JumpFly Blog: AdWords, Yahoo & Microsoft Advertising

Yahoo to Partner with Microsoft on Search? 

According to regulatory filings, Billionaire investor Carl Icahn increased his position in Yahoo by 6.78 million shares between November 24-26 (at about $10 per share), raising his total to 75.58 million shares (about 5.5% of the company). I saw a recent presentation he made where he stated that he continues to believe Yahoo shares are undervalued, but admits that he also thought they were undervalued when he was last purchasing shares near $25 per share. So far, he is down about $1 billion on his investment. Ouch! He is still looking for some type of partnership with Microsoft on their search efforts which he believes could help save Yahoo a great deal of money. While there are no alleged talks going on at this time, I suspect these two will eventually work out some type of agreement. With Yang stepping down and both Icahn and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer expressing interest in a search deal getting done, I think something will eventually develop. I would also like to mention that I very much hope that Carl Icahn is a better investor than speaker because quite honestly, listening to him speak was a little painful. Sorry Carl, but it’s the truth.

Black Friday & Cyber Monday Both Posted Impressive Increases Year Over Year

Sales during Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, saw an increase of 3% over the prior year. Last year’s sales of $10.3 billion on Black Friday increased to $10.6 billion spent this year. Though this gain appears promising for the economy, many fear that the increase in sales was at the expense of profitability. And though spending was up on this day, it may still be down for the Holiday season. One Gallup Inc. poll suggests that spending on gifts will be down 29% from a year earlier. We’ll soon know for sure.  

Online shopping saw a more dramatic increase in sales. According to data released by ComScore Inc., online sales for Cyber Monday, the Internet’s equivalent to Black Friday, jumped 15% from a year ago as Internet sites lured millions of consumers with offers of free shipping and dramatically reduced prices. Online sales increased from $733 million on Cyber Monday in 2007 to $846 million this year. Forrester Research expects 12% year-over-year growth for online holiday sales, or $44 billion in this November and December.

The US Economy Searches For Stability 

The US Economy continues to look a bit frightening and unstable. However, some good things are also taking shape. Gasoline prices are the lowest they have been in years, with prices at about $1.70 per gallon here in Illinois. That’s a far cry from the $4+ getting charged just 6 months ago. Additionally, mortgage rates are dropping and refinancing is rapidly picking up, enabling homeowners to lock in lower rates and lower monthly payments. Though we are clearly not out of the woods yet, there does seem to be shared hope that the economy will stabilize and business will pick up by the end of 2009. I suspect it’s going to be an interesting year.

More about Brad

One of the running jokes around the office here at JumpFly concerns MSN and their PPC platform.  When MSN PPC is mentioned aloud, the inevitable astonished question arises - “MSN has a search engine?”  That always gets a few chuckles.

Yes, MSN does indeed have a search engine.  I’ll be the first to admit that the volume isn’t huge and the management interface for their PPC platform can be quite tedious to work with, but it can deliver some incremental traffic for your business. 

One valuable change they just made in the Microsft Avertising adCenter is that they now allow you to pause keywords or ad copy (learn how here).  Prior to this change, you had to actually delete keywords or ads to stop them from running.  This made it difficult to keep track of which keywords or ads you had tried that were not working as well as you had hoped they would.  Before this change, you had to go in and delete the keyword itself instead of just pausing it.  This would also remove any history that the keyword might have had in the account from the keyword tab screen.

The biggest advantage of all this is just the increased flexibility you now have in how you can manage your keywords and ads in adCenter.  To me, that’s the best part about this.  Sure, you will always be deleting keywords and ads that you don’t want, but it’s nice to have the flexibility to pause keywords or ads that are seasonal or might see the light of day in the future.  You might run a new sale perhaps, or revise a landing page to make it a stronger converter.  Again, it’s just nice to have more flexibility in your PPC advertising strategies than to always have to use the final axe chop.

More about Jack

Since thwarting recent Microsoft buyout and partnership efforts, Yahoo!’s stock price has sunk back to levels not seen since prior to the proposed alliance, a full 50% off of where it had reached during the height of buyout speculation. Yikes. Looks like Yahoo! shareholders were the big losers there.

Perhaps it’s time for both sides to calm down, digest the situation and reconsider working together. After all, it sure looks like Yahoo! needs Microsoft’s help just as badly as Microsoft needs Yahoo!.

Let’s take a look at some recent search query data provided by Compete.com and see who really needs who here. When comparing June, 2008 search traffic numbers to those from June, 2007, there was a 12% decline in actual search queries performed at Yahoo! while Google realized a 44% surge in traffic; That is pretty staggering. Microsoft’s search queries increased, but very little. Based on the 9.1 billion searches performed in June, Google currently dominates search market share receiving 69% of all search queries, followed by Yahoo! with 19% and Microsoft with 8%.

Yahoo!’s one time search query empire has been gradually deteriorating as Google takes over the market. Yahoo! is dominant in other areas, but could certainly use strategic and financial support from Microsoft. Microsoft could be a great ally in trying to prevent Google from further expanding their reach into all areas of technology. I do not necessarily think a buyout is the best solution, though it might be, but I sure think a partnership like the one that had been previously discussed might be wise.

Microsoft needs to increase its Internet presence in order to survive in the future and Yahoo! offers a unique opportunity. Google is already encroaching on Microsoft’s core software business via their free online applications. Microsoft is well aware of Google’s threat in various areas and must do something soon. With Yahoo!’s stock price back to pre-discussion levels and the influence of Carl Icahn who now sits on Yahoo!’s Board of Directors, renewed talks would certainly not surprise me.

Google has already prepared an argument regarding the possibility of Yahoo! and Microsoft partnering, which is a bit ironic since Google has gone on to partner with Yahoo! themselves. We’ll still have to see if the Department of Justice decides to let that deal go through. Until then, I suggest that the powers that be at Microsoft and Yahoo! regroup and reconsider. Hey guys, you both need to do something. The Google Empire has arrived. Clearly, resisting independently has not been working. Perhaps it’s time to try something new.