Is there another paid placement player?

• Jul. 8, 2003

Sometimes, I like to equate paid search to gambling. Most of us are people who may come to a gambling establishment on vacation with a couple hundred bucks in our pockets, hoping to at least break even and have some fun doing it.  So we pick our poison, whether it's cards, craps or slots, and settle in for the long haul.  Then some high roller comes in and sits beside you. You know there's no way you can win against his virtually unlimited pile of cash, but you try anyways. You win some, but you end up losing most, because he has more money.

Paying for ads is similar in that the company with the most money can usually pay more for top placement.  Either you increase your budget or you hope for something in the top five listings.  There's a similar thing happening with paid placement providers as well.

We all know about the rivalry between Google and Overture for world domination in the paid search market. Both have a form of pay per click product and both have a form of contextual based advertising available as well.  There's even LookSmart out there with a pretty decent showing within this market.

One other name which I'm seeing a lot of lately is Sprinks, a division of About.com. They, too, offer a pay for placement advertising program which appears to be gaining some momentum in the search world.  Sprinks already delivers contextual ads to websites like Forbes.com, CBS Marketwatch, and America Online properties Netscape and CompuServe.  Today they announced a deal for contextual ads with a slightly larger property - MSNBC.com.

Unlike Google and Overture, Sprinks does not scan the content of the page to determine the appropriate ad.  They map the content page to their catalog of over 1,000 categories.  Sprinks claims this approach yields more relevant ads.

So, if you want to increase your exposure in the paid search world, but don't feel you can compete with the big guys, why not take a look at Sprinks?

Rob Sullivan
Production Supervisor
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Optimization
Specialists