Seek and ye shall find
Yahoo! is apparently searching for ways to show the world it still has what it takes to stay in the search business, despite an upcoming advertising partnership with Microsoft and the fact the Internet portal's CEO has said her company is not just about search.
But if the company is not about search, what exactly is it about, ask confused users. More to the point, does Yahoo! even care about search anymore? According to the Yahoo VP and general manager of search marketing, David Pann, the answer is yes.
Admittedly, Pann's job, by its very description, depends on Yahoo! still giving something of a damn about Search, but the vice president goes out of his way in a recent blog post to lay out some new features and tools he hopes will convince people Yahoo! still cares about the search market.
According to Pann, Yahoo's "new search enhancements fall into four major areas: innovation, transparency and control, value, and consumer relevance." Sounds like five to us, but who's counting?
Under ‘innovation' Pann lists Yahoo's experimentation with ‘rich ads' in Search, claiming they "can help improve click-through rate by as much as 25 per cent." A rich claim indeed. Rich ads let advertisers use video or still images to visually bombard web surfers with something a tad more noticeable than the standard and more unobtrusive textual solicitations. Yahoo says a few big-brand partners have already tested it out and reckons the service will open up to more firms later this month.
