SEL: Yahoo Local Listings: Yahoo Continues Small Biz Play (no ads on maps?!)

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April 28, 2006

Yahoo Local Listings: Yahoo Continues Small Biz Play (no ads on maps?!)

Yahoo now competing (more) directly with local newspapers and the yellow pages. Does Yahoo have any significant partnerships in place to be resellers for this new local product? Google has Verizon...

They are clearly aiming for the local, small business marketplace: "We created a product called Local Featured Listings, which introduces small businesses to online local advertising."

Yahoo has a good, preestablished history with small online businesses.

VERY INTERESTING! Here are some of the bits from the Yahoo Local Feature Listings collateral:

- Just six listings on the first two pages of search results, inventory is limited

- You choose the categories and regions associated with your listing. And unlike standard search results, you can adjust your listing messaging any time."

- It's a flat rate... No bidding on keywords.

Here's the rate card:

Interestingness:

- they are targeting small local businesses rather than big brands (who seemed to be Google's initial map advertisers...)

- charging a per-month rate instead of CPC or CPA (similar to other Yahoo properties?)!!

- apparently SMALL amount of inventory (a creating-demand move?)

- have not decided to consolidate map/local services like Google

- Ads do NOT appear on the maps themselves... WHY?? (new product coming there?)

For local marketers:
Get started testing this NOW before big brands snap up the inventory. I have no way of knowing if these prices are good, but I do know that Yahoo maps were recently ranked tops by Tech Crunch, which to me indicates a slowly gathering swell in Yahoo map usage.

Test it out and compare it to your ads on Google maps. Also see Google Maps API2 + Local Search Marketing Checklist and Advertising Locally on Google Maps.

From the Yahoo blog: Delivering flowers, delivering babies (with another ODD post title... I think they should bring in at least a LITTLE marketing polish on these things ;)

And see:
Yahoo! Local: Collaborative Local Content
and think about what this could mean based on Adam Schultz's Yahoo vision: Yahoo vs. MSN, Google and Ask (and ABC, NBC, FOX, CNN, TIVO, Netflix, etc…)

Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

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