WebProNews

So LookSmart's creating content now, to ensure itself a higher-quality distribution network for the pay-per-click ads it sells.

Makes sense. It's the type of on-topic, informative material that the original investors in the original highly granular directory thought would find an audience in the first place.

The next logical step would be to partner with Yahoo, Google, Quigo, etc. to actually serve (at least some of) the ads on those pages. LookSmart built a pretty robust platform for paid search, but the leaders in the field may well have larger advertiser networks and more importantly, advertisers willing and able to take the trouble to fund and maintain their contextual ad accounts.

I'd rather tweak my Google AdWords account to take account of (eg.) LookSmart's new inventory than to have to open up a LookSmart account to get at it.

LookSmart Searches for Vertical Comeback

Andrew Goodman is Principal of Page Zero Media, a marketing consultancy which focuses on maximizing clients' paid search marketing campaigns.

In 1999 Andrew co-founded Traffick.com, an acclaimed "guide to portals" which foresaw the rise of trends such as paid search and semantic analysis.