Conduct a search on the Orange portal in the UK and you’ll see that results now include sponsored ads courtesy of Yahoo (actually the ads are provided by Yahoo Search Marketing, the company that enables search monetization for Yahoo search results through a partnership with Mobile Commerce). Orange delivers upwards of five paid-for and relevant results – all under the Orange brand. Connect the dots and we’re talking about much more than a compelling search experience (from the user perspective); we’re seeing evidence of a new way of thinking at Yahoo. It’s obviously abiding by Orange’s business rules, allowing Orange to brand the service and promote its own on-portal content. (Yahoo runs the ads and makes sure money changes hands.) Yahoo’s approach addresses and soothes operator fears of brand dilution. Yahoo is letting operators choose: they can have a branded search solution (3 in the UK has partnered with Yahoo for precisely this reason) and they can have a white-label solution (Orange is showcasing this as we speak). This willingness to put brand on the backburner turns the pressure up on white-label search providers to come up with a new differentiator (other than their willingness to promote operator brands and content) and isolates Google as the only search engine that can potentially dilute operator brand. (BTW: Thanks to the UK advertisers that brought this scoop to my attention.)
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