January 21, 2009 by Jay Smith
Recently it was announced that Yahoo would be wrapping up its Content Match service in Germany, the UK and other non US locations. The last chance for users in these territories to bid on ads will be the last day of March, after that it’s over. This change will mean a much smaller inventory for Yahoo to put in their yahoo Publisher Network.
In an email to its users Yahoo explained themselves thus,
“The decision to close Content Match underlines our commitment to focus on our Sponsored Search and Display business and to simplify our solutions to deliver a high ROI for our advertisers.”
This is clearly evidence of how bad things are at Yahoo, but we’ve known that for months. More urgent for the consumer is the fact that this move will drastically weaken the Yahoo Publisher Network, the closest thing to an Adsense competitor there is. What’s more, if this is the first step of a move to roll out this initiative across the company, then Yahoo are about to basically hand Google ownership of online contextual advertising.
It doesn’t take a degree in economics to know that monopolies are bad for customers, since a lack of competition removes the incentive to provide good customer service and low prices. Come on Yahoo, pull yourself together!
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