Google has made various forays into the social world with some more successful (in Brazil anyway) than others.  However, it is clear that through their Profiles pages, and their less invasive tactics like the Google Places pages, that gathering social data from its users is high on Google’s list of things to do.

Enter the +1.  Nicely non-invasive and with the ability to help guide search results both from a direct (on the SERP) and indirect (on the website) point of view.  It’s simple, in tradition with Facebook’s “Like” button; and for now, it’s positive — there is no “-1” button…yet. But but the choice of a number makes this nicely scalable for Google, should they choose to make this a sliding scale.  As I mentioned in my previous post, Microsoft is well positioned to do something similar with their Windows Live service, and I really hope they do. Incorporating both the WinLive and Facebook networks for social data seemingly would deliver more targeted and insightful results, as well as protect Bing against any future changes to the Facebook relationship.  (For full disclosure: Microsoft is a client I work on.)

Time will tell how adoption for Google’s +1 system works out.  They’ve made a great move in making it simple for users and it lives in a format users are familiar with. Also, because they’re Google, webmasters will be likely to adopt their on-page system to help their websites rank too.  Google’s +1 will likely end up being a good source of data for Google, and, in time, could help level their field  with Bing’s Facebook partnership.

This news broke hours before Matt Cutts, a Google engineer and head of Google’s Webspam team, was to take the stage alongside Bing at a Bing-sponsored event to discuss the future of the space. Suffice it to say that the news of the day was a more pressing topic than where the space was going in the conversation that took place. What followed this event was a search engine Twitter fight between Mr. Cutts and counterparts at Bing that can be seen relived via TechCrunch.

Avoiding the morals of the story, there appears to be three unspoken, to date, points for advertisers to keep in mind when determining future plans:

Google is THE measuring stick

For the better part of the last decade, search starts and ends with Google. The public transformation of Google to a verb and the governmental exploration of a monopoly are both founded off the basis that Google is the defining entity in the search space. It would stand to reason that when measuring evolution, any search vendor will analyze their results against those of Google. A former engineer with the search engine Ask once recounted how they used to run internal evaluations of their search results against Google. Over time, Google started to serve up dummy results to prevent this kind of benchmarking – similar to what was done in this current “sting” operation with Bing. Using clean IPs they were able to do field surveys of satisfaction and found that the single biggest determinant of satisfaction was the Google logo on the page. When the logo was removed, the results swung to neutral or favored Ask. When the logo moved to the Ask page the satisfaction went way up.

That said, it should come as no surprise that Bing is using Google as a factor in rankings. The primary basis for the Yahoo deal from Microsoft’s side was to gain the market share in order to own more data and provide better performance. In absence of that data, using consumer information from Google results would have been a logical reference point.

Text search results are just table stakes

Google’s contention, that in six or seven of 100 examples they found Bing’s results to be stale copies, is meaningful – if you believe that the future of search is flat, blue linked pages. GroupM Search, in recently-completed research with comScore, found that brand infidelity is a growing challenge for search engines. Google today has nearly 70 percent market share; yet in the research we conducted, the user percentage (not query share) was less than 50 percent with Yahoo and Bing much higher than their typical market shares by query volume. When studying the young male audience, a segment who does more of everything online, these trends were further amplified.

The reality in this whole dust-up is that no one, be it Bing, Blekko or any other engine, is going to win on table stakes. Users switch engines when they are dissatisfied with what they are finding on their primary engine. More people use Google for multiple queries then bounce to Yahoo or Bing when they want a different opinion. This was the pitch to advertisers when Bing launched, and little has changed in consumer behavior. This reality is important because if all of this is to mean that “Bing is now Google,” as Mr. Sullivan joked, then consumers would have little reason to switch. What hasn’t been manifested in any of the sting data is a keyword that likely draws more than 10 queries annually. The reason, most likely, is that Bing is differentiating via Facebook and other implementations to stand out on the items that matter to their user base.

