NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> Web portals and Yahoo
ONLINE-ADS>> Web portals and Yahoo
Jeff Hodgson (jeffh_at_theoffice.net)
Mon, 01 Jun 1998 18:39:29 -0400
suing Amertech due to what they say are unfair practices in
Ameritech offering Qwest as a long distance carrier to their
customers (and in turn they got a fee for each new customer)
Full story at:
http://www.andovernews.com/cgi-bin/news_story.pl?36083
Qwest projected today it could obtain up to $200 million in
annual revenue as a result of the Ameritech arrangement and
has said that in US West's region, up to 35 percent of
customers may purchase the package. This will result "not
from any innovative new service, technological breakthrough,
or superior efficiency on Qwest's part, but merely from the
local monopolist's endorsement of its long distance services
and its preferential access to the distribution channels and
services of <Ameritech> ... the suit states
Now here is what I find interesting about this story. Is
this not basically the same thing as search engines, or
Portal sites as they now apparently are to be called, are
doing in the flurry of deals made with all types of vendors
from travel agencies, to flowers and books? Granted this
particular deal may or may not be illegal in the
telecommunications industry, but what makes these portal
deals so different?
With the growing dissatifaction that is heard from both web
sites and users of the service, will Yahoo one day be broken
up as the "Ma Bell" of the internet? Yes, I realize that
this is far fetched, but I am hoping to spark a debate, so
play along with me. :)
While the business advantage is obvious, is it unfair
competition for one site to make private deals for
exclusivity on sites that most internet users still think of
as search engines, and not a shopping mall? Another
interesting question is as advertisers, does the making of
these "portal deals" make banner and other similar forms of
advertising less valuable on portal sites because these
sites are giving incredible mind share to your competitors
products (whom have made these deals)? We have certainly
experience this with our site. When conducting advertising
on a site such as yahoo, we find one of our primary
competitors have a portal on the sames pages that we buy
keywords (meaning these pages are accessed when a user
enters the keyword we have bought advertising for). It
certainly seems to me it is almost a waste of our money, and
it has resulted in much lower clickthroughs than buys on
other non-portal internet sites which we advertise.
Jeff Hodgson
<jeffh_at_theoffice.net>
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