WebProNews

Yahoo is still awaiting approval from the U.S. Department of Justice on their proposed search advertising deal with Google, but that has not stopped them from making adjustments to their own advertising platform. In fact, some think they might even be doing it to emphasize to critics of the deal, that they are still serious about their own advertising endeavors, and are not just bowing down to the forces of Google.

Google itself has emphasized time and time again that this deal is good for competition, and will not hamper Yahoo's advertising offering. Yahoo has been relatively quiet on the issue in comparison, leaving most of the defensive tactics up to Google. Google has put up a website dedicated to the "facts" about the deal, and their lawyers are even calling advertisers asking for testimonials for the deal.

Yahoo Search Marketing has implemented a new system for geo-targeting so users can better pinpoint their target markets. Users can now select targets as wide as an entire country, and as narrow as a single zip code. According to Zachary Rodgers at ClickZ, who notes that Yahoo's geo-targeting offering trumps Google's who only offers it down to the city level:

In a statement that seemed crafted to address the DOJ's concerns, Yahoo said the new features are "reinforcing its commitment to be a leader in search."

Greg Sterling, founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, noted it's unlikely Yahoo undertook its enhancements to appease U.S. investigators. However, he said the move may serve to kill two birds with one stone -- convincing both advertisers and investigators that it still means to provide a serious alternative to Google.



Further evidence to support this notion (aside from Yahoo saying flat-out that they intend to invest the money they make from the Google deal into their own ad platform) is the incorporation of SearchMonkey applications into general Yahoo search results. This seems to be nothing more than an attempt to boost relevancy in the way Google tries to do with their own applications showing up in results (like Google Finance and News for example).

Yahoo's latest attempt at social media seems to indicate an additional component of a strategy to bolster use. This attempt has been the object of criticism (unsurprisingly considering Yahoo's past endeavors into social media), but you might say the social aspect could lead to increased relevancy as a whole too. User engagement (via social elements) can potentially lead to the sharing of relevant information between friends. After all, who knows the user better than their own friends (kind of Facebook's mentality with Beacon).

These are the kinds of things I believe Yahoo is looking at as firepower when it comes to competition with Google, Microsoft, and anyone else in the long run. The search game has long been a quest for relevancy, and Yahoo is banking on opening up their services in more ways than one to achieve this (no matter how many jobs they cut).

However, no matter how much they improve relevancy, they still have to overcome Google - the brand. Yahoo has a brand too. There's no question about that, but Google has become synonmous with "search" for many (even as a verb).

But back to the geo-targeting. Kastle Waserman, Communications Manager at Yahoo notes the relevancy as the goal of this type of marketing. "Keep in mind the more you target, the fewer users your ads may reach," says Waserman. "Generally, you’re trading relevancy for volume, narrowing your target to a specific audience rather than every potential eyeball in the overall market."

To access the new features, Yahoo tells users to:

- Click the “Campaigns” tab.

- Choose a campaign.

- Click the “Campaign Settings” drop-down located in the upper right-hand corner (above the graph).

- Select “Geo-Targeting.”

At that point, you can select your target from a drop-down menu accompanied by a map that shows the areas you are selecting.

Not all marketing campaigns will call for the relevancy delivered from a geo-targeted campaign. After all, some products are potentially relevant to people everywhere. That said, geo-targeting can be an incredibly useful weapon in an Internet marketer's arsenal, and the more precision offered from any provider of geo-targeting services, the better chance that marketer will have of achieving success with that campaign.

Unfortunately for users of Yahoo Search Marketing, Google still dominates the search market share by a wide margin, and to the best of my knowledge, the Google deal doesn't include serving Yahoo ads on Google's search engine.

Update: According to this page for holiday tips, Google actually will let you geo-target down to a neighborhood level rather than only the city-level as indicated here.