If you don’t like the conversation, change it

Every major search engine states they have hundreds of ranking signals. Google has built their entire business on the black box that is the Page Rank algorithm. Last week, Google went to the press to state they would be cracking down on duplicate content and the farms that cultivate them. This was not so subtlety timed for the day after online media company Demand Media had a highly successful first day on Wall Street. Demand Media has been called into question for deriving much of its revenue from its strategic approach to content development and inclusion in the Google rankings. And now, Google follows that with this presentation of copying, cheating and stealing, directed at Bing.

Not surprisingly, no one has spent the week engaged in the conversation that dominated the last two months in the search space – is Google slipping? Columns, like this one from Coding Horror, flooded the web in late December and into January about the continued decline of the Google results. Similar conversations are not happening today as a result of the offensive position being played by Google. While this may be a smart PR move, it does not represent innovation and differentiation.

Also of note, as an upstart (and Bing falls into this category), despite Microsoft’s deep pockets, one of the true signs of competition is when the leader starts fighting with you instead of you picking the fight. Steve Ballmer and Microsoft have been very aggressive in their declarations of war against Google in the search space and beyond. To see Google publicly fight over this and keep picking at the issue via Twitter and blogs is a bit startling and very unlike the Mountain View giant. It could be read as Google acknowledging Bing more so than ever before and trying to take them out at the knees.

So, what is the advertiser impact?

Search is a consumer first business. In the case of content farms, the motivations of Google are to improve the consumer experience. In the case of bringing to light the potential unlawful duplication, the motivation, it seems, is to shift perception and get consumers thinking that if Bing is just a copy, then why bother. Historically, that has meant little to consumers as they still go between Bing and Yahoo, and those results are now copies, by and large. What matters to consumers is the rapid evolution going on in search results that include multiple media formats, personal social graphs and a richer overall experience that delivers better outcomes and easier decision making. This “one copying another” dust up is not about any of that.

For advertisers, the impact of this dust up is minimal in the short term. Questions could be raised about Bing having enough engineering resources to truly compete, but the areas of focus have been on bigger opportunities than random character combinations as described by Google in this situation. The real impact could happen if Bing saw public perception change and a drop in market share. However, that is highly doubtful as this feud will likely not get so high profile that it reaches the general public’s consciousness.

In the end, we have a renewed shouting match between two of the industry’s leading influencers. If it leads to better innovation and development around experience and ad formats, then everyone will root for more of it. Otherwise, it is Cold War posturing, which makes for a great Tom Clancy-like thriller, but little else of substance.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and published in Instant Insights on ClickZ, Thursday, February 3, 2011. Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss

Previous Post from 2/3/2011:

A note from the editor:

Google and Bing, two titans in the digital world, engaged in a public war of words this week, with Google accusing Bing of copying search results. As Bing increases its market share and Google strives to maintain its dominance in the space, advertisers are wondering what this all means to them. Chris Copeland, CEO of GroupM Search, gives his perspective on the event of the week and boils down the impact for advertisers. You can read Chris’ post at ClickZ.

Neilson placed 2010 U.S. smartphone penetration at 31%. There are over 250,000 apps in the iTunes App Store; over 80,000 apps in the Android Market and a trailing 6,000 apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace – although I’ve seen figures as high as 300,000+, 130,000+ for the Apple App Store and Android Market respectively.Naturally, users tend to find their apps through the various app stores, however, it seems like a natural next step for the search engines to surface an app listing in response to a user search – particularly from a mobile device – when there is an app that delivers the answer that they are looking for (whether they knew that there was ‘an app for that’ or not). While there are some results appearing from the iTunes store – that Apple wisely redirects through to the application itself when clicked through on an iPhone, rather than just taking a user to the online iTunes store page – they do not yet appear in the listing as a ‘click to download’ app, which seems like a fairly logical progression in the personalization of search results. And from the other side, Apple is showing the way (again…) to Windows Phone and Android – in this case for delivering a good app-store user experience from the search results – as currently neither store has any results showing in their search results. If users want to see apps in their search results, the app stores need to make those apps available to crawlers for indexing and, in turn, visibility in the SERPs. When this happens, app-owners need to make sure they are prepared and have delivered optimized assets to their app stores.

