Forum Moderators: martinibuster
[webmasterworld.com...]
...then Google is becoming an Adsense publisher now. They'll become probably a premium publisher with a dedicted account manager, but the technology behind this is Adsense, right?
Yahoo! generate $800mm revenue annually from this, which is probably the (guaranteed?) payout from Google to Yahoo.
Now I wonder - what impact will the release of this huge real estate have on us tiny Adsense publishers?
Possible scenarios:
1) No impact. The real estate was showing ads before, sold directly by Yahoo!, so the total advertising budget spent on contextual ads will be more or less the same. The money is shifted to Google, that's it. The change will affect advertisers though. If they want to be on Yahoo! SERPs, please buy your ads through Google Adwords (and target yahoo.com).
2) Huge impact, and not for good. The real estate is now drawing ads from the Google content network pool, and as there is probably a guaranteed payment ("sweetheart deal") involved, high paying ads go to yahoo.com first, and what's left over will be distributed among the content network. Ad quality will become worse, and all metrics (eCPM, EPC, revenue) will be pointing down.
3) Huge impact, in favor of publishers. Google now attracts the advertisers from Yahoo!, and they might like what they see and spend MORE money with Google and the content network.
I think #2 is the most realistic scenario.
What do you think?
Targeted ads have always been top performers for us even with Google having tanked in general, and I believe targeted ads are going to play a much larger role in the future (i.e. general text inventory will be cheaper, targeted ads more expensive).
Advertisers already know where Yahoo is and how to advertise there if they wanted too, what's new from an advertiser's stand point is convenience, or yet another box to tick and opt out.
As for impact on the content network, I don't think there will be any at the top of the food chain as many factors should even themselves out, the bottom might get hurt though and 1 cent click competition might be the new WW3, another possibility which has been in the cards for a while is that the rich get richer, the poor get porer, and there will be no middle class.
Pssst. MS did it, if you want to hate anyone, there you go, I can just see the smoking gun and the hole in Ballmer's shoes.
