INTERACTIVE BYTES : The right to search

Online ad specialist The Internet Bureau attracted plenty ofattention with the latest in its The Internet Bureau Presents seriesof seminars drawing in more than 100 punters keen to brush up ontheir search marketing knowledge.

New Generation Search, held in May, explored the latestdevelopments in the NZ search environment. Internet Bureau managingdirector John Schofield says it's an interesting time for the Kiwimarket, with Google about to officially open its local office laterthis year, and releases by two major players - Yellow Pages andYahoo!Xtra - meaning search in NZ is no longer a one-horse race.

The presentation highlighted how the international search marketis growing in leaps and bounds, with a NetRatings survey showing 81%of the global internet population use search engines.

Advertisers are also getting into search in a big way. In the UK,search is 1 billion-plus market, with estimates that it comprisesover 57% of online adspend. In the US, search is estimated tocomprise 40% of all online adspend.

At the event, Blair Glubb and Paul Newby of Yellow Pages Group andYahoo!Search's Craig Wax and Kylie O'Brien outlined their companies'new search products to a packed audience.

Yellow Pages has a home-town advantage, having built up years ofexperience in the local market. It gave an exclusive pre-launchpreview of its site, which offers search functions like personalisedaddress books, making it easier to save information online.

The new Yellow site also connects to a much deeper database ofbusiness information than was previously available. The database wasenhanced by telephone interviews with tens of thousands of businessowners, and now includes information like products, services andopening hours.

"Yellow Pages has a key advantage over many other search enginesin providing relevant results, because they already know the 'intent'of searchers is to find business product and service information,"says Schofield.

"Understanding that intent in advance means it can skip straightto the appropriate results, without having to figure out if the useris looking for pictures of plumbers, stories about plumbers orplumbers in California."

International heavyweights Yahoo!, already major players in thesearch advertising space, then demonstrated its new sponsored searchplatform which, notably, makes it possible to target advertising toNZ eyeballs.

"Yahoo!Search has been on our shopping list for search advertisingcampaigns for a number of years," says Schofield.

"However, without the ability to target advertising specificallyto New Zealanders, it has been difficult to achieve efficientresults. The new platform, when it launches, should make Yahoo!Searcha much more viable option."

Both the Yellow Pages and Yahoo! offerings look to focus onenhancing user experience, and could eventually prove strongcompetitors to Google.

With the advent of these new products, agencies will need to gearup for the challenge of managing campaigns on multiple searchengines.

With this in mind, The Internet Bureau has built a team of searchspecialists, offering advanced adserving solutions such as bidmanagement tools to take the hard graft out of campaign managementand optimisation.

InterActive Bytes is compiled for AdMedia by Scoop.co.nz, aleading online news site attracting a readership of over 500,000unique visitors a month. Send feedback to business developmentmanager Wade Bishop (wade@scoop.co.nz.)