My point is this – there are ways to optimize your apps for visibility within their various ‘natural” environments, and developers and brands alike should have been optimizing their app assets for small-screen app-store success up until now – but to future-proof your app-optimization, it would be worth thinking about how to make them rank and how they resolve in the regular search results as well. Time will tell if this potential next step in organic search evolution comes along – will Google only surface Android apps? Will Bing only surface Windows Phone Apps? Will they both only surface apps that don’t reduce search volume? Angry Birds, anyone?

Time will tell on how those SERPs shape up this year, but in the short term, it can’t hurt to be ready.

The Oscars, Google’s search algorithm, the Eurovision Song Contest– they all famously choose the “best” answer to their questions by finding out who recommends whom -or what. The Oscars poll members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) – “the Academy” to its friends – to see who gets the most votes in a series of categories.  Google looks at the number of incoming links into a webpage, and the authority of those pages, to determine the authority of a webpage. The Eurovision Song Contest gives each competing nation several votes of different values that they can cast for anyone other than themselves.  It seems like a democratic system, on the surface;  at least it is if you’re a member of the Academy, own a website, or if you’re on the Eurovision committee for your country. Could you imagine only letting some people vote for your country’s president? It all seems a little elitist to me.  What about your poor huddled masses?  Most are not members of the Academy, don’t have their own website, nor are they living the dream of being part of their country’s Eurovision committee.  I’m thinking a lot more though, are probably members of one social network or another: Facebook (originally an elitist closed eco-system itself), MySpace, LinkedIn, Windows Live, to name just a few. Might there be something there that could  really democratize the web?

Last year, Bing managed to incorporate something that Google has been chasing for a while: true social search – as opposed to just universal search surfacing social content in the search results. Bing’s partnership with Facebook has given them access to the industry-standard social network. A hive of data that can be tapped to give even more personalized search results. If you are looking for a restaurant, and are logged into your Facebook account, then Bing will deliver search results that highlight restaurants that your friends “Like” – a true recommendation from a friend – on top of the algorithmic selections that they deliver. This is a huge step forward for personalization – and is one of the reasons that both Google and Microsoft were chasing a partnership with Facebook – although I don’t think that Bing received the acclaim that they deserve for this innovation.  It’s an interesting -and a positive-system, as there is no “Dislike” button, but as seen with relatively recent developments in Google’s search results, they are starting to consider the sentiment of pages that are linking to other pages to ensure that a page that is linked to with a lot of negative reviews is not gaining a top result, and as such greater exposure and more sales from the SERPs.

The interesting part of this to me, is a question: “What is the next data source?” I realize there are a lot of people busy working on or trying to work out what the next Facebook is, but I’m talking solely from the data perspective: Google needs to find an equivalent to Facebook, which is no easy task. They have made several attempts over the years to foster social networks of various sorts. One that I noticed recently was the Google Profile Pages – an opportunity to have users link through to their social networks, Twitter feeds, YouTube profiles, so that Google can understand what each user is doing and where. Google does not want to be reliant on a third party for their social indicator data if at all possible, and Bing shouldn’t rest on its laurels either. Microsoft has Windows Live, and could integrate a “Like” function – or a grading system if they wanted some more indicative data – fairly easily into the product to start generating their own “peer review data” for personalization purposes.

Either way, there is a potential sea-change in the way that Google, Bing et al are ranking pages – could social peer review be the new link-juice?  It presents an opportunity to ask not only the Academy, web developers, or committee members, but to ask the common person what their take is on a topic, and use that information to make tailored recommendations to their social-network-searcher-friend. Is this the wisdom of trusted crowds?

