March 03, 2005
Yahoo Co-founder Discusses Future Endeavors
In a wide-ranging keynote "interview" today with Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang, which opened day two of the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York, Yang spoke on his company's growing search prowess and dropped a few hints about the Web-giant's future marketing endeavors.
With regards to search, Yang clearly indicated that Yahoo can claim the leading position in the search marketing business, a position currently held by Google. "When you think about all aspects of search, you should think about Yahoo," he said.
To that end, Yahoo announced on Tuesday that its Overture Services division, the paid-search arm that it acquired in 2003, would be renamed "Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions."
Yang's hope is that Yahoo's growing array of search products will expand the medium's uses, as well as user expectations about search. "Search is not just about destination," he said.
One of those new search products, the recently-launched Y!Q, allows users to highlight a selection of text while reading content and conduct related searches on that text without leaving the Web page they are visiting. While Yahoo had previously maintained that Y!Q would be advertiser-free, Yang said otherwise. "Our hope is to provide monetization solutions [for Y!Q]."
As he spoke about the merits of personalized search, Yang also intimated that Yahoo may explore some sort of behavioral targeting play related to search. The company launched My Yahoo! Search last fall, which theoretically provides users search results that take into account their past search activity. "Preference-based search...it's a tremendous value," he said. Whether that value translates to ad dollars remains to be seen.
"It's about how is Yahoo or the industry going to get their first," he said of the trend toward personalized media. "It's a huge business opportunity."
