Editor’s note: As previously stated, aQuantive (parent company of AA|RF) was acquired by Microsoft in 2007. The goal of SMTrends is to provide the insights and intelligence that matter to our readers. With that said, we know absolutely nothing more about merger talk than what has already been published publicly. What we do know is that everything related to Yahoo! will have a tremendous impact in the world of Search and Online that needs to be discussed and will continue to do so.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program…
Last week Yahoo! announced it has arranged for Google to power 3% of paid search ads on Yahoo!. As part of the two week test, Yahoo! will deliver Google ads alongside Yahoo!'s own search results, similar to the system Google uses to show ads on Ask.com and AOL. This will occur on search results from the Yahoo! portal, not search results from properties that syndicate Yahoo! results and/or use Yahoo! search technology. Yahoo! did not specify the terms of the deal, nor did it elaborate on the role Google is playing in the test.

Initially Yahoo! appears to have made the play to show increased value to shareholders – a major concern as the company attempts to resist acquisition by Microsoft. The announcement comes in the context of increased pressure on Yahoo!, as Microsoft recently threatened to reduce its offer amount if the initial offer isn’t accepted by April 26.

Microsoft representatives were quick to point out that Google and Yahoo! together account for 80% of the search market. Yahoo! hopes to ease antitrust concerns by describing the deal as a temporary test, rather than a full-scale outsourcing plan.

From an advertiser and client perspective, there is a distinct possibility that costs could rise due to increased competition for clicks in Yahoo!; there is also reason to hope that better Google returns will flow from the addition of a relatively strong syndication partner to Google’s roster. At least in the short term, Yahoo! can conceivably grow monetization of its search traffic without negatively impacting advertisers or their own core search offering. It is for these reasons that the timing and terms of the deal seem to be a very smart, calculated play for Yahoo!.

Article by Justin Scarborough & Adam Heimlich

Last week Yahoo! announced plans to acquire Indextools. Indextools was founded in 2000, providing a customizable analytics platform with worldwide clients, which include EMC, Epson, and Tesco.  Dennis R. Mortensen of Indextools blogged that “Yahoo! currently intends to provide the IndexTools Web Analytics service FREE of charge to clients and partners who accept the standard Yahoo! agreement.”
   

My hope is this acquisition, more than the other analytic industry consolidations, will spark a free (or lower cost) analytics vendor dog fight; Google Analytics versus the equally impressive Indextools, possibly rebranded to Yahoo! Analytics.  Yahoo! actually is the last of the big three search engines to acquire an analytics company despite their initial foray into analytics with the release of Panama to measure search ROI. 

The search engines’ acquisitions officially started with Google’s hugely successful Urchin acquisition in April 2005.  Microsoft followed with their acquisition of the Deepmetrics product in May of 2006.  (Uh… Gatineau, where are you?)  Now Yahoo! will roll Indextools products, which are already raved about and growing in analytics clout, into their offerings. 

Pre-acquisition, Indextools was at a notably lower price model than industry leaders Omniture, Webtrends or Coremetrics.  Indextools is currently priced at $49.95, or $295 per month for their E-business or Enterprise editions, respectively.  Rumor, conjecture, and innuendo on my part have it that Yahoo! will provide the E-business edition for free.  Of course, with talks of a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo! in the tabloids, we could see a mix of Deepmetric’s and Indextool’s strongest qualities. 

This Indextools acquisition is a potential game changer – so much so that Google and Yahoo! may start to compete on features,  and increase research and development efforts to match or exceed competitor offerings.  New features, of course, force the big guys Omniture, Webtrends and Coremetrics to increase their offerings, and possibly lower prices, in order to show their continued value.

Nonetheless, the analytics, online industry and mankind in general should see the benefits of new competition.  Ask.com, there is still time for you to acquire an analytics company.  This Yahoo! Indextools news also means that the next time a Yahoo! employee asks me if I use Yahoo!'s analytics package, I can stop looking at them with the crazy eyes.

Article by Joel Collymore

Usually, if I’m watching South Park, my brain is turned off to some extent. Well, last week my brain was forced to stand at attention because they were talking about something that affects my career, their take on monetizing the Internet.

I’ll try to explain without getting into too many details about the episode, titled “Canada on Strike.” The reason Canada went on strike in the episode was that they wanted more money – specifically, some of that Internet money. Well, through some twisted plot lines, the boys of South Park decided to help raise money for Canada, which they’d get from the Internet, to help save the country from themselves. They did this by posting a video to YouTube. We all know that won’t make you any money, but therein lays the point that South Park was trying to make: How do you make money on the Internet from intellectual property, or specifically content, if it hasn’t matured as a distribution mechanism? Just look at Kyle’s “I’ve learned something today” speech. If you’re curious, the boys couldn’t save Canada, as they were only given “theoretical money” for their popular video, although it all worked out, and they got to meet famous YouTube stars like Chris Crocker, Numa Numa guy, and other highly viewed “stars” in the process.

It may seem like an amateurish, simplistic take on the subject, but South Park owes much of its popularity to the Internet, having burst onto the scene thanks to wide online distribution of their pilot episode, “The Spirit of Christmas,” creating a buzz around college campuses. The episode is still downloadable to this day, for free, online. Note the “for free” aspect. While they get paid for their work by Comedy Central on TV, they don’t get any money for their work when it shows up online, which is to say that they do have a vested interest in the eventual monetization of video search.

Well, just a week after the episode aired an article appeared in Yahoo! News about UK online ad spend overtaking TV. It appears as though video is closer to achieving monetization like on TV– at least in terms of ad spends – than the South Park episode would have you believe. The article says that the Internet will overtake television as the biggest advertising medium in Britain by the end of 2009. While the road there was long and meandering, if the advertising world can figure out how to optimize and track the effectiveness of their online videos, to the point that it surpasses TV as the main ad conduit that should indicate that it’s only a matter of time before the major broadcasters figure out how to monetize TV online. The opportunity is there, somewhere among the mass of online video.

ABC already gives away their shows on the Internet, and anyone who has watched them that way knows that they see ads, not only on the web page they’re downloading the episode from, but also in the video streaming into their homes. However, these videos often offer fewer commercials than if you were to watch on TV – perhaps owing to the fact that they’ve already been on TV, or maybe just because there are other ways to get ads into the users’ experience. While nothing is in the works, it isn’t hard to imagine YouTube or some other as-yet undiscovered site cracking the online monetization code for video and other intellectual property – just as they did for ad spends.

Article by Josh Spiegel

An Interesting report that Yahoo! made some gains on Google this quarter.

comScore has released the March search engine share data for the US. 

William Flaiz believes we don't need no stinkin' standards!