Searching For Answers at Ninemsn

Searching For Answers at Ninemsn
Tony Faure leaves in August

COULD the increased popularity of search marketing and pay-per-click advertising be playing a role in the implosion at ninemsn, Australia’s most popular internet portal? The answer is … kind of. Certainly a sense that better opportunities lie elsewhere is a major reason for the resignations of five senior ninemsn execs, including CEO Tony Faure, over the past three months. Clearly online display advertising and the ninemsn model is under pressure as advertising preferences shift toward niche websites, performance advertising networks, Google and Yahoo!

Ninemsn is also losing eyeballs – one report said during April the site had 7.8m unique users, down from 8.2m in March. Ironic that following his resignation Faure cited a 50% increase in ninemsn search revenue (through its agreement with Yahoo!) as evidence that progress is still being made ninemsn, which is a bit rich when you consider how little respect the company has given search over the past few years.

Faure made a keynote speech last November about the future of the internet in which he only mentioned search in passing twice; once in relation to measuring customer satisfaction online (“we should be measuring search engines on the fewest number of page views per consumer because that tells us how well they're doing”), while Google was also referenced as the world’s most valuable media property. However, the reasons for the success of search (consumers like it) weren’t mentioned.

Odd in an address on consumer-driven online trends, though it’s now clear this speech to the Australian Media and Broadcasting Congress was designed to sell the audience on ninemsn instead of informing them of what was actually happening in the market. But you can only fool some of the people some of the time. Now everyone knows the truth - five resignations in three months! Say no more. Search Engine Room: June 11, 2008

 

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