Mar 10
20
Google Expands Into Display Ads
If you wanted to summarize the difference between Google’s advertising strategy and Yahoo’s, you could do so thusly: Google uses small text ads tailored to user’s searches, whereas Yahoo focuses on graphic display ads that do much the same thing.
Looks like the status quo is pretty close to being flipped. Google is looking into introducing an ad exchange, where advertisers and publishes can buy and sell advertising space to fill spots on Web pages. Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, has said that display advertising is one of Google’s best opportunities for expansion. Yahoo, however, is probably not thrilled about it.
The new system is called DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and it’s designed to make the process of buying and selling display advertising easy, so that more publishers and advertisers can use it. Though ad exchanges only account for 10-15% of the display advertising business, this may simply be because Google hasn’t yet gotten on board. Google remains the most popular search engine, and could easily overtake Yahoo in the exchange competition.
Yahoo continues to say it isn’t concerned and that it welcomes the competition. The folks at the search engine may very well be confident, considering their years of dominance in the ad exchange market, but it’s hard to think that any company isn’t apprehensive about the idea of Google, a giant in the industry, invading their turf.
However, because it is such a trend-setter and the leader of the pack, Google and its decision may also have an upside for Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing, as online advertisers may become more confident in the value of using an ad exchange and will start to invest more of their dollars there.
