eBay and Google play nice… for now
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Written By Emily Koh | June 26, 2007 | Share This
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Just a few days after their dramatic withdrawal from Google Adwords, eBay will resume paid search advertising on Google. But, “in a much more limited way than before,” reports eBay spokesman Hani Durzy.
Last week, eBay announced that it was “experimenting” with paid search providers outside of Google — a move that many people interpreted as an abject response to escalating competition between Google Checkout and eBay’s PayPal.
Though they’ve resumed Adwords activity, eBay reports that their anti-Google tests were “successful”. Said an eBay representative,
“We found that we were not as dependent on Google AdWords as some may have thought. By re-allocating our marketing dollars to our other partners, such as Yahoo!, AOL and MSN, we were able to increase traffic and find efficiencies that will enable us to drive more value to our sellers and partners going forward.”
Kate Kaye at ClickZ News Blog suggests that it might be time for eBay and Yahoo to partner up. Yahoo already serves display and sponsored text link ads on eBay, while Paypal handles Yahoo’s online transactions. It’s easy to see how a paid search exclusive would be a natural next step.
From our own experience, however, it seems unlikely that eBay would cut Google out entirely. From a purely performance standpoint, Google Adwords consistently beats Yahoo Panama - and with $100 million a year Search budget, eBay would be foolish to give up such a margin of potential return.
Topics: ECommerce, Google: AdWords |
a move that many people interpreted as an abject response to escalating competition between Google Checkout and eBay’s PayPal.