Text Ads on eBay: For Yahoo!, the US; For Google, the World!
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Written By Reprise Media | August 28, 2006 | Share This
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Yahoo!? What Yahoo!? The number 2 engine looked to be sitting pretty with eBay back in May, when the two sealed a partnership that would see 1) Yahoo!’s ads served on eBay’s US site and 2) eBay’s online transaction service PayPal used throughout Yahoo! But eBay looks to be hedging its bets, turning to Yahoo! bete noir Google for all text ads served on eBay’s non-US sites.
In a deal that will come to fruition by 2007, says Reuters, Google and eBay will share the international ad revenue (details not disclosed), and the companies will also cooperate on click-to-call technology that would enable interested buyers to contact eBay sellers over the phone just by clicking on an ad. The latter project will combine elements of both firms’ VOIP services: eBay’s well-known Skype and Google little-used Google Talk app - once again, details are sketchy.
Since this Google-eBay deal parallels the Yahoo!-eBay tie-up in many ways, you might wonder if there’s a PayPal component at work here as well. So far there’s no word on that, nor on whether the deal will have much effect on the Google Checkout tiff that began back in July. Checkout, a transaction service that offers PayPal some competition, was banned from eBay over accusations of unreliability. It looked at the time like a move to preserve eBay’s PayPal monopoly, but legitimate questions have emerged over the past couple of months over Google Checkout’s well-publicized difficulties.
As for when you’ll start seeing Google’s ads all over eBay’s international sites, we’re not sure. But they’ll probably start small and ramp up slowly, as with Yahoo!’s US ads. Some eBay merchants have chafed at the idea of ads directing their customers to other sellers’ auctions, so thus far Yahoo!’s ads have shown up mainly when eBay searches yield no results.
Topics: Advertising: Contextual |