Campground Management Blog

Hi Folks,

With the recent announcement that Microsoft and Yahoo have formed a partnership I thought I would take a quick look at what that announcement means to the average consumer and average advertiser. I have been doing lots of reading on this and I thought I would share my thoughts. We are an advertiser on Google with both Campground Manager Software® and especially with Bookyoursite.com ,as we are trying to drive traffic to our partner campgrounds and get reservations.

Fist off, what does this deal entail? As you may or may not know Microsoft recently launched   a new search engine called Bing. This is their latest attempt to take a run at Google and their massive advertising revenue. The old MSN.com was obviously not working. So Yahoo’s ads will appear on the sidebars and headers and footers of the Bing website. Bing (using the massive power of Microsoft search technology) will power the search portion of the consumer input. So this partnership effectively puts Yahoo out of the search business but still in the advertising business.  Yahoo will get 88 percent of the revenue for the ads and the pay per click (PPC) revenue.

What does this mean to the consumer?

More competition for Google is the goal here. Together Yahoo and Bing together will account for just under 30% of the searches on the Internet. Now that is dwarfed by the Google 67% but is still much more formidable than two other competitors at 15% each. With more searches you get more revenue. With more revenue you can drive better quality targeted advertising. With more revenue you can drive more innovation. With more innovation you can produce a better product that will benefit the consumer. All the search engineers at Yahoo that get laid off can get off the Titanic because let’s face it Yahoo was dying a slow painful death and move over to the evil giant Microsoft. Think of it- Microsoft the underdog- who’d have ever thought we would say or think that?

What does this mean to people like advertisers like us?

More competition for Google. No longer is spending money on Yahoo or MSN.com like throwing money out the window at 60 miles an hour. No longer is doing an ad buy on Yahoo or Microsoft a gesture of protest against the Google behemoth. At 30 percent market share there is a serious number of people using this search engine. “YaBing” will be able to build a long term relationship with advertisers which will lead to more revenue and more innovation. More innovation should lead to more business and value for advertisers like us. Like they say the bigger the ship, the harder it is to turn it around. You have to think Yabing will be much more nimble than Google.

Our Bookyoursite.com ad spend on Google is being done almost out of spite as no one else can drive the volume like they do. Yet we know we have to be there.

Google ads are becoming more and more expensive and less effective. Hope fully this deal will put a small dent in their armor and give us what everyone wants, more choice and better value. More customers in a cost efficient manner for our partner campgrounds on Bookyoursite.com . ( Statistics and some editorial ideas are gleaned form many sources on the Internet especially Searchengineland.com)