In a bid to catch Google in search advertising, Yahoo unveiled portions of its long awaited platform at the Search Engine Strategies convention in San Jose today.  There doesn’t appear to be any earth shattering features at first glance, just "me too" features in line with what Google already provides such as targeting geographic areas and creating budgets for their campaigns.  The one glaring difference is the abolishment of an auction style bidding system in which companies bid for placement in the search engines.  Some business are already complaining because of the lack of transparency.  In the existing Yahoo system (as well as Google), customers could bid just one cent more to appear higher in the search engines.  Not knowing what others are paying for keywords takes this advantage away, potentially creating more revenue for Yahoo.  However, the lack of transparency may drive advertisers away.  We shall see.  Yahoo’s new system is set to launch in the 4th quarter or in the first quarter 2007.  Given, the long delays already, I’d put my money on the first quarter at the earliest. 

Here’s a link to the full Red Herring article

Ebay (EBAY) announced yesterday that they would begin rolling out a contextual advertising system of their own called eBay AdContext, but would differ from Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) in that ads would link directly to auction goods rather than serving a generic advertising network.  Still, it’s just one more competitor that may take away publisher ad space and ultimately clicks from the big gorilla Google.  With both Yahoo and Microsoft set to roll out their own competing platform for publishers, Google should be concerned.  The competition can only be good for publishers.  While eBay has said that the service will rather compliment Google Adsense and could be run side by side, it will be interesting to see if Google will allow eBay ads to run on the same page.  Currently Google does not allow contextual advertising (ads displayed based on keywords of the page) from other companies to run on the same page.  This rigidity along with notoriously poor customer support may have publishers increasingly turning to alternatives over the next year.

 

Here’s the Reuters news story

Upon additional research, some additional info to consider:

1. There is already a system in place for publishers to display eBay auction items through contextual advertising that is independent of eBay.  One such program, fyiAds launched just a couple of weeks ago (see an example of an ad at the top of the page.

2. Like fyiAds, eBay’s system is CPA, where publisher’s only receive payment through commission on a sale of an item, rather than a cost per click basis (40 – 70% commissions).  Could be lucrative for publishers writing about high ticket items.

3. Amazon is rumored to be working on their own contextual advertising system – everyone wants a piece of Google’s pie!  In the meantime, it looks like an independent program for displaying Amazoon products is available too.

It’s time again for another rousing edition of top breakouts for the past two weeks.  Are you ready?  I know you can hardly wait, so lets get right to it.  The past two weeks saw a nice pick up in breakouts after a dismal last 2 weeks of August in which there were only 7 breakouts in my tracking system.  In fact the first 2 weeks of September saw a nearly 5 fold increase from the previous 2 weeks with a total of 33 breakouts..

Leading the way were big breakouts in Neoware Systems (NWRE) with a gain of 26% and Minas Buenaventura (BVN) with a gain of 18%.

On the downside, Stryker Corp. (SYK) led the way with a 7% loss as it reversed sharply after breaking out and has slipped below support of the 50 day moving average.

In looking at the data for the last 2 weeks, one industry group that stood out was steel.  Four steel related issues broke out in the first 2 weeks of September – Nucor (NUE), Commercial Metals (CMC), Quanex (NX) and Gerdau (GGB).  5 out of the top 10 breakouts listed below are metal related.

Here’s a snapshot of the top 10 breakouts (it should be noted that there were several companies with a total rank of 48 that broke out and the companies that appear in this image aren’t necessarily in better shape than those that don’t appear).  To see a larger, readable image please click here.

Topping the list this time around is Mechel Steel (MTL), the Russian steel provider.  The stock broke out a few days ago, but it was not an impressive breakout.  Just because a stock is highly ranked and looks good technically doesn’t mean it’s an automatic buy.  The volume at the breakout just wasn’t there, so this is a position I would have avoided.

Of the stocks on this list that remain in a buyable range, I think Pioneer Drilling (PDC) looks like a solid play at this point as does Essex Corp (KEYW), but I’d want to see Essex break above 25 convincingly.  It cleared the left side of a cup formation without forming a handle last week, but it appears it will form a high handle from here (so I’ll be adjusting the pivot in the database to reflect this).  Anyway, here’s a chart of Pioneer Drilling… it broke out of a range between 14 and 17 this week to all time highs and buy volume is good.  In fact, the buy volume vs. the sell volume has been very good over the past couple months after carving out that funky looking base.  That ugly base took the stock out of consideration for me a few months ago, but the action since then has been quite good.  An opportunity worth considering.

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