‘Google Me’ Rumors Swirl as Details of Facebook Competitor Take Shape

A tweet from Digg’s Kevin Rose (since deleted), a confirmation from a former Facebook exec and a story on TechCrunch were all it took for rumors to fly that Google is working on its own social platform to go head-to-head with Facebook. This week several outlets began speculating about Google Me, which according to former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo (he’s now heads up Q&A service Quora) is a very real project to build a “first-class social network” modeled off of Facebook.

Though none of this has been confirmed by Google, the company did begin integrating Google Buzz updates within Google Social Search this week (via Search Engine Land). Social Search, launched in January, displays search results based on individuals you’re connected to per Google.  As Danny Sullivan notes, if all this represents a larger overhaul of Google Profiles and/or Google Buzz, we can expect that Google Me (if and when it exists) will also be integrated into Social Search.

Oreo to Give Facebook Page a Global Makeover

The New York Times reports that Oreo, a Kraft Foods brand, will unveil a new look to its Facebook page on July 5. The page will offer a hybrid of local and global content to acknowledge that though the brand resonates differently in different markets, there are also universal elements to Oreo that translate the same no matter where fans live (see 360i’s blog post on best practices for managing a global Facebook community).

As partners with Oreo on this project, we’re excited to share the new page with fans around the world. We can’t give away everything just yet – but one thing you can expect to see is a “world’s fan of the week” distinction for the most devoted Oreo lovers.

Be sure to Like Oreo on Facebook to be one of the first to see the global page on Monday.

Report: Paid Search is Still King for Retailers, though Social Captures Interest

The average retailer allocates more than 40 percent of their budget on paid search marketing – this according to a new Forrester study commissioned by Shop.org and the National Retail Federation. Though search spend overshadowed social marketing spend (with averages around 2-3 percent), retailers said they find value in engaging consumers via social media – and nearly 30 percent said social marketing has helped their business grow.

A large majority (80 percent) of retailers leveraging social say they are using the channel to experiment and learn what they can do in the social space. A solid 50 percent said they engage in social to listen and better understand their customers.

A Blueprint for Luxury Brands to Go Mobile

This week Mobile Marketer’s Editor in Chief, Mickey Alam Khan, urged luxury brands to consider launching mobile marketing initiatives as the mobile channel enables marketers to reach consumers at each step of the marketing funnel (awareness, persuasion and loyalty).

Since today’s consumer is “online, mobile and in control,” Khan argues that luxury brands can reap big rewards by incorporating mobile into their multichannel efforts ahead of the 2010 holiday season. Why mobile for luxury? Khan points out that the audience is on mobile devices (which are increasingly of the smartphone variety) and eager to browse/shop/buy and create relationships with brands via these devices.

Khan offers up some ways for luxury marketers to get started, including creating a mobile-friendly website, applying for an SMS short code (more on this in 360i’s Report on SMS) and launching a targeted mobile media plan. One strategy we might add would be to consider engaging customers and building loyalty via mobile social media (check out our latest POV on Mobile Social Marketing for more information).

Report: Flash & Rich Media Ads Make Up 40% of US Online Ad Impressions

ComScore released its Ad Metrix Creative Summary report this week, designed to provide current figures on the types of display ads being used by advertisers on publisher sites. The May report found that JPEG display ads lead the market with more than 42 percent of U.S. impressions – though flash and rich media ads came in close behind at 40 percent. Leader-board banner ads (728 x 90) were the most commonly viewed ad format.

Jeff Hackett, senior vice president at comScore, said the company has witnessed a “strong resurgence” in the display market over the past several months, with impressions rising 15 percent year-over-year. “One of the several drivers of strength in this market has been the innovation occurring with respect to ad units, as larger and more engaging creative ad formats are employed,” he said in a press release.

TechCrunch notes that increasing revenues for online advertising mean that marketers who optimize their display strategies will have the most success.

It’s been a year since Microsoft unveiled its new “Decision Engine,” Bing, amid a flurry of hype and speculation. Microsoft said the new engine was developed to help searchers navigate more easily through information online – an objective perhaps most vividly captured in the company’s slew of commercials poking fun at “search overload.”

