It's no longer a rumor and definitely not a beta launch. Today's announcement of the Ask Sponsored Listings contextual product is the real deal. First came Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) 1.0 in August, 2005. Next came ASL 2.0 in October, 2006. Now comes the next innovative product offering with the Ask Sponsored Listings contextual product launching in less than four weeks.

How is this product different from our competitors, you ask? Three important reasons, each one a paradigm shift:

* It gives publishers more control over yield and relevancy
* It gives publishers more creative ad unit opportunities
* It allows both advertisers and publishers more control over where and what ads are displayed

We'll be working with publishers to customize their implementations with some of the following options:

* New customized relevancy thresholds for publishers
* Innovative yield management thresholds that allow publishers to optimize their monetization efforts

You won't find the standard white background with text ads. Our hybrid text + graphical contextual units will offer a fresh new look to performance based contextual advertising.

Back to the labs for us. Stay tuned for more new product updates from the Search Marketing product team.

Cheers,

Paul Vallez,
Director of Product Management
Search Marketing
IAC Advertising Solutions

I first had the idea for this post a few years ago, when Google?s April Fool?s Day prank was to define love as a search problem and talked about how Google Romance was going to find you the person of your dreams.

We wish! (Although, at one time it DID work for Rory). But anyway, it got me thinking about Search and Community, and now that I?ve been on the Live Search team for a year I have more I can say.

So in their April Fool?s Day prank, Google had it precisely inverted. Love is not a search problem as much as search is actually a love problem, and all the search boxes in the world will have to take that fact into account.

Now I?m not going to talk about how computer geeks love computer algorithms, or how math geeks love the math of search, or how crawlers love the web pages they crawl (which sounds too kinky for this blog). I?m going to talk about how you find things around the house, what your friends do when they give you stuff, versus what happens when you are with strangers.

a) You wander around the kitchen groggily looking for the coffee grounds, which you know were in the cupboard only yesterday. Your housemate says: I put them by the sink cupboard behind the coffeepot. (Very Local Search)

b) You are on the phone with your mom and she says: you know those pants you loved when we were out shopping last weekend? They just went on sale this afternoon so I picked you up a pair. (Shopping/Product Search)

c) You realize your coworker left a notebook full of info on your desk on next steps for your project. You bring it back to them. (Sharing ? think Digg.com but also, Stumbleupon.com)

Can you imagine if your experiences were different? As in, no love?

a) Your ex-housemate now hates you, moves out. Suddenly, there?s all sorts of porn magazines delivered to your mailbox at home. You have to wade through the piles of nudes to find your copy of Wired. (PORN SPAM GONE WILD)

b) You want coffee and your too-cheery housemate says: Buy NEW MAXWELL HOUSE STARBUCKS CRUNCHYBROWN  BEANS! WITH EXTRA CAFFEINE! But does not lead you to the coffee. What kind of friend IS  this? Certainly, no friend of Betsy?s.  (ADS GONE WILD)

c) Your mom mails you a sweater she thinks is perfect but actually looks better on her than you. (Now, this can actually happen and it is not a sign of anyone hating you, just mom?s taste in clothes and yours = totally different.) But then, not to offend her, you wear the sweater at the next family function and more relatives buy you similar ones for Christmas, thinking that you liked it. :P  (BAD SEARCH HISTORY GONE WILD)

Because at the end of the day, it?s not what the search engine thinks is the most relevant answer. It?s what a human brain thinks is the most relevant answer. Humans make the queries, and humans make the answers. In the end, the user experience is what matters. And humans determine the user experience.

That?s why community features and approaches are so important. A search engine isn?t going to collate information from several web sites into a ?how-to? because it?s never made bath fizzies/bombs before. A search engine hasn?t lived through the experience of where to put aging parents who can still get around but might fall down with no one to help. And even if the math is perfect, only so many answers fit on that first page, and there are many more types of people in the world who may disagree with the results. 

Search is a love problem.

-- Betsy Aoki, Program Manager, Live Search

Have you seen this list of the 100 Oldest Currently Registered Dot-Com Domain Names? It's a fascinating list of internet history. The first domain on the list is SYMBOLICS.COM and it was registered on March 15, 1985.

There are a couple interesting things to point out here:

• From what I can tell about 80 of the domains are gigantic companies. The likes of Intel, Xerox, Apple and Convergent are all on the list.
• There are no "market-oriented" domains on the list. For instance, you don't see names like LOAN.COM or PETS.COM. I found that very surprising.

After looking at this list, it seems the corporate behemoths in the US were alerted to register these names by the government before anyone else had ever heard of the internet. Of course, that's just speculation. Thoughts?

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Jack was stumbling along today and found a great example of Link Bait and a unique way for eCommerce sites to drive more traffic to their site.

What is more boring than luggage and suitcases? Nothing right? Except for maybe toothpicks, umbrellas or carpet cleaner. Luggage Online took advantage of a cross-promotion for their market and has capitalized on it big time.

Their linkbait piece 20 Bizarre Hotels is well-written, well-designed, entertaining and memorable. The tie-in to their market is obvious. People looking to travel need luggage and they are counting on bringing those people to their site.

The thought process is simple. The visitor reads a great article on travel and the next time the visitor needs luggage, they will probably remember Luggage Online. It's a win-win situation for the visitor and the company. Brilliant work by Luggage Online.

More tips for driving traffic to eCommerce Sites:

1. Use a powerful content management system. A solution like Joomla is perfect for a site like this. You can only customize so much with a Yahoo Store.
2. Look for cross-segments in your market. In this example, they are using a much larger market like travel to sell luggage.
3. Other examples would include: a piece about the benefits of running to sell shoes or a piece about marriage and relationships to sell diamonds. Always be creative and look for ideas.
4. Create a piece like this on a monthly basis. By nature, most eCommerce are not dynamic in nature. Meaning, they do not use RSS feeds and are not constantly updated. Adding fresh content will add momentum to your site.

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