Yahoo! Native (formerly known as Yahoo! Advertising, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Yahoo! Gemini) is a native "
Pay per click
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked.
Pay-per-click is usually ...
" Internet advertising service provided by
Yahoo
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...
.
Yahoo began offering this service after acquiring Overture Services, Inc.'' The current offering of Yahoo Native launched in 2014 as Yahoo! Gemini. It handles advertising for both Yahoo and AOL properties, as well as other media outlets.
History
GoTo and Overture
GoTo (not to be confused with
Go.com
Go.com (also known as The Go Network) is a portal for Disney content that was created after The Walt Disney Company acquired the search engine Infoseek. Go.com is operated by Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, one of four divisions of the ...
or
Go2Net) was an
Idealab Idealab (formerly known as idealab!) is a startup studio based in Pasadena, California, U.S.A.
History
Idealab was founded by Bill T. Gross (not to be confused with the founder of PIMCO, Bill H. Gross) in March 1996. Prior to Idealab, Gross fou ...
spin off and was the first company to successfully provide a pay-for-placement search service.
GoTo Going Strong
'', Danny Sullivan, The Search Engine Report, July 1, 1998
Jeff Pelline, CNET News.com, February 19, 1998[''Who Will GoTo.com?'', Ken Glaser, OnlinePress.com, Feb. 20, 1998] It started off with the purchase of
World Wide Web Worm (WWWW), one of the oldest search engines. GoTo is considered to have been an influential pioneer of paid search.
In February 1998, GoTo offered advertisers the option of bidding on how much they would be willing to pay to appear at the top of results in response to specific searches. The bid amount was paid by the advertiser to GoTo every time a searcher clicked on a link to the advertiser's website. By July 1998, advertisers were paying anything up to a dollar per click. In June 1999, GoTo launched a tool set ''direct traffic centre'' (dtc) to enable advertisers access to keywords and real time bidding.
GoTo's business model was based on the idea that its paid listings would make it more relevant than other services, especially for general searches, and web sites that pay more are probably better sites. A similar service had been offered by Open Text in 1996, but this precipitated outcries and bad publicity because searchers at the time did not want the search process more commercialized.
In contrast, GoTo's pay-for-placement model was very successful. Commentors theorized that the Internet had matured in the intervening two years, and this type of economic models were more acceptable since the web was no longer just a place for academic research, but also a place for buying products. GoTo founder
Bill Gross speculated at the launch that GoTo would succeed because, as a relatively new service, it had no reputation to taint with paid listings, unlike Open Text.
On October 8, 2001, GoTo renamed itself Overture Services, Inc. GoTo's chief operating officer Jaynie Studenmund, mother of fallen U.S. soldier
Scott Studenmund, said, "We also felt it was a sophisticated enough name, in case our products expand."
Through partnerships, Overture enabled portals such as
MSN
MSN (meaning Microsoft Network) is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95.
The Microsoft Net ...
and
Yahoo
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...
to monetize the hundreds of millions of web searches made each day on their sites. Indeed, these partnerships proved highly lucrative, and in a period otherwise marked by dot-com failures, Overture became a substantial profit driver for portals like Yahoo
This success enabled Overture to acquire web sites such as
AltaVista
AltaVista was a Web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own sear ...
and
AlltheWeb
AlltheWeb (sometimes referred to as FAST or FAST Search) was an Internet search engine that made its debut in mid-1999 and was closed in 2011. It grew out of ''FTP Search'', Tor Egge's doctorate thesis at the Norwegian University of Science and Te ...
.
[Yahoo to Acquire Overture](_blank)
Yahoo press release, July 14, 2003
Acquisition of Overture by Yahoo!
On October 7, 2003, Overture was acquired by its biggest customer,
Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...
, for $1.63 billion.
The old brand name of Overture was phased out as Yahoo rebranded many of its products under the Yahoo name. The exception to this was in
Japan and
Korea
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
where the local businesses continued to use the Overture brand.
Panama
Panama was an online advertising platform created by
Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...
, launched on 5 February 2007. Panama was Yahoo's effort to close the wide gap with
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
in the race for search advertising dollars, a fast-growing business then dominated by Google, which is now also dominated by Google. Customers with accounts already on Yahoo! were transferred to the new system over the following few months. Yahoo! inherited the search advertising business when it purchased Overture (previously named
Goto.com). Until Panama, Yahoo! search continued to operate the original simplistic
algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...
which ranked text ads according to how much advertisers bid for the keyword searched by the user. Meanwhile, Google operates under a more sophisticated model, which ranks paid ads on the basis of bid price as well as prior click-through rates. This improvement generally produces higher click through rates (hence higher revenues) for the search engine.
For example, an ambulance-chasing attorney bidding for the keywords "back pain" would likely get a lower clickthrough rate than the keyword "physiotherapist", regardless of what the two parties bid per click. An algorithm that eventually de-prioritises the attorney's ad is better for the search engine (in terms of revenue produced) and the user (more relevant ads).
Key players in the Panama project were
Brian Acton, David Henke &
Qi Lu.