Bing, which was fully rolled out on June 3, 2009, claimed to take a new approach to search through three simple goals (as articulated in the official release): deliver great results, deliver a more organized experience and facilitate fast, more confident decisions through search. Beyond that, Microsoft’s new engine sported a sleek design, with large, vibrant visuals extending across the homepage. Both inside and out, Bing was striving to be different.

As the year progressed, Microsoft made several large announcements that granted them significant attention among industry professionals and publications. These included the following milestones:

• July 2009: Microsoft and Yahoo team up for a much-anticipated search deal. Per the partnership, Microsoft acquires Yahoo’s search biz and licenses Bing’s search platform back to Yahoo. (Read 360i’s complete report for more information.)
• Sept. 2009: Bing and Ping launches to encourage people to share their searches.
• Oct. 2009: Bing debuts “Bing Twitter,” a service that aggregates Twitter chatter within the engine. This announcement was made shortly after All Things D reported that Microsoft had struck a deal with Twitter to allow real-time status updates to integrate within Bing search results.
• Dec. 2009: Bing debuts its free iPhone app.
• Feb. 2010: Bing inks another deal – this time with Facebook – that strengthens its real-time search capabilities (and drops Microsoft’s banner ads from the social networking site). The partnership included a more comprehensive Bing search experience on Facebook that would generate “rich answers” to help customers make smarter decisions.
• April 2010: Microsoft rolls out Bing Social Search, providing real-time social results to searchers within the engine.
• June 2010: Apple adds Bing as a search option on the new iPhone 4.0, though Google will remain the default search platform. Microsoft makes waves again at SMX Advanced, when it announces the addition of a new social site to the engine: Bing Social.

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Which brings us to now. Though Bing has remained in the headlines – and increased its brand awareness through a vigorous PR & marketing campaign (*some* people now say “Bing it”) – it still has not captured the market share that many in the industry thought it would. Nielsen’s latest search market share numbers put Bing at just under 13 percent – trailing Google at 65.1 percent and Yahoo! at 13.5.

After falling in early 2010, this was Bing’s all-time highest figure, though it remains to be a formidable threat to Google’s dominance of the search market. In fact, Bing’s gains have been at the expense of Yahoo – not Google – which does little to help Microsoft’s cause.

Figures from 360i sister company SearchIgnite on ad spend seemed to parallel the consumer trends reported by Nielsen. A July 2009 SearchIgnite whitepaper showed advertiser spend on Microsoft remaining flat from Q1 to Q2. Microsoft’s share remained flat through Q3, though by SearchIgnite’s Q4 2009 report Bing had captured 1% share of spend from Yahoo.

A Wall Street Journal article published last week takes a closer look at how Microsoft hopes to expand Bing in the months and years beyond this first anniversary. In that article 360i CEO Bryan Wiener noted that the core challenge facing Bing and Yahoo is to “ramp up” the volume needed to emerge as a viable competitor to Google.

We look forward to seeing how Microsoft approaches this challenge. Stay tuned for more insights and updates right here on the blog.

Twitter Announces Promoted Tweets Ad Platform

On Tuesday Twitter unveiled it’s much anticipated advertising platform, called Promoted Tweets.  The platform will allow marketers – preliminary users include Bravo, Red Bull, Starbucks, Virgin America and Sony – to purchase special tweets atop Twitter search results. Promoted Tweets will be ranked by a “resonance” metric, which accounts for user engagement in the form of re-tweets, favorites, responses and clicks.

Bravo is one of the first brands to use the Promoted Tweets platform.

Sarah Hofstetter, SVP of Emerging Media & Client Strategy, told the Wall Street Journal that Twitter’s resonance metric is compelling and distinguishes it from Google’s search ad-system. The platform’s biggest challenge, she added, will be convincing marketers to continue investing. “Its challenge is longevity,” she said. “It gets exciting for a while and then you might move on the next shiny object.”

For a complete recap of the news, download our POV or head over to Ad Age and read David Berkowitz’s latest Digital Next column.

