Interactive Advertising

Yahoo! Shine Built for Women, Advancing Yahoo!’s Starting Point Strategy by Offering the Most Relevant Content to Keep Women Coming Back
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Mar 31, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced the launch of Yahoo! Shine, a new website for women that aims to provide the information most relevant to their daily lives. The site offers nine categories ranging from Fashion & Beauty to Parenting, and will feature content from many of the most popular lifestyles publishers, including Conde Nast Publications and Hearst Corporation. Additionally, a new editorial team will develop original stories on a daily basis, and hand pick the best user blog posts to feature prominently on the site. Yahoo! Shine creates a single destination for the approximately 40 million women between the ages of 25 and 54 who already come to Yahoo! each month, making Yahoo! a more relevant starting point for this audience.

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Breaking news in the interactive marketing space…Microsoft announced today a $44.6 billion bid to acquire long-time online rival Yahoo!. The bid represents a $31 per share price which is a 62% premium over current trading value. You may recall an eerily similar announcement from last summer when Microsoft first launched efforts to woo Yahoo! into a deal.

In its press release Microsoft indicated its focus for the combined entity would “create a more efficient company with synergies in four areas: scale economics driven by audience critical mass and increased value for advertisers; combined engineering talent to accelerate innovation; operational efficiencies through elimination of redundant cost; and the ability to innovate in emerging user experiences such as video and mobile.”

I whole-heartedly agree with the benefits Microsoft believes would result from a marriage with Yahoo!, but my bet is that Yahoo! is no more interested in selling to Microsoft now than they were a year ago. This time around, however, the deal may be one they just can’t refuse.

Here’s what I think interactive marketers should consider about this possible acquisition. A combined MS/Yahoo! would mean:

*Deeper customer data. For an advertiser looking to laser-target ads, a behavioral history of users aggregated across all of Microsoft and Yahoo!’s media properties would be invaluable.

*Easier ad management. We’ve long talked about the advertiser challenge of having to work with multiple agencies, media firms, ad networks, technology companies. While smart marketers shouldn’t give over to only buying ads with the MS/Yahoo! conglomerate, having a large media partner that can singularly manage buys across channels will greatly simplify the mechanics of integrated marketing.

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If you’re striving for a top ranking for that very competitive keyword, you may discover that the first search result on Google lists more than one page for a particular site (often commanding the first AND second spots on search result listings). I’ve personally always wondered why this occurs and how I could replicate the success seen by other top ranked website.

Thanks to a recent article available through EvanCarmichael.com, I now have an answer. Evan provides some great content on his site and I highly recommend it. I hope you enjoy this info as much as I have…

What are Google Site links?
Google Site links are a collection of links that appears below the result of a website. These additional links link to main pages of the website. They are randomly and automatically chosen by Google’s algorithm.

Site links only appear for general search terms. You’ll get Site links if you search for “HP” but you won’t get Site links if you search for a term like “HP printer supplies”. Site links show up most often for searches on brand names.

Which links does Google use for the Site links?
Google seems to use the first level links
Google seems to use the first level links on a website for the Site links. That means that all links that are not present on the homepage of your site won’t be used as Site links.

The links should be descriptive text links or image links with a descriptive image, alt attribute. JavaScript or Flash links are not considered for Site links. Google uses 2 to 8 links for the Site links of a website. Unfortunately, it’s unclear how Google assigns the number of links to each website.

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Yesterday proved to be an interesting kickoff to this year’s Search Engine Strategies conference here in New York. The Organic Listings panel was entertaining and informative as always and the Build Investment Interest in your SEO/SEM firm was an early indulgence for myself that offered great tips for those looking at the future liquidity and monetization for their agency.

Jolina weighed in with her posts on excellent sessions, Four Ways to Redfine the Customer and Three Tips for Successful Analytics. There was also a spontaneous goofball interview with Mike McDonald of WebProNews offering a few insights about the future of SES/SMX.

The day wound up with the Orion Panel on Vertical Search which didn’t leave Jolina with a warm fuzzy (to be expected as Kevin Ryan’s just not that kind of guy ) but it did offer interesting insights into vertical search - vertical content marketing as well as how social networks will play into the future of vertical search overall.

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- On the outs with Nicole Richie for some time, Pars Hilton wants a new BFF and MTV has launched a new reality show to help her find one.
- DDB Barcelona brings out hand string games to somehow illustrate how its cars are built. We sure hope they’re made of something stringer than string.
- Ziff Davis Media, publisher of PC Magazine among others, filed for bankruptcy citing falling print ad revenue and subscriptions as the reason.
- Advertising Age is getting into coverage of social media with the launch of Digital Issue Social Media.
- AdHoles has announced its Speckies Call for Entries. The Speckies celebrate spec work, the stuff that never makes it but probably should.
- The Laredo Group has expanded its sales and media buying training to include search and email training.
- For those who love Photoshope disasters.