Google, Overture Eye Content-Based Advertising
Google Inc., Overture Services Inc. and other Internet advertising providers are racing to sign partners for new services that link commercial messages to content on Web pages, a largely untested market that backers see poised for explosive growth.
The niche is an outgrowth of search-based advertising services, which have boomed even as demand for other forms of Internet advertising has faltered.
Google and Overture are the top providers of paid-search services that respond to keyword Web searches with text ads that appear under such headings as “sponsored links.”
The new services promise to put relevant ads in prominent places on Web pages. For example, a story about singer Britney Spears might be accompanied by links to Web sites that sell concert tickets or CDs.
Together, Google and Overture have locked up search partnerships with operators of the Web’s most trafficked sites, including AOL, Yahoo and MSN, while building rosters of advertisers totaling about 100,000.
“In the last quarter, all the excitement around search-engine marketing spilled over into contextual search,” Jupiter research analyst Gary Stein said.
Google rolled out its contextual service in March. Its partners include newspaper publisher Knight Ridder Inc., HowStuffWorks.com and a few smaller Web sites.
Last month, Overture stepped into the market with partners including MSN, Microsoft Corp.’s Internet service, and the MyFamily network of genealogy sites. Web search services partner Yahoo Inc. also is testing its contextual products, a spokesman said.
Also in the mix is Sprinks, a division of magazine publisher Primedia Inc., which counts CNET Networks Inc. and business and financial information provider Forbes Inc. as partners.
Sprinks said this week that it signed an exclusive content-targeting deal with MSNBC.com, a cable television and Internet news provider that is a joint venture of Microsoft and the NBC unit of General Electric Co.
Pasadena-based Overture estimates that the market for contextual advertising could grow to $2 billion annually by 2008.