Report: U.S. Paid Search on the Upswing

According to a new whitepaper from 360i sister company SearchIgnite, paid search spend in the United States rose 11 percent in Q1 2010 (compared to Q1 2009). This marked paid search’s strongest quarter since Q4 2008.

A new report from SearchIgnite shows paid search spend rebounded 11% YoY.

In 2009, first quarter spend compared with Q4 2008 declined more than -14%, TechCrunch noted in its coverage of the report. However, spend in Q1 2010 “held steady” with Q4 spend. These figures could indicate that the search market is rebounding from declines witness during the recession.

Google: New Frontiers of Display will be Forged through Better Data, Analytics

In Google’s third and final column exploring the future of display advertising, Product Management Director Ari Paparo discussed how better data will help marketers plan and measure display campaigns in the future.

Paparo compares advertisers of today to professional basketball teams of the 1980s who were stuck dwelling on simple statistics (points, rebounds, etc.) to measure performance. Over the past 30 years he notes that there has been a “data renaissance” in sport that has led to “more insightful measures” that take into account things like team chemistry and player psychology. Paparo argues that a similar data evolution will push the display industry forward.

How can marketers better work out where to buy ads and quantify their impact? Paparo says the combination of innovations in planning and measurement will revolutionize campaign management. And companies in the display space are already pushing the envelope – for example, sister company Netmining recently announced a new analytics dashboard that grants advertisers an under-the-hood view of the Web site analytics behind their campaigns.

Stats from Twitter Chirp Conference

Twitter uncovered some interesting stats about its fast-growing network at Wednesday’s Chirp Conference. Some of the most compelling numbers, as curated by ReadWriteWeb, include:

• Twitter has nearly 106 million registered users and 300,000 new users sign up per day
• There are 600 million search queries on Twitter per day
• There are over 100,000 Twitter applications
• 37% of active Twitter users use their phone to tweet

Click through to view a slideshow from the Chirp Conference via Business Insider.

Which headlines captured your interest this week? Send us a tweet or leave a note in the comments.

Image by atomische via Flickr.

For marketers in the digital space, 2009 was a whirlwind year. Twitter took off amid a social surge, Yahoo! and Microsoft partnered up in search and Google gobbled up a litany of companies. During this time we’ve used our blog to cut through the headlines and share insights into what the year’s top stories mean for marketers. Look to Digital Connections for more of this in 2010.

Below you’ll find our most widely-read posts of the year (we’ve recently counted down the top five on Twitter, for those of you who follow us there).

1. 360i Publishes Social Marketing Playbook

No surprise here. We harnessed brainpower from dozens of employees across the agency to put together this comprehensive 56-page report for digital marketers entering the social space. The result was a highly-regarded document that was shared across several social channels, garnering more than 50,000 downloads along the way.

» Download the complete Social Marketing Playbook.

2. Introducing @TweetingBar

Who could forget the inauguration of 360i’s very own in-house twittering tap? Sure, @TweetingBar might not be the most important thing we did all year, but we did have tons of fun figuring out the technological implementation and demonstrating the ways in which technology can spur social media in new and exciting directions. Not to mention he’s always good for a fresh, frothy brew – and a laugh to boot.

» Follow @TweetingBar on Twitter.

3. 6 Things to Expect if Google Decaf Gets a “Caffeine” Boost

Late this summer Google announced that it would begin testing a new “next generation infrastructure,” dubbed Caffeine. According to Google, the new architecture would help the world’s leading search engine enhance its size, indexing speed, accuracy and more. As buzz began to build, a team of SEO professionals at 360i set out to test the differences between Google “decaf” and Caffeine. You can read our six key takeaways for marketers in this post.

4. Google Changes “Nofollow” Policy, No Longer as Effective for SEO

In June, Google’s Matt Cutts pulled the rug out from under SEOs and Webmasters everywhere when he suggested that a previously sanctioned search optimization technique heavily relied upon by many site optimizers would not be supported in the same way. In short, he stated that the nofollow attribute that is considered helpful in preventing spam and even sculpting a site’s PageRank would no longer be as effective. This post takes a look at what the move means for marketers and the way they approach SEO.

