The Vastly Different Approaches Of Google And Yahoo When It Comes To Newspapers

from the strategy-shift dept

About a month ago, Google dumped its program to try to help sell newspaper ads, admitting that it had been something of a failure. It wasn't a huge surprise why. Google entered the space assuming that it could reform the newspaper ad business the same way it revolutionized the online ad business. But it neglected to realize some of the massive differences in the markets. Meanwhile, the NY Times is noting that Yahoo's much more collaborative approach to newspapers is actually a shining success story for both Yahoo and its newspaper partners. Rather than trying to revolutionize the entire market, Yahoo is simply working within the process by which newspapers already sell print ads, to add targeted online advertisements as well. And it's working amazingly well.

In the meantime, with Google dropping its newspaper ad sales effort, it seems to be going to the other extreme: it finally started putting advertisements on Google News. For years, whenever angry newspaper insiders would complain about how Google News was somehow "profiting" off of their hard work, people would respond that Google didn't even put any advertisements on its news search engine. However, now that this has changed, pretty much everyone is expecting lawsuits to follow. Personally, I can't see how the newspapers would win such a lawsuit (and, think that they have much more important issues to spend money on), but given Google's willingness to cave to book publishers and authors, you can bet some newspaper publishers are hoping that Google will be forced to throw money in their direction as well.
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Filed Under: ads, news, newspapers, search engines
Companies: google, yahoo


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  1. identicon
    gyffes, 2 Mar 2009 @ 10:44pm

    Ads?

    There are ads online?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    braynes, 3 Mar 2009 @ 2:54am

    "add targeted online advertisements as well. And it's working amazingly well."

    Well there is the problem, more adds that no one reads.I no longer buy the print crap as it is more the 70% adds so adding more adds Is just dumb and greedy.
    Bruce

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2009 @ 5:25am

    Re: Ads?

    Indeed, it's been a long while since I last saw and advert online.

    If you're using Firefox and you haven't already got it, try the Adblock Plus Element Hiding Helper addon it makes Adblock Plus 100x better.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    Killer_Tofu (profile), 3 Mar 2009 @ 6:23am

    Re: Re: Ads?

    Hmm, Element Hiding Helper eh?
    I shall have to look this up tonight. Thank you for the tip.
    I already thought AdBlock Plus was insanely awesome. I can only imagine it afterwards.



    Although I don't agree with the jerks suing Google over stuff like this, I must say that they are now reaping what they have sown and I do not pity them.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Hoeppner, 3 Mar 2009 @ 6:53am

    Actually there is a reason why I still use Yahoo Jobs and Monster Jobs.

    Yahoo Jobs you can find every job that's in the newspapers if they have over X viewership, Quite a few times these same jobs aren't on monster. The newspapers are still nice but I'm going to hop down to the local library if I'm going to quickly go over their classifieds rather than buying today's all the way to a week ago.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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