Microsoft and Yahoo Seal The Deal

After nearly 18 months of deliberation, the Microsoft-Yahoo deal is finally complete. Needless to say, the blogosphere and Twitter-sphere is all a-buzz, so I won't go on and on here. You can read more, including my comments, at Search Engine Watch (and every other SEM blog in the world). If you're on Twitter, there is lots of live coverage of the MSFT-YAHOO phone call. Danny Sullivan's tweets (@dannysullivan) are particularly entertaining.

Now, the fun begins. Once the dust has settled, what do you think will happen in the PPC arena? Or in search in general? Does MicroHoo have a shot?

YouTube Ads

I finally saw my first YouTube ad today. These have been around for a while, but I hadn't seen the popover type yet, until today.

It's for Biggby Coffee, a local franchise started by a Michigan State grad. Great guy. And I love their lattes. But I digress. Here's a screen shot of the ad:



And yes, I admit it - I was watching a godawful Charlie the Unicorn video. My 12-year-old twins love these things. I think the guys who make these are, well, smoking something. But again, I digress. (And I swear, this was work-related research. Really.)

This ad is clearly geo-targeted to Michigan, and possibly behaviorally-targeted as well, since I am an avowed Biggby customer and have visited their site before. Still, this is kind of cool. I'm not sure what the ROI on these ads would be, but it got my attention.

Anybody used YouTube ads like this? If so, what were your results? Would you do it again?