5. The Social Marketing Playbook Quiz – Are You Game?

Quizzes aren’t known for their popularity, but our test of Playbook retention seemingly broke the mold. We challenged readers to take our quiz for a chance to win a free hardbound copy of the Playbook – and we followed through. Ten lucky quiz-takers received hardcover Playbooks for their efforts.

6. 360i Report on Social Graph Ad Targeting

Targeting is set to be one of the industry’s biggest buzzwords as we head into 2010. In this POV, we dive into the up-and-coming strategy of social graph ad targeting – that is, reaching consumers based on who they’re connected to within online social networks – and lay out the most promising opportunities it holds for marketers. As the report points out, social graph targeting can happen several ways (within a social network, across social networks and even across publishers).

» Read our complete report on Social Graph Ad Targeting.

7. 100 Ways to Measure Social Media

David Berkowitz, 360i’s Sr. Director of Emerging Media & Innovation, made waves with this column (originally published in MediaPost) that listed 100 ways marketers can measure social media. You can read insights from David every Tuesday as part of the magazine’s Social Media Insider blog.

8. 360i Releases New Report on Twitter for Marketers

This was the year businesses began embracing Twitter in droves. Whether they used it to build brand loyalty, drive sales or bolster CRM, brands interlaced the fast-growing microblogging platform into their broader social marketing programs. Our POV serves as a resource for marketers choosing to use Twitter to meet their broader objectives.

» Read our complete report on Twitter.

9. 360i Point of View on the Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal

A search-shaking July announcement revealed the much-anticipated partnership between Yahoo! and Microsoft and shed light on what the deal might mean for digital marketers. Our assessment was that it signaled a smart strategic play by both parties to focus on their core ambitions and areas of expertise. The upshot? The partnership will build more scale and efficiencies in search advertising, enable marketers to make the most of Bing’s traffic.

» Read our complete report on the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal.

10. New White Paper on the State of Search Marketing

We recently issued a whitepaper revealing key trends shaping search marketing strategy and introducing PageShare^SM, a new metric for quantifying the success of a brand’s presence on the search engines. As part of this report, a brand SEO audit calculating approximate PageShare was performed for each of the Top 100 Advertisers in the United States.

» Read our white paper on the State of Search Marketing.

Visual Elements

What it is: The Visual Elements feature is a hidden extension of the traditional text ad triggered by clicking a plus box.

Marketer Benefit: This is a great fit for a media/entertainment brand or anyone trying to drive awareness, as long as they do not mind if users don’t visit their actual site. If you are looking to drive revenue efficiently, this product may not be the best fit for you. However, it’s worth testing if you have a compelling video or another visual element — especially if you can include a strong call to action. Marketers pay on a CPC basis, either for a click on the link or the plus box, but the advertiser will not be charged twice.

Consumer Benefit: Since the visual element is hidden until the user activates, the placement has the benefit of a rich media ad without being obtrusive. This type of advertisement can add to the search experience – instead of detracting from it.

Sitelinks

What it is: This is a new feature that allows you to provide additional links to content deep within sites. Rather than sending all users to the same landing page, Ad Sitelinks will display up to four additional Destination URLs on your search-based text ad for users to choose from.

Marketer Benefit: Of all the new offerings, Sitelinks is perhaps the most exciting because it can help you make the most of brand and general searches. As you can see from the image, someone searching on “priceline” will have the ability to put themselves in the ideal landing page for what they are looking for, rather than landing on the site homepage and having to find what they need from there. Anytime you can put the user on a deeper page, it’s a good thing for user experience and conversions. If they searched on an unmodified brand term (i.e., your brand name by itself), it’s a great thing because it is on that term that you should see the lowest CPC.

Consumer Benefit: Sitelinks ads provide users the ability to choose the section of the site that is in line with their needs, making it unnecessary to navigate there from the site’s homepage.

Location Extensions

What it is: This product allows you to “extend” your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching your business address to your ads. You can set up extensions by linking an AdWords campaign to your Local Business Center (LBC) account. If you’re not the primary business owner of the locations you’re advertising, you can manually enter addresses directly into AdWords.

