Yahoo is working with Revenue Science on cost-per-click text ads targeting user behavior rather than web site content; if successful, it could enhance Yahoo’s plans to compete with Google AdSense. Omar Tawakol, Revenue Science SVP-marketing, explained to AdWeek: “There’s a big portion of the Web that’s a contextual desert … There’s a ton of sites on the Web like entertainment, blogging and social networking sites — all those sites are better served by focusing on the user, not what’s on the page.” You can see the beta here.
No details about how the company works its magic. MarketingVox reminds us that Usama Fayyad, the founder of digiMine and co-founder of Revenue Science, joined Yahoo late last year as chief data officer.
Meanwhile, Tacoda’s behavioral text product is on hold in favor of its graphical ads. CEO Dave Morgan told AdWeek: “The greatest priority to us is delivering graphical banner ads for branding … because there’s a lot more money available, we believe, over the next two years in that area.” (Via MarketingVox.)
Update: Jakob Nielsen saw my comment about Revenue Science not providing details and sent along some thoughts about how it might work along with a link to his article“Reviving Advanced Hypertext” — even if you think you understand the power of hypertext, it’s worth a read. Nielsen suggests that Yahoo and Revenue Science could be working off retained knowledge of previous searches; “this is one way in which owning a search engine can provide benefits outside the searches themselves.”
Author: Rafat Ali