Can Microsoft capitalize on their lead? Is Google’s brand strong enough to get the data they need to take on the combination of Bing and Facebook? There is a lot to come in this space in 2011 as the search superpowers fight this one out and try to improve their recommendations and personalization.  Bring on the New Year!

Earlier this week, Microsoft and Facebook held a press event to announce a new module coming to Bing. In essence, Bing is now a true social search engine, using your own Facebook social graph to inform and expand your decision-making process. Looking for a new restaurant or a good movie? The new Bing experience will enable you to see your friends’ experiences as part of the searching process.

This, in and of itself, is big news. Search has been an evolving marketplace, but the searchable content has historically been similar from engine to engine. Whether it is Google, Yahoo or now, Bing, the major Web sites — sites like Wikipedia — have always been prominent on every engine. Image and video inclusion as well as that of news feeds may vary by query, but the general data sources have always been whatever could be crawled and indexed. That is certainly not the case, at least for now, with this deal.

But for most marketers, the implications of this have meaning far beyond search. The strength of search has been in its direct-response nature — the ability to search, find, refine and ultimately act in some way. That way has historically been emphasized as purchase, but more and more brands are considering the intent expression as an important part of understanding who people are and what motivates them either into searching or where they go next on their consumer journey.

Contrast that with social media where, what was once a solitary island for friends to connect with friends has been infiltrated by brands wanting some of the benefits of friendship. Twitter and Facebook are leading a charge to convince marketers that the connections made through their social platforms is a crucial piece of the value exchange between consumers and brands.

What started as artists using MySpace to connect with their audience evolved into Twitter as a new-age customer-service vehicle. It became fashionable for brands to have Facebook fan pages and to tweet deals and information out to customers to help them stay informed. Beyond that, location-based services such as Foursquare have gotten into the act and given another layer of connectivity and currency between consumers and brands. Each of these engagements has a consistent value exchange that brands were giving in exchange for very little. Whether a band was trying to hit it big or Comcast was trying to resolve a disgruntled customer, it was the brand doing the heavy lifting. People use Foursquare to check in so their friends know where they are, but they also hope that businesses are willing to exchange that check-in for some discount or freebie.

The announcement of social as defined by Facebook into Bing both changes and amplifies this relationship. If someone is looking for a good restaurant in New York to eat, a query on Bing not only provides what they find to be relevant but also what your friend network has decided worthy of liking. Suddenly all the Yelp reviews in the world seem minimal in a results page if one friend you trust as your groups “foodie” likes a place. It means that every person who visits, interacts or buys from you can be a part of your sales force and marketing efforts. Or they can be that for your competition.

Brands like Zappos, JetBlue and Apple have grown in popularity because of their authenticity. At the ANA conference this week, I saw a tweet from Patrick Harris of Microsoft suggesting that the early themes for advertisers  having success in this climate were “purpose, authenticity, heritage, service through people.” Safe to say the brands I described above adhere to that. But how do small brands with limited resources, and “old” brands, turn the battleship to meet this challenge? The answers aren’t clear, but what is becoming increasingly apparent is that as social and search fuse for consumers, the impetus for change is staring brands in the face. Those that do not provide customers with a sense of belonging, invite them on the journey together, and recognize the importance of “like” and its role going forward, are destined to be dead brands.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and published in MediaPost’s Search Insider , Friday, October 15, 2010. Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss

Financial Implications of the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance

The analysts in our Predictive Insights unit here at GroupM Search have been busy researching the financial implications the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance will have on advertisers in order to help our clients prepare for the upcoming transition.  The study revealed cost-per-click implications and how increased competition will impact CPCs as paid search advertisers move to one platform. Our analysts also identified a window of volatility advertisers will experience post-transition before the marketplace settles.  Below is our press release on the topic; you may also download the white paper for a deeper look into the study.