Features
The platform provided advertisers with a digital dashboard where they can manage their marketing campaigns, aim ads geographically, and test their effectiveness. It included interactive tools that suggest to advertisers what to bid based on their budget and the number of users they want to attract.
Yahoo Gemini
![Yahoo! Search Marketing logo (2009-2013)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Yahoo%21_Search_Marketing_logo_%282009-2013%29.png)
During the tenure of
Marissa Mayer
Marissa Ann Mayer (; born May 30, 1975) is an American businesswoman and investor. She is an information technology executive, and co-founder of Sunshine Contacts. Mayer formerly served as the president and chief executive officer of Yahoo!, a p ...
as Yahoo's CEO she started a new advertising platform project under the name Gemini. The goal was to build a native advertising solution, where the ads take on the format of the content they accompany.
The so-called "quality index" gave advertisers a sense of how the system would rank an ad along with sophisticated analytical tools that gave advertisers insights on why certain campaigns had been effective.
Patent litigation
In May 1999, GoTo filed a patent application titled "System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine", which was granted as in July 2001. A related patent has also been granted in Australia and other patent applications remain pending.
Prior to its acquisition by Yahoo, Overture initiated infringement proceedings under this patent against FindWhat.com in January 2002 and
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
in April 2002.
The lawsuit against Google related to its
AdWords
Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads both in the result ...
service. In February 2002, Google introduced a service called AdWords Select that allowed marketers to bid for higher placement in marked sections - a tactic that had some similarities to Overture's search-listing auctions.
Following Yahoo's acquisition of Overture, the lawsuit was settled with
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of
common stock
Common stock is a form of corporate equity ownership, a type of security. The terms voting share and ordinary share are also used frequently outside of the United States. They are known as equity shares or ordinary shares in the UK and other Comm ...
to Yahoo in exchange for a perpetual license.
Trademark issues
In 2013, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held in
Lens.com, Inc. v. 1-800 Contacts, Inc. that online contact lens seller Lens.com did not commit
trademark infringement
Trademark infringement is a violation of the exclusive rights attached to a trademark without the authorization of the trademark owner or any licensees (provided that such authorization was within the scope of the licence). Infringement may ...
when it purchased Yahoo and Google AdWords search advertisements using competitor
1-800 Contacts
1-800 Contacts Inc. is an American contact lens retailer based in Draper, Utah. The brands that 1-800 Contacts use includes Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Alcon, Bausch & Lomb and CooperVision. The company was founded as the industry's first way ...
' federally registered 1800 CONTACTS trademark as a keyword. In August 2016, the
Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging, among other things, that its search advertising trademark enforcement practices have unreasonably restrained competition in violation of the FTC Act. 1-800 Contacts has denied all wrongdoing and was scheduled to appear before an FTC
administrative law judge
An administrative law judge (ALJ) in the United States is a judge and trier of fact who both presides over trials and adjudicates claims or disputes involving administrative law. ALJs can administer oaths, take testimony, rule on questions of evi ...
in April 2017.
Adware partnership
In April 2003, Overture announced a three-year partnership with Gator Corporation, (now
Claria Corporation) an
adware
Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the ...
company. Under the partnership, Gator's software monitored a web-user's activity on web sites and search engines (even sites such as Google that are not affiliated with Overture) and grabbed search keywords. These keywords were submitted to the Overture search engine. As a result, advertisers who paid for listings in Overture found their products advertised through Gator's Search Scout software, even if they wanted nothing to do with Gator. Overture faced a great deal of criticism for entering into this partnership.
When Yahoo acquired Overture, the Claria software impaired the operation of Yahoo's services. For example, when a user with a Claria application installed used Yahoo Search, they received a standard set of Yahoo results with sponsored listings at the top supplied by Overture. The user would then receive a full-screen pop-under window from Search Scout. Since Search Scout uses Overture's paid listings as well, Claria's window has exactly the same listings as the Yahoo search results.
Subsequently, Yahoo came out with the ''Yahoo Toolbar'', which allows users to remove
adware
Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the ...
and
spyware
Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is software with malicious behaviour that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user—for example, by violating their priva ...
from their system. The toolbar affected the operation of Claria's software and may have put stress on the relationship between the two companies.
See also
*
Ad serving
Ad serving describes the technology and service that places advertisements on Web sites, mobile apps, and Connected TVs. Ad serving technology companies provide software to Web sites and advertisers to serve ads, count them, choose the ads th ...
*
Google AdWords
*
List of search engines
Search engines, including web search engines, selection-based search engines, metasearch engines, desktop search tools, and web portals and vertical market websites have a search facility for online databases.
By content/topic
General ...
*
Microsoft adCenter
Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads, Microsoft adCenter and MSN adCenter) is a service that provides pay per click advertising on the Bing, Yahoo!, and DuckDuckGo search engines. In 2021, Microsoft Advertising surpassed US$10 billion in annual ...
*
Pay per click
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked.
Pay-per-click is usually ...
*
Search engine marketing
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine op ...
References
External links
*
{{Yahoo!
Yahoo! Advertising
Native
Native may refer to:
People
* Jus soli, citizenship by right of birth
* Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory
** Native Americans (disambiguation)
In arts and entert ...
Pay-per-click search engines