[Sigia-l] new Yahoo! search

[Simon Wistow]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 09:45:20PM -0400, Boniface Lau said:
> I hope it is not SARS. <grin>

me too :)
 
> I am not sure what you were trying to say with the above links - those
> pages don't have any sponsored links. Here is a screen capture of what
> I saw:
> 
> http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/boniface_lau/images/googleAmazon.jp
> g


Ah, this is what I see

http://thegestalt.org/simon/google/

(warning: large page). Must be a regional thing. Or I've been dubbed 
'influencable'

> explain

In short, I used to work at an online advertising agency. IN reverse 
order of successfulness as a means of advertising were (IIRC)

1. Spam
2. Banners
3. Directed Banners (i.e banners tailored at a site)
4. Directed Spam (i.e Tower Records sending mailouts about new records)
5. Interactive/Game banners
6. Sponsored links


I think banners now get a click through rate of about, what, 1%? If 
that. The games I did in banners got click rates of 10% but they tended 
to be very targeted (a penalty shootout game on a football page for 
example) and would get quite high click through rates, 5%->10% 
sometimes.

Sponsored matches however seemed to do very successfully since really, 
all they are are (usually) highly relevant links - You search for say 
"cheap flights" and on Yahoo.co.uk I get 

Yahoo's travel section 
excel budget airways (sponsored match)
british airways cheap flights (sm)
Which Cheap Flights (sm)
Cheapflights.co.uk
Flightline
Flights4less
(etc etc)
+3 (mostly irrelevant) adverts on the right
+2 SMs at the bottom

On Google.co.uk
Kelkoo (sm)
Travelocity (sm)
CheapFlights.co.uk
CheapOnlineFlights
Flightline
+ 8 sponsored links down the right hand side

So all the sponsored matches are relevant and I'd probably click on 
them if I was searching for cheap flights. If I remember sponsored 
matches regulalrly got a 15-20%% click through rate. Therefore I'd argue 
that they were a good thing although I would be willing to be argued 
with.

However, this is skirting well beyond the realms of IA and really is 
getting down to personal preference and belief so I'll shut up now. I'm 
willing to discuss this off list though.

Simon

-- 
experience is just cached common sense