Marketer Benefit: This offering replaces the LBA (Local Business Ad), which has been a profitable tactic for many retailers. However, it is likely that many findings from LBAs can be applied to these new offerings, so don’t panic. And if you’re using search for a drive-to-store campaign, this is definitely something to investigate.

Consumer Benefit: Local extensions give the searcher the option to find the nearest location of your business in one easy step.

Product Extensions

What it is: Product Extensions allow you to use your existing Google Merchant Center account to highlight your products directly in your search ads. When your AdWords text ad appears, and your Google Merchant Center account contains products that are relevant to the searcher’s query, product extensions show the images, titles and prices of your products in a plusbox under your ad.

Marketer Benefit: Product Extensions have the potential to be great for marketers in much the same way Sitelinks have. Operationally, there are some limitations. For instance, in the above example, the search is for “ski clothes” but what we see are five coats and one pair of girls’ pants. While this may match a certain searcher’s needs, it would not be ideally suited for someone looking for men’s ski clothes. So there is some risk if there isn’t enough variety in your product offering to satisfy people searching on general terms. And if the marketer doesn’t have complete control over what product appears for every search (which hasn’t been the case in the past), optimization isn’t possible.

Consumer Benefit: If the images match the searcher’s needs, then the photos should enhance their search experience by giving them insight into products without having to first go to the Web site. However, if the images are not properly aligned with the search (for instance, a search done today for “toys” generated an ad featuring images of batteries), then the result could be confusing or off-putting.

Comparison Ads

What it is: A comparison tool that allows users to specify what they are looking for and helps them quickly compare relevant offers side by side.

Marketer Benefit: Since this product is likely to be beneficial to lower-priced items, it is ideal if you are marketing goods or services that are competitively priced. But it can also be useful for generating more targeted leads because users can refine their search by giving details like income or home value. Also included is a “request quote” functionality that provides a unique code that allows you to contact the user. Payment is due only if the user calls or fills out a form.

Consumer Benefit: The consumer can make an informed judgment in one place, reducing the amount of time spent searching.

Key Takeaway

All of these new offerings show potential for improving performance, as long as they are applied properly. The important thing is to remember that the only way to know whether something will work is to test it. So if you have the luxury of a testing budget for 2010, set some of it aside for new product offerings from all the engines you work with, not just Google. You never know where the next big win will come from.

- Jason Hartley, Media Supervisor at 360i

Research showed that multi-channel retailers are increasing their U.S. paid search initiatives despite economic uncertainty, with spend up 7 percent in Q4 ahead of Black Friday. Each of the Big Three engines showed year-over-year spend increases from retailers, but Bing’s 47 percent boost represented the greatest gain. This was likely due to higher average order values (“AOV”) from shoppers converting on Microsoft’s engine.

Here are some of SearchIgnite’s key findings:

• Strong U.S. Retail Spend in First Half of Q4: U.S. search spend from existing retail marketers is up 7% YoY in the first half of Q4 across all major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and Bing).
• Conversion Rates on the Rise: In the first half of Q4, conversion rates were up 17%, a strong increase over this time last year and a hopeful sign that consumer confidence is on the rise.
• Retailers Increase Spend on Bing: U.S. retail marketers dramatically increased their search spend on Bing, up 47% YoY, seeing higher AOV from shoppers on Microsoft’s engine.

The full report is available for download at http://www.searchignite.com/about_research.aspx.

One way to effectively mix SEO and PPC: Stay ahead of the curve and utilize new innovations that enable you to weave micro-formats and RSS feeds into search listings.

In an iMedia Connection article published today, Mike Dobbs — Group Director, SEO at 360i — outlines 10 tips for combining SEO & paid search in your digital marketing programs. We’ve provided a brief summary below, but you can read the full article over on iMedia’s Web site.

While search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search are often seen as independent processes by digital marketers, the consumer sees a search results page as a single experience, and research shows that paid and natural search do impact eachother. Here’s a look at 10 key force-multipliers that leverage search results pages to maximize the impact of both your PPC and SEO efforts:

1. Follow proven SEO best practices
There are many standard best practices, but avoiding duplicate content is a vital SEO rule for retailers. Duplicate content is a term used in the field of search engine optimization to describe content that appears on more than one webpage. Embracing the “canonical tag” is an elegant solution for avoiding duplicate content.

