Today’s New York Times discusses a declining online advertising industry and credits the economic downturn for the industries woes.  The article cites the following statistics:

• According to PubMatic, between the months of March and April prices paid to networks for online ads dropped 23 percent; and for larger publishers the decline was steeper at 52 percent.
• AOL’s display advertising declined by 18 percent, to $191 million.
• Internet ad revenue growth at The New York Times Company slowed to 16 percent in the most recent quarter from 20 percent a year earlier
• WebMD Health and Weather.com experienced shorter buying commitments from advertisers; a result of wanting to test ad products prior to prolonged commitments.

While banner investments on ad networks have declined, search engine marketing appeared unaffected.  Google’s revenue in the United States was up thirty percent from last year, while Microsoft’s and Yahoo!’s online revenue jumped 29 and 9 percent respectively.  A majority of search engine revenue comes from search advertising.

Read the entire article here.

Yahoo! appears to be heading in the right direction when it comes to regaining market share from Google.  They have taken their Advanced Search setting a step further and have now developed Personalized Search.  The Personalized Search collects information about a searcher’s interests from their search history, browsing history, and interests listed in profiles from websites such as MySpace and other social networks. In doing so, it eases the users experience by narrowing the searches. 

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Yahoo! recently paired with McAfee security solutions to launch a new feature called “SearchScan”.  Some of the new features included are “always-on” alerts and identify sites with bad e-mail practices.  The deal signed is for multiple years and Yahoo! is hoping it will help minimize the gap with Google over that time period.

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On Saturday, Microsoft withdrew its bid to takeover Yahoo!.  CEO Steven Ballmer stated that the reason for Microsoft backing off from acquiring the company was the concern that Yahoo! would take action to make the company undesirable to Microsoft.  One concern in particular was Yahoo!’s partnership to test Google’s search ads on its own search results pages.

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The Internet retailer, Bigreds.com is accusing Yahoo! of click fraud. In their filed complaint, they state, “Affiliates of Overture used software programs, employed people, and/or directed people other than actual customers to click on plaintiffs links from keyword search results.”  In 2006, Yahoo! had acknowleded the click fraud but had only offered a refund of $17,000, which apparently was not enough at the time when Bigreds.com had spent an estimated $900,000 over the course of four years (2002-2006).  Hopefully the “little” guy will be able to make a stand against click fraud offenders everywhere.

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Yahoo! again blocks Microsoft’s bid. The Internet media giant extended a deadline for nominating candidates to its board of directors, buying it needs more time to find a white knight to help it stave off Microsoft’s takeover bid, currently valued at $41.7 billion.

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Yahoo! has launched a program that will allow marketers to enhance the presence of a listing that appears on a Yahoo! search result.  The purpose of this plug-in based program is to enhance the user experience and provide more relevant results for searchers.

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