Advertisers could see a cost-per-click (CPC) increase up to 78 percent above current Bing CPCs as a surge of competitors move to one platform with the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance transition, a study completed by GroupM Search revealed.

Based on the impact two industry milestones had on advertisers – Yahoo’s introduction in 2007 of Panama and Microsoft’s transition in 2009 from MSN Live to Bing, GroupM Search projects a three-week period of volatility post-transition before costs begin to settle. At the campaign level, advertisers can expect an average increase of 64 percent over current Bing CPCs for unbranded keywords and 78-percent for branded keywords during this time. Once the marketplace settles, CPCs on Bing will rest at 13 to 23 percent above current Bing CPCs for unbranded and branded keywords, respectively.

“Any time you interject change into the auction you invite pricing pressure,” said Chris Copeland, chief executive officer of GroupM Search. “In this case, we see historical evidence that suggests regardless of the bid tools and the preparation, a period of short-term volatility will exist.”

The study was completed by GroupM Search’s Predictive Insights unit, a team comprised of econometric statisticians and mathematicians with expertise cultivated in the area of search marketing. GroupM Search looked at current and historical paid search campaign data to estimate cost implications and how long it will take advertisers to return to equilibrium after this shock to the market. The study included campaign data of 12 market-leading clients who have maintained a steady presence on both Yahoo and Microsoft’s search networks dating back to 2007.

The insights from this study are important for advertisers because it allows advanced preparation for what to expect from this transition.

“If three-week volatility and CPC increases can be countered through better understanding of competitive sets, sophistication of those advertisers and what strategies they use today, then this research will have served our client base well,” said Copeland.

One of the most important insights from the study is the understanding of the number of advertisers with paid search campaigns unique to Yahoo that potentially will now be running on the Microsoft adCenter platform. Within the search marketing campaigns analyzed, on average only 27 percent of the advertisers’ competition for branded and unbranded keywords were running on both Yahoo and Bing. GroupM Search projects that advertisers unique to Yahoo moving to adCenter could lead to a 74-percent increase in competition levels on Bing than exist at present.

This increased competition will be the greatest factor for the amplification in paid search costs, the study revealed. In a pay-per-click auction system, such as paid search, the number of competitors matters greatly in the final price of the item because each competitor vies for its desired position.

“The industry has long known the variances of performance between Yahoo and Bing. What we found and what we believe has the biggest material impact for advertisers are the vastly different competitive sets between the two,” said Copeland. “When you put such a large set of new advertisers of varying sophistication into the mix, you are going to see a less stable CPC marketplace.”

On the heels of the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance transition, however, comes the peak of the holiday season when paid search sees its greatest surge in advertisers and CPCs. With this unique timing, the marketplace could experience bidding variables it hasn’t seen before and it could be early 2011 before everything settles and the “new CPC” is realized.

Copeland added, “It is essential for all parties to get this right and we support the decision to go forward ahead of the 2010 holiday season. However, this predicted fluctuation, combined with holiday bidding strategies, means it could be three to four months before the new normal is set.”

This news is disappointing in terms of the opportunities Cashback presents for advertisers and the needed differentiation a program like Cashback brings for an engine to be competitive in the marketplace. On the heels of Yahoo’s end of the Paid Inclusion program at the start of 2010, this is now two key variants in the marketplace gone from challengers to Google.

Cashback was introduced as a differentiator for Bing when it launched and took significant work on the part of their advertisers and agency partners to implement. Advertisers who invested in IT developments to support site integration for Cashback’s premium program will surely feel a sense of wasted long-term opportunity. Ultimately, this program felt partial baked upon launch, and with significant changes to the Bing focus and leadership, it is safe to say it never released its full potential and thus went the way of many “differentiating” products brought to the search market.

