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July 31, 2008
 If you are familiar with the background of Atlas Search you may view the following change as inevitable with any acquisition or in this case, a triumvirate of acquisitions:
- Atlas acquires GoToast, brands as Atlas OnePoint, later rebrands as Atlas Search, and then again as Atlas Solutions;
- Microsoft acquires aQuantive, parent co of atlas;
- Domainer acquires acquantive.com, misspelled URL for parent co
and so on and so forth
Important News Regarding Credit Card Processing
Dear Atlas Search User,
We wanted to let you know that we will be discontinuing the credit card payment option for Atlas Search effective September 1, 2008.
This policy change reflects an evolution in the market for search marketing services, and represents a decision to align the Atlas Search product with the needs of large enterprise users. Atlas believes that search marketing will continue to be a vital and effective channel for advertisers as well as an essential element of the Atlas Advertiser Suite.
For those clients currently using the credit card payment option, your business remains important to us, and we hope you will continue to work with Atlas Search. Given the significance of this change in policy, we would like to invite you to transition to our monthly invoicing plan, which will be the default billing plan for all users as of September 1, 2008. You will be able to enjoy all the existing benefits of the Atlas Search toolset - you'll simply be sent a monthly invoice based on your product usage, with a minimum monthly fee of $750.00. Your Atlas Search representative will be able to assist you with this transition and answer any questions you may have.
For those clients who choose not to transition to the monthly invoicing plan, we would like to invite you to continue to use Atlas Search free of charge through the end of October, 2008. As of November 1, 2008, this option will also close and Atlas Search will be available to clients only on the monthly invoice plan.
Note that the final credit card billing date will be August 16, 2008. Charges on this date will relate only to billing cycles with a start date between August 1 and August 15; any client who does not have a billing cycle with a start date in that date range will not be charged for their August/ September billing cycle. No clients will be charged for October.
While it may be disappointing to see the credit card option go away, Microsoft and the Atlas team remain committed to serving the needs of search advertisers. We will continue to add new features and enhancements to Atlas Search throughout the year, and hope to continue to work with you to maximize your search marketing potential.
If you have any questions, please contact your Atlas Search representative at SearchCS@Microsoft.com or 1-800-416-8389.
Best regards,
The Atlas Search Team
ymarketing was one of the first (100?) customers to use Atlas Search way back in the early adopter year, 2001, for Search Engine Marketing Campaign and Bid Management, literally building a business on what was at the time, a cutting edge technology. On a side note, I also personally contributed to the growth and evolution of the atlas search product by recommending specific management rules and enhancements over the years ('shooting holes' in the app as some may say).
With this new model and min price point of $750 per month, it will become cost-prohibitive for many in the self-service [read long tail] market to continue using this service. The good news, on our end, is we strategically migrated all of our clients and internal process to Omniture at the beginning of the year which will officially be more a cost effective and true enterprise solution; atlas search has fallen very hard downhill since the first round of acquisitions back in '03.
I wish you the best of luck to you, atlas!
-The MADD Man PS: This was my first attempt at creating a blog post using MS Word and you see the formatting outcome. :(.
Labels: atlas, atlas-search, microsoft-advertising
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posted by Ryan Lash @ 7/31/2008 11:26:00 PM
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July 23, 2008
I received the following notification today which is fairly big news related to Yahoo! outsourcing their Search Marketing to Google:
Dear Current or Prospective Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador:
The Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador program was specifically developed to help marketers drive sales leads to their clients. For the last four years, Yahoo! has made an effort to enhance the program to provide the greatest added value to our users. After a thorough evaluation of the program, we have decided to discontinue the program.
The Ambassador Program, except for the limited use of the Ambassador Logo as noted below, shall be terminated as of September 30, 2008.
For Prospective Ambassadors
Yahoo! stopped accepting new registrations to be an Ambassador on April 29, 2008. Ambassadors with pending certification have until July 31, 2008 to qualify to become an Ambassador.
If you have registered but not yet obtained certification to be an Ambassador, you have until July 31, 2008 to complete the training and take the test to become eligible to be an Ambassador. Once certified, landing pages will be delivered to new Ambassadors no later than August 31, 2008.
For Current Ambassadors and Prospective Ambassadors Who Become Certified
Ambassador commissions will no longer be earned or paid for any Managed Advertiser Account created on or after July 31, 2008. No Ambassador commission will be earned by an Ambassador or paid by us for any Managed Advertiser Account created on or after July 31, 2008. All Ambassadors that are due payment of an Ambassador commission will be forwarded such payment no later than September 30, 2008.
The Ambassador Logo may Still be Used
Ambassadors may continue to use the logo of the Ambassador Program on their web sites only to exhibit their designation as an Ambassador by Yahoo!. However, all other sales, marketing and promotions relating to the Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador Program must cease effective July 31, 2008.
New Program Terms reflecting the above changes are set forth at
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/sps/start/overview_ambassador_directory.html, or at such other location as we may designate.
We thank you for your support, dedication and participation in the Ambassador Program, and for your business with Yahoo! Search Marketing. For further information on these changes, please contact us at ambassadors-ysm@yahoo-inc.com.
Sincerely,
Your Partners at Yahoo! Search Marketing
 This is just one of a series of steps Yahoo! is taking to transition their core, outsourcing it to Google; ironically, the same company they helped establish as the world's largest most powerful brand by, once again, outsourcing their search exactly 8 years ago but in this case, their natural search engine results. Remember the good ole 'Powered By Google' icon? Who said display, er icon, advertising does not effectively build a brand!
History repeats itself once again, the blue whale is already in the room and there will only be one player in the Search Engine Marketing Business; unfortunately for the good of a competitive marketplace.
-The MADDManLabels: yahoo yahoo-search-marketing click-fraud, yahoo-outsource-google
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posted by Ryan Lash @ 7/23/2008 11:54:00 AM
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July 7, 2008
Allegedly, Google finally learns to crawl Flash. well the folks at ymarketing are putting this to the test and have launched the first, but possibly last ALL flash-based site!
Flash is an SEO's worst nightmare and a faux paux from a best-practices perspective for the following reasons:
1) The major engines could never effectively 'read' the content which means your site will never effectively well rank for it unless you had a high number of external links with a wide variety of different anchor text.
2) Internal links could not be followed which means their anchor text would also not be 'read' making your entire site appear to contain only one page, er in this case a 'swiff' file.
But hey, it's only our natural search rankings...what do we really have to lose :).
-The MADD ManLabels: adobe-flash, flash-seo, google-crawl-flash
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posted by Ryan Lash @ 7/07/2008 08:34:00 PM
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If you are familiar with the background of Atlas Search you may view the following change as inevitable with any acquisition or in this case, a triumvirate of acquisitions:
This is just one of a series of steps Yahoo! is taking to transition their core, outsourcing it to Google; ironically, the same company they helped establish as the world's largest most powerful brand by, once again, outsourcing their search exactly 8 years ago but in this case, their natural search engine results. Remember the good ole 'Powered By Google' icon? Who said display, er icon, advertising does not effectively build a brand!
