Yahoo Ups the Ante in Online Advertising

In an on-going effort to remain competitive with ever-evolving search leader Google, Yahoo is increasing its stake in the online advertising arena by turning its 20 percent hold in Right Media Group, purchased in October of 2006, into full ownership.

Right Media has become a high-stakes leader in the online advertising industry, allowing advertisers and online publishers to interact in online ad sales in a manner similar to eBay, offering an innovative open exchange to help buyers and sellers trade digital media more efficiently. Participants are able to make direct transactions with one another at fair market value.

Yahoo reportedly paid $680 million in cash for the remaining 80 percent of Right Media ownership.

Yahoo! chairman and CEO Terry Semel said in a statement that the acquisition of Right Media will further Yahoo's goal to create the industry's most open, accessible and vibrant advertising marketplace. This will then help democratize the buying and selling of digitally enabled advertising.

The purchase of Right Media falls right into accordance with Yahoo’s long-term business plan to build the industry's foremost advertising and publishing unit, in addition to its traditional search offerings.

Google announced just weeks ago that that it had agreed to purchase DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. Google also has a new partnership with EchoStar for TV advertising.

Google Surpasses Microsoft as the World's Most Uniquely Visited Web Site, and Most Valuable Global Brand

Google.com is now officially the most visited web site in the world - this according to measurements taken by leading global internet information provider comScore. Google’s 528 million unique visitors were just enough to steal the top spot from Microsoft, which was close behind with 527 million unique visitors.

Yahoo came in an admirable third place with 476 million, followed by Time Warner with 272 million and eBay with 256 million unique visitors.

The fact is that with Google’s increased array of products beyond just traditional search including a much improved Google Maps, Google News, and Google Video, more and more and people are sticking around and utilizing some of the other services Google has to offer. Google’s 2006 acquisition of YouTube, the world’s most popular video sharing portal, also most certainly played a big role in their increased rating.

In a separate annual online survey by Millward Brown, the Google brand is now valued at approximately $66.4 billion, making it the most valuable global brand ahead of previous brand leaders like GE, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola.

March 2007 Search Engine Rankings – Google Continuing Its Reign

Leading global internet information provider comScore has released its official monthly report of user activity across all major competitive search engines.

For the month of March 2007, Google once again maintained a strong hold on the number 1 position capturing a whopping 48.3 percent of the U.S. search market (3.5 billion total searches). This is up 0.2 percent over the 48.1 percent that earned Google the top spot in February.

Yahoo also maintained its not-so-close second place ranking with 27.5 percent of all U.S. searches (2 billion total searches, down 0.6 percent from February). MSN held steady in a distant third place with 10.9 percent (798 million total searches, up 0.4 percent) of search traffic, followed by Ask.com with 5.2 (379 million total searches, up 0.2 percent) and AOL with an even 5.0 percent, which was up a slight 0.1 from February (368 million total searches).

Overall, Americans conducted more than 7.3 billion online searches during the month of March. This is up a 6 percent from just a month ago, and a staggering 14 percent increase from March of 2006.