Products of this nature seem caught in a fatal cycle – brought to market with great effort to get buy in and heralded as a staple in differentiating factors. They are then supported by significant investments in time and resources by advertisers and agency partners, only to be pulled from the marketplace. What’s most disappointing is when these decisions are made without conversations along the way with key parties – leading advertisers, agencies, partner sites, etc. – to discuss what is or isn’t happening with the program and address how to combat a challenge when a product, like Cashback, falls short of meeting objectives.

So what are the implications? This decision by Microsoft raises important questions:

What will happen to cost-per-click and click-through-rates?
Close attention will be paid to CPCs and CTRs when Cashback comes to an end. When the program was announced, paired also with the aggressive nature of the program for eBay, CPCs on Bing increased. The impact on CPCs and CTRs should be monitored and, after a year’s time, also assessed to determine if they will adjust or whether the impact of the Yahoo/Bing Search Alliance will show little or no savings.

Will audience size decrease?
Cashback was designed as a tool to get users interacting with the engine. What happens with those adopters will be critical for Bing and the marketplace. The removal of the program will reveal in the mid-term the true impact Bing has had on consumers at providing value in what they’ve deemed as core: decision making.

What is the impact on campaign stability?
One could argue the elimination of Cashback offers greater stability in managing a search program as we face the imminent Yahoo/Bing Search Alliance with two engines housing drastically diverse environments. Previously, we were informed Cashback would remain on Bing but would not be offered on Yahoo post-Alliance. While Microsoft contends that Yahoo is not applying pressure to end the Cashback program, they do note that it would be difficult from a technical perspective to maintain the program in a unified marketplace with a common technology structure. That said, Yahoo and Bing have an essential task ahead of them to develop reliable programs and tools that mutually benefit their growth in share and deliver value for their advertisers.

There is discussion around the development of a similar program to incent users after the Search Alliance is complete. This is a tough proposition. While Microsoft has significant depth of resources and the potential to be successful in this endeavor, many search players, such as iWon, have tried unsuccessfully to devise incentive-based programs and increase share. The challenge Microsoft now faces with Bing, however, is bigger than an incentive program to attract users and advertisers. It is creating differentiation and product advancement that is critical for the industry and necessary to continue increasing market share.  Our disappointment with the lack of ongoing communication around Cashback heightens our interest in greater scrutiny when evaluating future opportunities and creates an expectation for greater communication in regards to the overall health of a program.

While the decision to end the program may have come down to the financial support model created by Microsoft, one cannot help but wonder if the decision was made premature to trying to allow this program to stand on its own. When Microsoft began this program they were adamant this was a “rabbit hole” they didn’t feel Google could or would chase them down; yet, here we find ourselves with clear indication as to why that is. While Bing is showing nice gains (up 3.4% market share since launch), this move leaves their core product more and more Google like; and that lack of differentiation is not a positive for Bing or the marketplace at large.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them — Shakespeare, “Twelfth Night”

I’ve spent most of the last month engaged in a knowledge quest to better anticipate the direction major players in search and social media are planning to take in the coming 12 months. The tour kicked off in Redmond, Wash. with Microsoft and concluded last week with a visit by Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz to discuss the current and future state of Yahoo with the GroupM Search leadership. It’s probably no accident that the bookends of this process are two players in the space who are banking on greatness coming from the combined power they bring to the marketplace.

What was clear to me after these discussions is that these companies have a shared plan on the path forward, as well as divergent objectives and strategies for their own properties. What’s not as clear is whether these companies are setting out to achieve greatness or rather hoping that they can bottle the lightning and have it thrust upon them.

The Yahoo/Microsoft deal moves the market needle up for Microsoft from its own level. That helps relevancy from an algorithm point of view, but what about allowing advertisers to improve relevancy directly?

