Verizon Media Native

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Yahoo! Native
FormerlyOverture (2001-2003)

Yahoo! Search Marketing (2003-2009)
Yahoo! Advertising (2009-2014)

Yahoo! Gemini (2014-2017)

Contents

Typesubsidiary
IndustryInternet
Founded1997;24 years ago (1997)
Headquarters
Playa Vista, California
,
U.S.
Parent Yahoo!
Website gemini.yahoo.com

Yahoo! Native (formerly known as Yahoo! Advertising, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Yahoo! Gemini) is a keyword-based "Pay per click" or "Sponsored search" Internet advertising service provided by Yahoo.

Yahoo began offering this service after acquiring Overture Services, Inc.

History

GoTo and Overture

GoTo main page in 1998 Goto screenshot 1998.png
GoTo main page in 1998

GoTo (not to be confused with Go.com or Go2Net) was an Idealab spin off and was the first company to successfully provide a pay-for-placement search service. [1] [2] [3] It started off with the purchase of World Wide Web Worm (WWWW), one of the oldest search engines. [4] GoTo is considered to have been an influential pioneer of paid search. [5] [6]

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 theorised that the web had matured in the intervening two years, and these 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. [7] GoTo's chief operating officer Jaynie Studenmund said "We also felt it was a sophisticated enough name, in case our products expand."

Through partnerships, Overture enabled portals such as MSN and Yahoo 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 [8]

This success enabled Overture to acquire web sites such as AltaVista and AlltheWeb. [9]

Logo (2009-2013) Yahoo! Search Marketing logo (2009-2013).png
Logo (2009-2013)
Logo (2013-2014 Gemini launch) Yahoo Ads logo.png
Logo (2013-2014 Gemini launch)

Acquisition by Yahoo!

On October 7, 2003, Overture was acquired by its biggest customer, Yahoo!, for $1.63 billion. [10] [9] 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 where the local businesses continued to use the Overture brand.

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". The patent was granted as US 6269361   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 in April 2002. [11]

The lawsuit against Google related to its AdWords 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 agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of common stock to Yahoo in exchange for a perpetual license. [12]

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 when it purchased Yahoo and Google AdWords search advertisements using competitor 1-800 Contacts' 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 in April 2017. [13]

Adware partnership

In April 2003, Overture announced a three-year partnership with Gator Corporation, (now Claria Corporation) an adware 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. [14]

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. [15]

Subsequently, Yahoo came out with the Yahoo Toolbar, which allows users to remove adware and spyware from their system. The toolbar affected the operation of Claria's software and may have put stress on the relationship between the two companies. [16]

See also

Related Research Articles

Claria Corporation was a software company based in Redwood City, California that invented “Behavioral Marketing”, a highly effective but controversial new form of online advertising. It was founded in 1998 by Denis Coleman, Stanford MBA Sasha Zorovic, and engineer Mark Pennell, based on work Zorovic had done at Stanford. In March 1999 Jeff McFadden was hired as CEO and Zorovic was effectively forced out.

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.

Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. They can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google beta-tested a cost-per-action service, but discontinued it in October 2008 in favor of a DoubleClick offering. In Q1 2014, Google earned US$3.4 billion, or 22% of total revenue, through Google AdSense. AdSense is a participant in the AdChoices program, so AdSense ads typically include the triangle-shaped AdChoices icon. This program also operates on HTTP cookies. In 2021, over 38.3 million websites use AdSense.

Google Ads Online advertising platform owned by Google

Google Ads 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 results of search engines like Google Search and on non-search websites, mobile apps, and videos. Services are offered under a pay-per-click (PPC) pricing model.

Click fraud is a type of fraud that occurs on the Internet in pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising. In this type of advertising, the owners of websites that post the ads are paid based on how many site visitors click on the ads. Fraud occurs when a person, automated script, computer program or an auto clicker imitates a legitimate user of a web browser, clicking on such an ad without having an actual interest in the target of the ad's link. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud.

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked.

Baidu Chinese web services company

Baidu, Inc. is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the largest AI and Internet companies in the world. The holding company of the group is incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Baidu was incorporated in January 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu. The Baidu search engine is currently the fourth largest website in the Alexa Internet rankings. Baidu has origins in RankDex, an earlier search engine developed by Robin Li in 1996, before he founded Baidu in 2000.

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 optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings.

Contextual advertising is a form of targeted advertising for advertisements appearing on websites or other media, such as content displayed in mobile browsers. In context targeting, advertising media are controlled on the basis of the content of a website using linguistic elements. The advertisements themselves are selected and served by automated systems based on the context of what a user is looking at.

