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Overture Launches Content Match
Posted on July 2, 2003
Overture’s paid placement goes
where it’s never gone before: content pages.
Paid search placement pioneer Overture
Services Inc. delivered some 2 billion consumer clicks
to advertisers last year, and the Pasadena, CA-based
company says advertisers are asking for more. To provide
them, Overture is taking its advertising platform and
its keyword-bidding model to where it hasn’t been
before–-beyond search results listings directly
to the pages of content publishers. Overture this week
announced the launch of a new product, Content Match,
which places Overture’s paid search results on
relevant content pages of its distribution partners’
web sites.
Overture announced it’s already
distributing the contextual advertising product to MSN
and other content-oriented businesses such as the MyFamily
network of web sites, which operates sites such as Genealogy.com.
It’s also in talks with other content-focused
sites that have participated in tests of Content Match
over the past four months, including the auto and real
estate sections of Yahoo, says Bill Demas, senior vice
president and general manager of Overture’s Partners
Business and Solutions Group. The Content Match product
is similar to Google’s AdSense program which places
contextually related ads on non-search sites.
How does it work? Consumers logging
onto MSN to find content about jazz singer Nora Jones,
for example, might see ad links to related products
such as Nora Jones CDs or videos to the side of or at
the bottom of the content on the page. Clicking on that
link delivers the consumer to the advertiser’s
site where the consumer can buy the product; clicking
on the back button gets them back to the content on
MSN. Advertisers bid on the contextually placed keywords
as they do on keyword positions in search results. The
difference is that the link to a relevant shopping opportunity
is delivered on a content page, to a consumer who’s
chosen to view particular content but not actively looking
to buy something.
“The links are done in a non-intrusive
way so as not to hinder consumers’ experience
with that content, but at the same time, they’re
relevant to the story they’re reading about. So
there’s a greater likelihood they might go ahead
and click on that link,” says Demas. Overture
at this point isn’t releasing any data on click-through
or conversion rates of Content Match among sites that
have tested it, but he terms the early response “positive.”
In addition to new opportunities
for existing partners such as MSN, Content Match opens
up advertising opportunities for publishers previously
unable to participate in the Overture network, such
as Genealogy.com, because they didn’t have search
boxes, adds Demas.
In addition to new distribution partners,
“You could expect that much of our existing network
will be interested in this, and we’ll be announcing
those implementations as they happen,” says Demas.
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