For years I’ve howled at the moon over third-party ad serving in search. If the end goal of relevancy is to give users the best connection to their expressed intent, then allowing advertisers to stop advertising when people don’t click on them time after time, or switching up creative based on inactivity on the brand listing would be an improvement, right? We continue to gravitate toward a single platform that will ultimately allow advertisers to buy search and display. So, if you are Microsoft, why not provide more intelligent and valuable solutions for advertisers in this area?

That being said, there’s one piece of this deal that I continue to hear little about. Today, advertisers buy two distinct marketplaces. At the conclusion of this deal, advertisers will suddenly buy Yahoo and Bing as one: same bid, same creative, single view of keyword-level reporting. Most advertisers know that these marketplaces behave quite differently. A recently released SEMPO study of the search industry detailed that barely 50% of all advertisers surveyed are buying Yahoo, and fewer still buy Bing; therefore, you need to simplify and engage the masses better. Still, when you attempt to increase the supply of advertisers and force the existing ones to blend their bidding, the likely outcome is a cost increase, which threatens to pale the impact experienced today when you buy a single answer via Google.

Compounding this is the present decision of Yahoo not to migrate Bing Cashback into their offering. One of the few areas where Bing has really distinguished itself in year one is in this area. Advertisers who today message and bid based on their variable Cashback offers now must do so knowing that a vastly larger portion of the market share will not be afforded the benefit of the listing; and the price value being made is done without full value being returned from Yahoo. I sense a desire to study and get deeper on this from Yahoo, but a program that comes to market without this is a hole in the results page.

Speaking of which, nothing surprised me more than the statement from Yahoo that the Bing algo and paid content represents only two of 24 elements that go into creating a results page. Yahoo has kept and continues to work around the fringe on innovation to the format and construction of this experience.

What will be interesting is to see where and how Yahoo tries to create value for its audience to stem the tide of market share losses seen in the last few months. Spend any time with Yahoo at a high level and you’ll find a strong commitment to a unique experience around search, including beyond just what gets ported over from Bing. This is crucial for market share growth.

More importantly long term than giving up search technology for Yahoo is its decision to get away from toolbar distribution deals. These deals have dramatic sway over search share and Microsoft is more than willing to buy ahead of organic growth. For Yahoo to keep its base it has to evolve, and there are signs, mostly verbal at this stage, of doing that.

On both sides of the fence, Yahoo and Microsoft have much to gain, and lose, in the coming months. Advertisers have warranted concerns about technology and transitions and the players have to keep pace with Google while trying to be integrated.

But those are table stakes for this game. People like to suggest that search is in its early innings; and while that may be true, this is no excuse not to compete from the outset. If the goal is to be in the game and to be viable as another choice, then the industry is about to settle for good. This is no time or place for the faint of heart — and fortunately for Yahoo, that’s not a phrase you’d ever associate with Bartz. Harry Gray, former chairman of Mott Corp, once said, “No one ever achieved greatness by playing it safe.” Now is your time, Yahoo and Microsoft. Be bold, be great.

SearchFuel and GroupM Search are doing a blitz giveaway today on Twitter, giving four (4) people a free VIP pass to MediaPost’s OMMA Mobile, a one-day event where advertisers and industry leaders come together to talk all things mobile marketing. This pass covers your registration for the event, plus the breakfast and lunch on-site.

But you have to act quickly! OMMA Mobile is tomorrow, Thursday, October 29 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza from 8am til 5:30 or so.

For your chance for a free pass, follow these three simple steps by 3pm CST today:

1. Send a Reply or Direct Message (DM) to @SearchFuel on Twitter
2. Tell us you want to go to OMMA Mobile
   
3. Tell us your company name (Sorry, I do need this. Not for marketing purposes – but when we got these passes I had to agree they’d be used for brand advertisers only, so I need to keep my promise.)
   

We’ll draw 4 names from all of the Tweeps who DM us and I’ll DM you back by 3:30pm CST if you’ve won a pass. From there we’ll connect by email or phone to get you registered.