2. Evaluate your paid search campaign structure against your own site architecture
Following your site’s architecture when setting up your campaigns and ad groups can help reveal untapped opportunities for your paid search efforts. Do you have an ad group for each of your product categories and promotions? Walk through your site map and compare it against your PPC campaign to make sure you cover all the bases.

3. Take a holistic approach to PPC bidding and ad creative
Running paid ads that include timely promotions and a call-to-action alongside natural search results for your brand can actually increase overall click-through rates (CTRs) on natural search listings, providing higher ROI across your search efforts.

Results of a SearchIgnite study showed that natural search clicks were 17 percent higher on days when paid search ads were running, garnering more “free” clicks simply by running paid search ads alongside natural search results. In addition, total conversions and revenue on both paid and natural terms dramatically increased on days when paid search ads were running.

4. Optimize landing pages
Landing page optimization should be status quo for most sophisticated search marketers. For retailers, advanced optimization efforts can propel a search campaign from good to great.

5. Develop a content diversification strategy
Universal search results — i.e., non-text listings such as images, videos, and maps — are growing in prominence across all of the engines as consumers seek out diverse types of content on the engines. As such, brands should incorporate content-building into their SEO strategies and seek to diversify their content types as much as possible.

6. Think locally
Get mapped if you have a brick and mortar presence. This helps capture consumer interest when looking for physical locations and can aid in drive-to-store efforts. Make sure you have a local landing page strategy that includes a unique landing page for each location and a specific URL with details and content that is unique per location.

For a more holistic and complete search strategy, leverage and incorporate these detail pages into your paid, natural, and feed initiatives as well.

7. Know your seasonality
Learn from last season’s data and identify what worked — and what didn’t — from past years’ efforts. Have an evergreen SEO strategy to gain relevance year round.

8. Analyze your analytics
Improving search performance largely hinges on the level of data you have and your ability to understand and act on it. Spend quality time with your analytic tools. Evaluate your current level of quality control, as well as your existing segmentation of paid, natural, and other marketing programs.  It’s easy to just ignore the moving parts, but fine tuning your attribution strategy will provide more accurate data for critical business decisions.

9. Know the competition’s strategy
The best defense is a good offense, and this is especially true in search as competition for top natural links increases across the engines. Create a process to monitor the search programs of your competitors, including their messaging, positioning, and price listings in ad creative to see how you measure up. Keep an eye on potential threats by assessing how your competitors differ in both natural and paid, especially by product category.

10. Be an early adopter
Becoming an earlier adopter of coding techniques for structured data delivery can separate you from the competition. Leverage emerging solutions like rich snippets or “SearchMonkey” bring more value to the search results listing and could improve quality CTR.

The search landscape is evolving quickly as the major search engines continue to innovate. This creates both new challenges and new opportunities for marketers. Whether it’s fundamental tried-and-true best practices, getting your hands dirty in the data, or trying something new, search opportunities for retailers are plentiful. All of the strategies discussed here can help add some needed horsepower to your holiday campaigns and prepare you for the fast-approaching 2010.

Read our complete POV on the Microsoft-Yahoo deal below, or download a PDF version via Scribd (above).

Microsoft is effectively acquiring Yahoo’s search business, migrating Yahoo’s search ad customers to its adCenter platform, and licensing Bing’s search platform back to Yahoo. Yahoo will become the worldwide sales organization for the companies’ premium search advertisers, while from an ad technology perspective adCenter will be the search ad platform and Yahoo’s Panama will be phased out. Smaller advertisers will use adCenter directly to purchase their search advertising. After the deal goes into effect, both the natural and paid results on Yahoo’s owned and operated properties will come from Bing’s search platform.

Below we address a number of the key questions marketers may have regarding the deal, with 360i’s perspective on what this means for your search marketing efforts.

How does this affect Microsoft and Yahoo?

