A new type of Search Affiliation?

While Google’s AdSense for Search is all well and good, I am interested in another model.

For sites that have prorietary content, the search should be done on their content and not on Google. So, when a user searches for the content on the site, while displaying the results, it should be possible to have links to Google, Yahoo! or other sites which passes the relavant search context. The user browsing the results may first choose what he wants from the results and then further explore more about it on these general search engines. In this case, essentially the first site is sending search traffic to the search engines. So, the search engines should track the site sending the traffic to them and any profit generated there after should be shared with the first site.

This is probably more highly targetted than the current “Adsense for Search”, because of multiple reasons

1. The fact that the user came to this site with proprietary content means, the user is looking for a specialized content
2. The fact that the user has first seen a set of results and is trying to further explore on some of it means, the user search has narrowed down and as a result, the click-through-rates for the search engine company and the conversion rates for the advertisers is likely to be improved, even slightly.

So, my question is, is Search Affiliation really a new idea or is it already there with some of the search engine companies? Atleast, none of the top ones seem to be having it.

Will YouTube take away revenue from Google?

First there were banner ads. Then there came text ads and AdWords really popularized. One reason they are popular compared to banner ads is that the ad content sort of matches with the text within the surrounding content. Now with YouTube becoming more and more popular (with billions of views and thousands of uploads per month), there are new advertisement oppurtunities. Before displaying each of the videos, YouTube can for example display an ad. So, depending on the length of the video, they can choose to display larger duration ads. That is, a 10minute video can be padded with a 30 sec ad, while a 5 minute video with a 15sec ad. In addition, to provide context, they can use keywords for the video description at the time of upload to the text of the advertisement and provide appropriate ad.

Similar to how Google charges different amount depending on where the ad is placed, YouTube can do the same depending on whether the ad is displayed at the beginning or the end. Ofcourse, the ad revenue has to be shared with the video providers.

See, where this is going? All of a sudden, there are old ads (gif, flash) with new format (video). One thing that I am not familar is if it’s possible to click on a video while it’s playing to navigate to a web page. Otherwise, this may be a little bummer for the web channel. Ofcourse, ads for branding are still possible without the benefit of being able to navigate to a website. Like the traditional TV. I mean, we don’t have a way to click the remote to take us to the website when a commercial is coming. Do we? That’s called WebTV?

Search Engine Optimization Idea

Using current affairs is potentially a way to increase traffic. I realized this after observing the traffic pattern on my other blog where I talked about “American Idol” in a completely different context. Every wednesday and thursday, I see some traffic to my pages which had American Idol.

So, providing information about current affairs has two advantages

1. A lot of people are searching for that information (may be because they missed it, may be they hard it from collegues or friends and want to follow up more, or they already know it, they are hooked on to it and want to learn more and more as the story develops!)
2. Some of the topics, being relatively new may end up with newer combination of keywords in the content which makes it possible to show up relatively high on the search results

Ofcourse, it doesn’t make sense to be very greedy with this approach and make your own site as a spam site! Instead, it would be good to pick topics selectively based on your core business .

Standards on click count?

With online advertising expanding more and more, so is the fraud. Clearly, a measure like coming up with a standard for click count that is known to both the publishers and advertisers will come a long way.

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