Vinny Lingham's Blog - Latest Comments in AOL Only Adwords - Marketplace & Revenue Impact

Re: AOL Only Adwords - Marketplace & Revenue Impact

Searchquant — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:35:39 -0000

Linda,

I don't think it ever will be. AOL's deal with Google gives it the right to sell to 1000-2000 top advertisers (as defined by a 3rd party I believe), and no one else. So either you're on the list or you're not.

Re: AOL Only Adwords - Marketplace & Revenue Impact

Linda Garcia — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:38:37 -0000

Does anyone know if and when AOL's white label program will be available to smaller advertisers?

Re: AOL Only Adwords - Marketplace & Revenue Impact

Cat Seda — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:43:44 -0000

More work but more control. So overall, this is good news for PPC advertisers. Thanks, Vinny, for including examples and possible conclusions. It'll be interesting to see what happens...

Re: AOL Only Adwords - Marketplace & Revenue Impact

Jeremy Palmer — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 17:29:20 -0000

Worth noting... AOL's white label program is only available to AOL's 1,000 biggest advertisers. One of many little clauses in their renewal deal they renegotiated last year.

Re: AOL Only Adwords - Marketplace & Revenue Impact

Vinny Lingham — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 05:53:34 -0000

Thanks guys!

Two other posts of interest relating to this topic, which would add some additional strategic background logic (in my opinion, anyway!):

(MSN/Yahoo/Google)

http://www.vinnylingham.com...

(Return on Effort)

http://www.vinnylingham.com...

Re: AOL Only Adwords - Marketplace & Revenue Impact

Andre — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 02:24:06 -0000

Hi Vinny,

Now I remember why I enjoyed following your blog so much... Somehow I dropped the Vinny-feed after I switched to Google Reader.

Love the analytic thinking, simple explanations and conclusive round-up.

Re: AOL Only Adwords - Marketplace & Revenue Impact

Chris Zaharias — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 19:56:32 -0000

Good post Vinny, and I'm very much in agreement with your description of the situation. In terms of whether it's (1), (2) or (3), I have to say it'll be some of each. One point of distinction, though - my understanding is that this is *not* something Google is pushing but is rather being led by AOL who wants to (and has the rights to) sell their traffic directly for its higher ROI value and, frankly, because they have the rights to in their 2005 agreement with Google.

Another point of distinction - as far as I understand, AOL does not have the rights to sell their traffic directly to anything other than a list of 2000 top advertisers as determined by an independent 3rd party.

Google CPC's will not be impacted much, if at all, in the short term, advertiser adoption (even among those 2000) will happen over a period of 3-9 months because of work loads, lack of ROI understanding, and AOL's newness to search ad sales - and IMO because of the AOL/Google deal structure not making it easy to launch a la Site Targeting or Content bidding.

Markets want to be efficient, and this is AOL being sick of seeing their CPC's diluted by G's lower-quality [and IMO non-search] search distribution partners. Good advertisers who adopt AOL directly will be able to profitably spend more overall in search, Google will see a little bit less spend overall, and perhaps most importantly, many of those 2000 advertisers will opt out of G's search network once AOL's in place - at least until/unless G allows Search Network-specific bidding.