Yahoo has implemented a cool music listening feature as a result of their partnership with Rhapsody. Now users will be able to do all the same things they could before like viewing artist photos and videos, or viewing song tracks and official website, with the added bonus of listening to full versions of tracks up to 30 a month as opposed to the sample that users where once limited to. The tracks will play in the new Yahoo Foxy Player and you can do all of this without ever leaving the search results page or logging in! Google has also announced in a Google Labs project that they are indexing audio content. Imagine being able to search for a phrase and limit the results to audio or video files. Could be pretty interesting. This may even lead to new forms of marketing and advertising in files, or for the search giants themselves as pre roll ads for the service they are providing.
In a recent attempt to clean up the traffic and help the cpc and conversion of clients, yahoo among others have began to cut down drastically the ability to practice arbitrage with their feed. In an email I recieved a week or two ago from ParkingDots, they informed me that Yahoo would be closing the feed and they would be closing the business. What does this mean for other parking companies out there? Obviously they were unable to aquire an alternate top tier feed so how will this affect the industry leaders? Heres the email for your reading pleasure!
Subject: ParkingDots is permanently closing on 3/9/08
Importance: High
Hello. You were recently informed of the end of our Yahoo feed for your parked domains, and the subsequent contract we expected to sign with another Tier One feed provider. Unfortunately, the arrangement with the alternate provider did not work out as we’d expected. The consequence of this is that ParkingDots will be closing our doors effective this Sunday, March 9, 2008 at midnight. All the domains you have pointed to us should be redirected immediately to an alternate parking company. You might want to consider the following parking companies for your domains -
If we have not spoken to your personally today to explain the events unfolding, it is because we did not have a valid phone number in our system for you. We apologize that we are only able to reach you via email.
Any monies owed you will be paid according to our normal payment schedule, approximately 45 days following months end.
Please feel free to contact me should you have any questions.
Barbara Reininger
Product Manager
According to an email from Yahoo Search Marketing, minimum bids are no longer fixed at $0.10. This could be due to a improved ad network since Yahoo has taken great measures to begin fighting arbitrage traffic. I think this is a great step for Yahoo to take. Google already allows the advertiser to bid less than .10, and has also tightened its quality scoring and guidelines to fight the arbitrage. In the end i think we may see a better conversion for advertisers, and better payouts for publishers. The email below is directly from Yahoo. I thought i would include it for you to see.
The email from Yahoo reads:
| Starting in the next several weeks, the minimum bids for a number of Sponsored Search keywords will no longer be fixed at $.10. Your new minimum bids can be lower or higher than $.10. Content Match minimum bids currently will remain at $.10.
This update is intended to align your minimum bids with the value and quality of your keywords. It also is designed to help improve the overall search user experience by rewarding advertisers for better quality with lower entry points into keyword markets. The amount set as your minimum bid on a keyword in Sponsored Search can vary depending on multiple factors, such as: • The relevance of your keywords (as measured by the quality of the ads associated with them) A keyword term becomes “active” — switched “on” in the system and eligible for display — when your bid is equal to or greater than your minimum bid. If your bid falls below your minimum, your keyword will not be displayed. You’ll be notified of such changes and will have some time to adjust your bid. What You Should Do to Prepare • Improve ad quality to potentially receive lower minimum bids. • Learn about updates to the account interface. For more information on this change, please read our FAQs. |
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It seems that Yahoo is pulling the plug on its domainer’s or parking companies that are performing what is known as arbitrage. Arbitrage is the process of buying a domain based on the keyword you wish to advertise for and parking it or hosting publisher ads, while at the same time driving cheap traffic to those domains via a PPC provider. The concept is simple. Come up with a competitive term that pays high to the publisher, while driving relevant traffic to that site for a fraction of the cost. The domain parking companies that utilize the Yahoo ad feed have sent warnings in various forms about arbitrage and how it is strictly prohibited. What do you think this will do to the domain industry? Will we see parking companies begin to struggle for survival, or will they shift gears and adapt to the situation. It will certainly change the way some people have been making their living over the past several years.