Well I hope that everyone had a good Easter, though to me it’s already seeming as distant as last payday by the time you reach the middle of the month. Interesting post today in New Media Age, Yahoo! are apparently going to be shutting their network off to the smaller advertisers, effectively ceasing to compete wih Google for the budgets of long tail merchants.

As argued previously, Google has created a near monopolistic platform for supplying and delivering ads to the long tail (see my previous pearls of wisdom here.) Yahoo’s decision (and more on that here,) appears to mean that they will continue to service the niche publishers, but the smaller advertisers will be left with one fewer route to market.

That the long tail is important is now something that marketeers appear to have learnt by rote. An effective solution though for reaching and servicing the genuine niches out there appears to demand a level of automation and resource not open to all. Cutting out the smaller advertisers is very likely going to result in more specific niche sites losing out on the best advertiser matches.

Despite all the talk of fragmentation of the market, to me that it is taking on a new level of conformity, only now it isn’t about the content, but how the ads are delivered to that content or user. I feel that we are seeing the growth of the Mass Delivery Platforms, where the fat delivery platforms will act as the medium between advertisers and publishers, large, small and tiny. Yahoo’s decision I feel is another step away from the front rank of networks.

Anyway more of that anon, and let’s get back to enjoying the run up to the election.

Rob, Blogger, On-e