Both companies have been wrestling internally for years with their brand identities – to be a media or technology company. The consolidation of ad sales efforts with Yahoo’s sales team strengthens Yahoo’s hand as a media company. By contrast, Microsoft is doing the opposite by consolidating its technology position in search at the expense of its media sales aspirations. 360i’s assessment is that this seems like a smart strategic play by each of the parties to focus on their core ambitions and areas of expertise.

How does this impact marketers?

The most obvious impact on marketers is that there will now be two major places to buy search advertising, down from the previous three. The upshot for marketers: the partnership builds more scale and efficiencies in search advertising enabling marketers to take better advantage of Bing’s traffic.

This should also allow Yahoo to focus more on sales support, especially for its larger advertisers and agencies. Improved scale and customer support should enable Yahoo/Bing to close the gap between their combined consumer search share (28%) and advertising search share (23%) as compared with Google’s share (65% and 77% respectively), according to the latest comScore and SearchIgnite figures.

There is the possibility that cost-per-clicks will go up for some keywords, although increased relevancy from the platform’s scale might lead to increases in conversion rates, thus ensuring that ROI will be better, or at least neutral, for advertisers. Time will tell. Either way, we do not anticipate massive changes, especially given the large duplication of advertisers already running campaigns on Bing and Yahoo. We expect advertisers’ ROI should remain strong if they are proactively managing their campaigns. As it relates to SEO, optimization for Bing results will become increasingly important.

Is Bing a better search engine than Yahoo?

Bing is unequivocally the best search experience Microsoft has delivered, and it has been improving incrementally since its release. Yahoo has continued to innovate over the years, such as with products like Search Assist that helps refine queries and SearchMonkey that delivers richer natural search listings. Yet Bing has the stronger product, supported by considerable momentum and growing mindshare. Bing also excels at various specialized and vertical search fields, such as travel, shopping and image/video search.

The real challenge is giving consumers a compelling reason to use an alternative to Google. That will require smart marketing and extensive product innovation. The deal seems to be structured in a way that will give Microsoft access to Yahoo’s research and development resources, including its engineering talent. If these resources are harnessed properly, Bing will hopefully evolve further to offer the best aspects of both Yahoo and Microsoft’s current search engines.

Could this run afoul of government antitrust laws?

360i is not an anti-trust expert and can’t weigh in on this matter other than to presume that the Justice Department will likely examine the terms of the deal given their recent track record. We suspect that there will be two opposing points of view on the matter:

1. Deal opponents will argue that the main players controlling over 90 percent of search advertising share is now reduced from three to two, thereby lessening marketplace competition.
2. Deal proponents will argue that the partnership creates increased competition by creating a viable number 2 competitor. This argument is based on assessing the current field as being made up of Yahoo as a distant number 2 with declining market share and Bing with small, stagnant market share.
   Ultimately, approval may hinge on whether advertisers and anti-trust officials believe this partnership is pro or anti-competition.

When will this take effect?

No timetable has been set, but it will take quite some time before the deal clears government approval and the two companies can sort through the significant integration issues involved with combining search and sales infrastructures. 360i’s estimate is that it will be at least Q2 2010 –and more likely the second half of the year – before this partnership takes full effect in the US (and likely 2011 globally).

As such, there are no immediate action items for marketers; and Q4 spending, the most critical time of year for many marketers, should remain unaffected by the deal this year

Should Google be concerned?

Google has a dominant position in search. This deal does not change that. Google should remain well positioned as long as they stay focused on their consumers and advertisers.

What else will advertisers need to know?

Given this breaking story, not all of the facts are on the table yet.

First, it remains to be seen what will happen with Yahoo Search Submit Pro, often known as ‘paid inclusion,’ where advertisers pay a fixed cost-per-click to have their listings included in natural search results.

It is also unclear how this will affect mobile search, a fast growing and rapidly evolving field. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have all been promoting and further improving their mobile search offerings, and all have major deals to serve as the default search properties for carriers: Google with Sprint, Yahoo with AT&T and T-Mobile and Microsoft with Verizon. This means three out of four carrier deals could be impacted.

360i will update this POV as more facts become known.