One more giant advertising partnership was announced today, and this could be one of the biggest yet. EBay has announced that Google will serve up text ads on its sites outside the US. The sum was undisclosed, but must be gargantuan. Half of eBay buyers are reported to live outside the US and the international part of the business is growing twice as fast as eBay in the US. EBay said that the deal wouldn’t substantially impact their bottom line in either of the next two years, so Google payments may depend on conditions that will be evaluated after that time. Yahoo! announced an agreement to provide ads on the US site in May.
EBay’s traffic trails closely behind MySpace’s, but serves an audience intending to spend money and with a more clear, stable relationship than the fickle teenage cool factor driving MySpace. MySpace got a guaranteed $900 million in its deal with Google.
This could have been a major coup for Yahoo! or Microsoft, but as it stands it’s unsurprising that Google landed the deal. Google is willing to go to great lengths to land big advertising deals lately, such as to reportedly giving 90% or more of total revenue to select partners like AOL and Ask and guaranteeing nearly $1 billion to Myspace. Google’s advertising formula is also believed to be the most lucrative, as it takes customer clicks into account. Yahoo! is rumored to be working on similar functionality but lost the chance to extend it’s US advertising agreement with eBay. The Google agreement makes deals like Microsoft’s with Facebook last week look puny, though that deal is said to have required very little negotiation.
When eBay formed an agreement with Yahoo! in May to serve the advertisements on the domestic site, analysts said that both companies were running scared from Google, that one company should buy part of the other and that the partnership was expected to expand over time. In that deal, Yahoo! agree to heavily promote PayPal throughout Yahoo! properties. In this week’s deal with Google, it looks like Google doing the pushing – eBay paid a lot of money for Skype but will integrate the tiny Google Talk as well into the site.
Yahoo! was supposed to integrate Skype as a part of the May deal, but eBay’s Meg Whitman told the New York Times that working with Google on VOIP made more sense. It probably made sense because Google demanded it and had the money to back up their demands. EBay spent more than two billion dollars for Skype but has failed to integrate it beyond a simple click to call inside auctions – something Google Talk could probably have done as part of a deal like this for far less money than the acquisition.
As it is both services will be available for click to call, Skype will offer the Google Toolbar for download with a Skype button and the companies say they are exploring interoperability between the two systems, at least for IM and presence.
Googles doin everything these days. Its not suprising that theyd strike a deal with EBay. heh googles even paying people to use them. Sooner or later google will be ubiquitous.
Google has announced that it’s planning to buy Pluto since it’s no longer a planet. They planned to put Text Ads on the former planet.
Yawn..
Techcrunch becoming boring..
ubieuitous = being everywhere.
I used to be big fan of google.But lately there are so many lousy products that they have released, they are not “wow” any more. But the competetion should really work hard on google adsense products.
When it comes to the crunch deals, Google really leaves everyone behind. However it would really be common knowledge that Google must have guaranteed a hell lot of cash to ebay to score this deal.
It’s funny how ebay is showing ads on their listings – isn’t charging people for the ad and the commission enough?
guess tomorrows headlines at techcrunch .
Goog did this and goog employess did that .
we come here to hear / read new innovative ideas and startup reviews and not to a site which promotes with Goog biased news
“promotes with Goog biased news” that’s pretty funny considering how often we get accused of having an anti-google bias. both these last two stories are big ones but rest assured that startups are the lifeblood of TC and we know it. thanks for your support.
LOL – seems you can’t win guys – no matter who you praise or condemn
Microsoft and Yahoo!’s shareholders must be wondering what their respective companies are doing.. Google looks to have stolen a march on both of them in this space.
Don’t they have a similar deal with Yahoo?
The yahoo announcement made a big splash a month or so ago. They are alo hiring product managers to work on the yahoo partnership.
Yahoo and Microsoft’s shareholders? What about Ebay’s shareholders? I bet Ebay’s shareholders are scratching their heads over this one. Didn’t the company justify the Skype acquisition last year by claiming click to call/PPCall would open up new revenue potential? $2.6 billion invested and you still need to partner (and split the profits) with Google to make it all work?
One day we will all find out what the deal is on Skype. It sure aint “so people could call the sellers to chat with them”.
eBay buying Skype falls into the same class as AOL merging with TimeWarner (although at a much smaller scale) it makes absolutely no f’n sense… and this GTalk deal makes it even more apparent.
Google does it again. To be successful, we have to do business with those who are successful. A large part of Goggle’s success is they have relentlessly kept on innovating.
WELCOME TO WEB 2.0.
WHAT WILL YOU INVENT?
It’s interesting to see this, considering that eBay blocked GBuy (or whatever it was called) from being used on eBay, to drive people to PayPal. I wonder if opening that back up is something Google is looking at?
It is worth noting that both Skype and “click-to-call” got the prominent mention in this deal. It seems a natural exention of the CPC model.
The Question no-one has asked sofar….
The more interesting question, no one has been asking sofar is, does this advertising deal also cover Ebay’s international properties such as Kijiji, Gumtree, LoQuo, Marktplaats.nl and others?
As you might remember, Ebay has acquired Free Classifieds Players such as … (read the rest of my posting @: http://www.patr...h/blog/business
eBay’s playing an interesting game – dancing a fine line between two of the webs biggest rivals.
jonny
i have some advertising with google. but not making a dime. i would to try ebay international. i might have better luck. thanks