According to a news item by Shankar Gupta, yesterday MIVA filed papers with the SEC revealing that they plan to switch their advertising partner for MIVA Direct from Yahoo! to Google. MIVA has been with Yahoo! since 2001, but that deal ends on January 27. The new Google deal is set to run for a two-year period, although apparently there are many ways out for both parties if they wish to pursue them.
MIVA (which earlier was known as FindWhat) had legal troubles with Yahoo! in 2005, with perhaps some lingering bad feelings about the results of that case still in the air.
MIVA Direct is primarily associated with toolbars and search-related apps, but also works with direct-to-consumer channels, which sends a lot of business to MIVA Media (the main advertising arm of MIVA).
With Yahoo! just having released the Panama revamp of their ad program, which looks a lot like Google AdWords, I suspect MIVA had to make a move one way or another with the January deadline looming and has decided to give the current search leader a try, instead of going through growing pains with Yahoo! as Panama settles in.
Posted on January 4, 2007