Favored placement is the practice of preferentially listing search engine results for given sites. It is also known as pay for placement, but this term usually refers to advertisements that appear along with relevant search results while favored placement affects the order of actual search results.

Microsoft Advertising is a service that provides pay per click advertising on the Bing, Yahoo!, and DuckDuckGo search engines. As of June 2015, Bing Ads has 33% market share in the United States.

Google Inc. was officially launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to market Google Search, which has become the most used web-based search engine. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, students at Stanford University in California, developed a search algorithm at first known as "BackRub" in 1996, with the help of Scott Hassan and Alan Steremberg. The search engine soon proved successful and the expanding company moved several times, finally settling at Mountain View in 2003. This marked a phase of rapid growth, with the company making its initial public offering in 2004 and quickly becoming one of the world's largest media companies. The company launched Google News in 2002, Gmail in 2004, Google Maps in 2005, Google Chrome in 2008, and the social network known as Google+ in 2011, in addition to many other products. In 2015, Google became the main subsidiary of the holding company Alphabet Inc.

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. In 2006, its last year as a public company, the company reported net sales of US$247 million.

JR Cigars

800-JR Cigar, Inc., more commonly known as JR Cigar or JRCigars.com, is one of the largest wholesalers and retailers of cigars, cigar related products and pipe tobacco in the United States. The company originated as a cigar shop in Manhattan but now chiefly operates through on-line and catalog sales; however, the company maintains three retail outlets in North Carolina, two in New Jersey, as well as a retail locations in Manhattan (closed), Washington DC, and Detroit, MI.

Keyword advertising is a form of online advertising in which an advertiser pays to have an advertisement appear in the results listing when a person uses a particular phrase to search the Web, typically by employing a search engine. The particular phrase is composed of one or more key terms that are linked to one or more advertisements. The most common form or keyword advertising, focused on payment methods, is pay per click (PPC), with other forms being cost per action (CPA) or cost per mille (CPM).

Search advertising

In Internet marketing, search advertising is a method of placing online advertisements on web pages that show results from search engine queries. Through the same search-engine advertising services, ads can also be placed on Web pages with other published content.

Panama was an online advertising platform created by Yahoo!, launched on 5 February 2007.

Quality Score is a metric used by Google, Yahoo!, and Bing that influences ad rank and cost per click (CPC) of ads.

Yahoo! has been a party to several instances of litigation.

Search syndication is a type of contextual advertising which allows online search advertisers to buy keyword-targeted traffic outside of search engine results pages. This is considered to be an alternative to advertising on search engines, since 43% of all searches occur outside of the top search engines.

References

  1. ↑ GoTo Going Strong Archived 2006-10-21 at the Wayback Machine , Danny Sullivan, The Search Engine Report, July 1, 1998
  2. ↑ Pay-for-placement gets another shot, Jeff Pelline, CNET News.com, February 19, 1998
  3. ↑ Who Will GoTo.com?, Ken Glaser, OnlinePress.com, Feb. 20, 1998
  4. ↑ "GoTo: The Forgotten Search Engine". 1998-02-19. Archived from the original on 2019-01-20. Retrieved 2019-01-19.
  5. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2017-12-30. Retrieved 2019-01-19.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  6. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2019-01-20. Retrieved 2019-01-19.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. ↑ GoTo Makes Overture To New Name Danny Sullivan, The Search Engine Report, October 2, 2001
  8. ↑ Yahoo reports profit on higher revenue, Jim Hu, CNET News.com, October 9, 2002 - estimating that Overture contributed $25 million to Yahoo's revenue in Q3 2002
  9. 1 2 Yahoo to Acquire Overture Archived 2007-07-08 at the Wayback Machine Yahoo press release, July 14, 2003
  10. ↑ "Yahoo! Inc. - Company Timeline". Wayback Machine . 2008-07-13. Archived from the original on 2008-07-13. Retrieved 2016-07-19.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  11. ↑ Overture sues Google over search patent, Stefanie Olsen and Gwendolyn Mariano, CNet news.com, April 5, 2002
  12. ↑ Google, Yahoo bury the legal hatchet, Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com, August 9, 2004
  13. ↑ David O. Klein & Joshua R. Wueller, "Trademark Enforcement and Internet Search Advertising: A Regulatory Risk for Brand Owners", IP Litigator, Nov./Dec. 2016.
  14. ↑ Overture and Gator Archived 2006-10-16 at the Wayback Machine summary of the agreement and objections by pcpitstop.com
  15. ↑ Yahoo and Claria Archived 2007-02-02 at the Wayback Machine analysis by pcpitstop.com
  16. ↑ Yahoo clamps down on Claria adware, Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com, August 6, 2004
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