job boards and taking advantage of free sites, like Indeed, to post and distribute their jobs.

To combat the influx of poor-fit applications, companies are turning to new technologies and online services to target talent and search across the open Web for people who may not be actively searching for a job on a board. This is possible because 42% of working adults in the US now maintain a profile somewhere online?most notably on LinkedIn and Facebook, but also on Twitter and services like Jigsaw, an SF-based, user-generated database of professionals. And the downturn is growing this number.

The more innovative recruiters at growing companies like Zappos and Dell are now are using social media to engage prospective candidates in a genuine and inexpensive way: building candidate communities in their career site and blogs, search engine optimizing job listings, distributing jobs through social networks to dramatically drive referrals, and tracking web analytics by job to determine their best sources of talent.

To me, the more interesting acquisition was Monster?s purchase 18 months ago of Trovix, a Bay Area startup that built a behavioral algorithm for matching jobs and resumes to help recruiters sift through applicants and jobseekers through jobs. But, the irony is that they will be ?unveiling? this new technology, dubbed 6Sense, on this weekend?s (expensive) Super Bowl, the annual marketing battleground of the big, horizontal job boards.

As funny as those ads can be, they are not likely to solve the job boards? bigger marketing challenge: how to convince companies to spend more money ?posting and praying? that the best person applies for their job when the broader, open Internet is fast becoming the new, cost-effective ?job board? of talent. This week?s combination of Monster and Hotjobs isn't going to solve that problem either.