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About the Author
David Rodnitzky (38 Posts)
David Rodnitzky is CEO of PPC Associates, a leading SEM agency based in Silicon Valley. PPC Associates provides search, social, and display advertising management to growing, savvy companies. To learn more, visit ppcassociates.com, or contact David at david@ppcassociates.com.
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True. True. True.
One exception – ask users how to make it better than Adwords.
David, you’ve said what I’ve been thinking for years. Let’s hope they actually listen to their customers. According to Hitwise, In Feb 2008, Yahoo and MSN have around 28% of the search market, compared to Google’s 66%. Yet I spend 95% of my PPC ad budget with AdWords, and only 5% with Yahoo & MSN. If they follow your suggestions, they could increase their PPC revenue by 700% in no time at all. I mean, how can Yahoo call themselves a tech company when they make you open a new account and set up new campaigns for each country you want to advertise in. How archaic is that? And their shareholders wonder why Operation Panama didn’t live up to expectations. Duh!
Michael and Chris, thanks for the support. For the record, Michael, I am a Yahoo shareholder – maybe part of the reason I have held on to my shares for so long is the hope that they will find religion and switch to Google – either as a total outsource solution or just their tech and UI!
David, I’m sure Yahoo (and MSN) can create user friendly interfaces as good as Google’s if they stood back a bit and really looked at how their customers are (or rather aren’t) using their products. The question is… would they put their egos aside for the greater cause? These companies are spending millions (billions?) on R&D. Where is all that money going? It certainly doesn’t look like it’s going towards improving one of their largest revenue generators.
All Yahoo and MSN really have to do is improve their client centers and capabilities, at the moment theyre nothing compared to Adwords.
Right, so here in Holland we don’t even have an AdCentre, MS is still using the Yahoo! system on their Dutch sites. Even tough, the marketshare of both together is somewere between 5 and 10%… No wonder there are more and more rumours that Yahoo! want’s to withdraw from Holland and other countries in Europe. I Fully agree with the statements in this article.
You’re spot on David. Search is all about distribution so a Microsoft/Yahoo deal makes sense both for advertisers and for the companies. I see this deal as very positive all around.
One of the risks I see is that while Microsoft recognizes that their interface sucks, I’m not so sure they recognise that Yahoo’s does, or that Yahoo recognizes it themselves yet. Both of these giants have a history of developing large code bloated programs and systems that get in the way of their success. They also have a pattern of stubbornly holding on to products/systems way past their shelf life and spending way more in time, money and resources than they should on constantly tweaking something that was second rate to start with.
My biggest concern with a merger is that both of these businesses have a history of over thinking and over analyzing themselves into oblivion.
As Google as proven so well – This is business model that sells itself. Just give advertisers/agencies the right tools and get the heck out of the way.
If there is a merger of Microsoft and Yahoo there will most likely be a combining of the properties and systems especially to integrate all the other advertising related companies that Microsoft has been buying. It’s their only chance to gain market share. Google is going to keep marching ahead with advertising on search, radio, media, mobile and everything else that displays an ad.
I think both Microsoft and Yahoo are painfully aware that their respective ad systems are not what the market wants.
Personally I believe the deal will happen in the next two weeks, befor Yahoo is faced with reporting dismal earnings on April 15th. Until a deal happens Yahoo’s share price will continue to tick down.
I am definitely ready for a combined MicroHoo! ad platform.