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October 28, 2004
Search engines reach local advertisers
BellSouth's Yellow Pages Online unit is helping sell advertisements on Google's search engines, a move that underscores the growing emphasis by search engines to reach local advertisers.
The two companies plan to announce an agreement today, under which BellSouth Advertising & Publishing Corp.'s close to 2,000 sales people in nine Southeast states will sell online advertising packages featuring Google.
The deal, one of the first of its kind, is part of Google's efforts to sell advertising to more small- and medium-size local businesses. Some analysts have questioned how Google could significantly reach that group with its traditional Web-based, self-service ad-sales model.
The Mountain View, Calif., search company and rivals including Yahoo Inc. and Ask Jeeves Inc., have this year launched special sites to allow consumers to search for businesses and organizations in their neighborhoods, moves linked to their quests for more local advertisers.
The search engines' revenue related to such local searches should climb from $45 million last year to $2.5 billion in 2008, according to the Kelsey Group, a Princeton, N.J., consulting and research firm.
BellSouth aims to simplify the process of buying search-related advertising for businesses, by providing flat-rate monthly packages.
Search engines generally require businesses to bid on key words and then charge based on the number of times consumers click on an ad, a system that can sometimes be unwieldy and unpredictable.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Posted by seomasters at October 28, 2004 01:27 PM | TrackBack