The Digital Corner

Now that the buzz around the Yahoo and Microsoft deal has calmed down. I wanted to take a deeper look at what this really means for the search landscape. According to ComScore Google searchers remain loyal to the brand and Google is actually growing market share globally despite the release of Bing.  There has been some traction in the US market for Bing, but the US market is not only the most mature, it only represents 17% of the global search space. The MicroHoo deal instantly made Baidu the world’s third largest search engine. And with China having the worlds largest internet community is number and growth, Baidu could eventually become the worlds number two search engine. In addition to the growth of competitors globally, the landscape for “portal searches” has changed. More people are using their mobile phones and twitter to search, which offer faster and more relevant information making the 1 year courting of Yahoo! search seem pointless.

Not all the news is bad though. The MicroHoo deal could be the beginning of a powerful partnership and a competitor to Google’s real growth opportunity, display advertising. Yahoo and Microsoft combined have a powerful display network filled with a quality audience and global reach. Between the two companies there are 4 ad network systems, which doesn’t create confidence that a display partnership is close (in execution not on paper).

In the end, Microsoft had to do this deal. It was necessary and the right thing to do. This partnership is not only needed for Microsoft, but for the advertising community. I just get the feeling that Microsoft may end up feeling buyer’s remorse once the “new” feeling is gone.

Increasingly more companies are pushing for display and search integration to be more efficient with ad dollars. Although this concept has been romanticized by many agencies and publishers, it only represents the beginning of the real shift understanding advertising effectiveness. It has been well documented that multiple exposures to a brand influences consumer choices, yet media continues to be measured in silos. The success of banner ads, emails, search, TV and radio should be measured by market exposure versus click thru or open rate. And once you add in viral and word of mouth, the success of a program becomes increasing difficult to dissect using our current available metrics.

Should there be a new metric to measure advertising effectiveness? Or is the current structure of advertising agencies and media buying the barrier to truly having a holistic view how customers interact with brands? More ideas around how to execute on this concept coming soon.

“Vision without execution is hallucination” – Thomas Edison

Thanks for all the followers who have reached out to ask why I have stopped writing. It really means a lot. I am currently working on a few projects that have unfortunately taken away from my blogging time. I’ll be blogging again in the next month with a lot to say about mobile advertising, marketing dashboards, Facebook and why you should never invest in Twitter. Stay tuned.

March 13th, 1989 is the birth date of one of the most powerful inventions of our time. Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the foundation for the Internet layer that has become the World Wide Web. The last 20 years of the Internet has changed everything from how we shop, communicate, bank and make many decisions about our lives. From this invention some of the most powerful companies have been born, from Google and Yahoo! to Salesforce.com.

What will the next 20 years bring? Will the Internet continue to change every aspect of our life or has it reached its saturation point? Is this the year the Semantic Web becomes a reality? For more information about what the Semantic Web is, check out this interview with Sir Tim Berners-Lee http://tinyurl.com/semweb