Search Alliance Yahoo! and Microsoft in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – What is the impact of this marriage of convenience?

Finally both parties got consent from the United States and European Union, the much needed regulatory clearance in Pay Per Click and Search Engine Marketing. The unified force is to give a tough competition to Google Adwords in thePay Per Click market. The goal is to bring the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance to, at least, the U.S. by the end of 2010.  The other selected countries will follow the suit.
Impacts as a user
1.    No change to your PPC account or service.
2.    PPC Ads will continue to serve on Bing search results pages and Microsoft.
3.    Tough competition to Google adwords
Questions as a user
1.    How do we optimize ads in PPC?
2.    How do we optimize keywords?
3.    Will our ads compete with one another in  Search Engines?
4.    What is the guarantee that user will not be left in lurch in case of divorce?
searchalliance.com says that the search ad inventory from Yahoo!, Microsoft, and their respective partners will be combined into a new unified search marketplace.  This will give the PPC advertisers of all sizes access to a combined audience of nearly 577 million searchers worldwide.  But while preparing a campaign you may need to look into two search engines to finalize keywords, ads and more.  In case of a separation, you will be forced do a lot of re-work.
 
The other side is that the market will become more competitive and the user can look for better return for his investment in the Pay Per Click Market.

Impact of Web-based Marketing

Web-based marketing research studies are changing the role marketing research will play in future businesses. The Internet marketing is changing the landscape of business in many ways. One of those ways is in marketing research. Internet Marketing research is an essential tool for businesses to gain vital information on which to base sometimes critical business decisions. One complaint with traditional marketing research is that the value of the information often isn't worth what the research cost. Another complaint, particularly in industries with short product life cycles, such as high tech industries, is that the research process takes too long. Often research results are not available until it is too late for them to be useful. Obsolete before they exist.

Web-based surveys have many advantages over traditional methods.

It is fast: With a Web-based survey, the questionnaire is posted on a secure Web site. Respondents are generated either from on other Web sites or personal e-mail invitation. Respondents drop by the survey site whenever they want to and send in their surveys.

It is cheaper: Generally speaking, this data collection cost is the most expensive part of any study: With Web-based marketing research, this cost is often reduced to zero.

Web-based surveys offer tremendous potential to the marketing research industry. Web-based surveys are potentially faster to conduct, generate more accurate information and cheaper by several magnitudes. Used properly, Web-based market research will, in the near future, vastly increase the amount of customer feedback on which managers in all industries base critical business decisions

Google's New Ad Formats Initiative

Google has introduced New Ad Formats over the last few months for Pay per Click. These new formats are part of their AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative and showcase the ways they have worked to include richer types of information in their ads. This initiative is Google's next Pay per Click chapter in search advertising and over the next year it'll be a major focus for AdWords, Let’s see Google’s idea of what to expect.

The AdWords New PPC Ad Formats Initiative has two themes: ad extensions and new ad models.

• Ad extensions offer you the ability to enhance your existing text ads with additional relevant information. Some examples of ad extensions include Ad Sitelinks which allow you to provide additional links pointing to specific information on your site and Product Extensions which allow you to show images and prices of relevant products from your Google Merchant Center account. By putting the most salient information directly wiithin the ad, ad extensions are designed to help users more quickly and easily find the products and services they seek on Google.

• New Pay per Click ad models are formats that offer better solutions to more complicated queries. For example, Comparison Ads enable users to specify the exact product or service they're looking for and compare multiple offers in a single location. New ad models also offer advertisers new pricing models, like cost per action for Product Listing Ads. Our new ad models are designed to make it easier for users to find exactly what they want and for you to reach more users with better information.

The AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative is part of their core mission to deliver the right information to the right user at the right time. As more and more users come online searching for products and services, Google will continue to test new ad extensions and new ad models to find the information of user're searching for.