It seems like the heavy weights of the industry are joining forces to try to gain some advertising marketshare away from Google (im not sure if 3 on 1 is fair). Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft will be offering each other’s premium non-reserved online display inventory to their respective advertising customers. This will all start in 2012 and they say the partnership is non-exclusive so it will mean they will still compete on getting agencies and the bigger contracts.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Microsoft and AOL and bring to market what we believe will be a more efficient, effective and more effortless way to access true premium inventory and formats,” says Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo! EVP of the Americas. “There has a been a significant shift in how inventory is bought and sold, and we’re now 100% focused on controlling our own destiny, working directly with marketers and agencies and driving better returns for our advertising partners.”
via – Yahoo
As a website owner, one normally has to pick and choose between a range of off the shelf ‘creatives’, display ads, banners or keyword sets from ad networks like Adsense, Tribal Fusion or DoubleClick that are provided by the people who want to sell their products, Dell, Amazon, Chevrolet etc. These ads often clash with a publisher’s website, and can run out of inventory and revert to remnant or filler ads selling tooth whitening products or smileys, depending on how one sets up the account. Bedrock offers a different type of ad exchange, where publishers design their own ad slots on their website – a tech blog like ours might offer a link to a web hosting service, or an ISP, and instead of using the advertisers’ own ad format, we would provide a text link, or own-branded display ad that links through to whichever approved service provider makes the highest bid for the particular click that comes through that link. The ad will stay the same, but the advertisers bid on the inventory listed by the publisher (site owner), meaning that one click on the link saying, “buy a new laptop” might go to Amazon, and the next to eBay, depending on which of them is prepared to pay the most for the traffic, on a click by click basis.
It’s an intriguing idea, but one that depends on having a large number of advertisers on the roster to compete with one another – and Bedrock will have a tough time dragging those people away from the traditional services, abandoning the freedom to use their own ads in the process. On the other hand, it does put more power in the hands of the publishers to control the content of their own website, and push the ad content that earns them money on their own terms – after all, they know their user base best, and can adapt to serve their needs better. Another tool in the advertising arsenal can’t be bad. If you have any experience using Bedrock, please post a comment!