So why should you see and be seen at OMMA Mobile? For starters, it’s a gathering of more than 200 advertisers and mobile marketing experts which makes for a great day of networking and conversation about where the industry is going. GroupM Search is kicking off the day by hosting the breakfast session, featuring a round table discussion with Google, Microsoft, Joule, Outrider and JumpTap about current challenges and opportunities facing the mobile marketplace today. The day unfolds from there as MediaPost’s mobile columnist Steve Smith emcees the event, and a handful of industry leaders take the stage, including a keynote address by John Zehr, SVP and GM of ESPN Mobile. Other speakers and panelists include Kodak, Paramount, the AP and the Weather Channel, as well as  Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and many more panelists from across multiple areas of mobile expertise.

You can check out the full agenda here.

SO GET TO IT! Pull up your favorite Twitter client and send us a tweet to enter to win your pass to OMMA Mobile. See you in LA.

Every summer, millions of people take time off for the annual family vacation. Families take to planes, trains and automobiles in search of an escape from their day-to-day grind. Yet, during these tough economic times, many families have chosen convenience over destination. Fewer families headed to Disney’s theme parks and more headed to their closest lake or amusement park. Likewise, high-end vacations such as international travel and cruises all saw declines during the past twelve months.

People chose convenience because it offered something desirable, a lower cost. But in doing so, they also gave up specific amenities and luxuries that they would expect from going to a specific destination. When you choose convenience over destination in travel, you are making a swap of cost not only in locale, but also in food, entertainment and lodging.

At some point during 2010, this reality will come to search marketing in the form of the Bing-Yahoo merger. In recent discussions with the principals, it has never been clearer that their consumer marketing strategies could not be more divergent. Microsoft is squarely aiming to be in a fight with Google as a destination people turn to for relevant information to any problem they find a search engine beneficial to solving. Meanwhile, Yahoo is going back to its roots in a sense, focusing on the convergence of offering and convenience of searching while embedded within the Yahoo portal and network of properties.

Frankly, both approaches fit the companies and their aspirations for differentiation and market capture. Yahoo plans to win by growing the base and subsequently seeing more of that base use search while on site. Microsoft wants to innovate to become a natural alternative that expands cross platforms.

What’s clear is that while someone can choose convenience or destination at any given time, it’s impossible to be in two places at once. And once they’ve made their decision, people want to be communicated with in a relevant means to their needs.

Which brings us to the rub in the proposed Yahoo-Microsoft deal. In order to gain scale, further innovation and streamline support (all of which are good things), Bing will provide a single platform across both partners. In doing this an advertiser will place a single buy across both networks with usage of a single creative at a single price. Currently, we find Bing to be a better performer than Yahoo, due in part to lower CPCs from less competition and a more targeted audience as it tends to be more of a destination. In the future, we’ll buy Bing based less on its own attributes and more so on the performance from Yahoo due its greater market share.

Last year, I took my kids to Disney World for a week. This year, we went to Wisconsin Dells (site of my wife’s family trips for many years when she was a child). For many, Disney is a destination, not a convenience; while Wisconsin Dells is almost reversed in terms of those who go for the convenience versus the destination. Targeting the audience of both is a different proposition. At Disney, we had breakfast with Cinderella and the other princesses. In Wisconsin, it was at Mr. Pancake. In the search world, my query for breakfast would carry very distinct and different expectations if I was going to a destination versus doing a search for convenience.

Given the technology advancements forthcoming in search and required of Microsoft as part of the Bing-Yahoo deal, it is my hope that this issue will not be overlooked. Bing has started to gain traction by being more relevant, and in some cases, more timely in its solution. To not give advertisers a better way to target between Yahoo, an engine of convenience, and Bing, a destination, would be short-sighted.

Search is a business of relevancy. It is the marriage of relevant content with consumer intent. When consumer intent is a mixture of audiences seeking convenience and precise desired solutions, then the ability to be relevant is compromised and value is minimized.