Today I posted a new article at the community home page and suddenly I received a Desktop Alert about tonight's game.  Cards have momentum  Thats crazy!  The Mets just lost their 1st game in the playoffs and they lose momentum? 

So anyway, its Saturday and I was looking at Googles contextual ads for some pretty common words like "instant messaging"  Only a few sponsored results.  Then I went to Overture (Yahoo) and did a similar search.  Clearly there were more unique ads as I searched page to page.

We all know Google gets the lions share of the search nowadays but what does the loss of contextual ads to competitors represent to Google over time?  I say that it will eventually eliminate the PROHIBITIVE click through chicanery going on at Google.  Its a down right ransom.

Some advertisers have complained that Google's contextual ads are too expensive for the results that they deliver and can show up at inappropriate times -- such as a weight-loss ad paired with a story on anorexia. Forbes Online.

We have totally discontinued using Google for advertisement.  It was impossible to "back-out" of their campaigns no matter how well crafted of targeted.  Attending the bi-yearly Google "now we do it this way" college was also becoming very tiresome.

Conversely, our Overture campaigns have brought relevant traffic and at a very very affordable cost.

We are developing an opt-in alert client for delivering highly targeted sponsored results for  leading search firm.  While clearly just another widget, I would predict that over the next few years the companies that can offer the most highly targeted results by ways of various content delivery systems (i.e.  beyond Google search) will be in high demand.

The upside is MORE ALTERNATIVES and less of a monopoly by Google in the search arena.  The downside is that it cannot happen overnight.