They may have sold their soul to the devil already, but we don’t need to.

in the past few weeks (months), comScore has also been reporting the following:
-Google is still #1 in Search
-Yahoo is losing ground in “click-thrus” of display ads with MySpace taking the #1 spot

So, if this whole Starting Pointst theory revolves around Search and Ads, then recent trends in both areas are definitely not in Y!’s favor.

Both Google and MySpace are likely considered to be Starting Points by a good chunk of people (myself included). So essentially this research benefits these other Starting Points too, especially with trends favoring them.

Can you still then say Yahoo is being biased and self-serving when they just handed over a share of the pie to their fiercest competitors?

But as you point out, read something, research something, or even perhaps talk with someone, increase your network blah blah…these are examples of need-states that trigger your going online.

And the Starting Points a person has revolves around those need-states and keeps satisfying those need states. This consistent satisfaction then encourages you to keep coming back to these Starting Points. And the cycle goes on… (Maslow Needs Hierarchy theory anyone?)

Mark – you need to further flesh out the story you heard from that conference.

btw the guy in the picture looks like Paul Oakenfold http://www.dono...ulOakenfold.jpg

I find it hard to believe too – I would think that the only ads that would possibly make sense on the “launch site” are those suited for impulsive buys (perhaps pizza delivery or something like that).

Not that I often click on ads anyway…

…

It still serves a good purpose though. Just don’t drink the kool-aid .

I find it hard to believe that, let’s say a person looking for camera reviews, is 13 percent more engaged by ads on a search engine than those within their destination review site. In fact the whole idea of a launch site having more engaging ads than a destination site, seems somewhat ridiculous.

Not that this report is anyway biased of course…..

It would be interesting to find if users who visit more sites are good (i.e valuable) users or not.

Just as much as you gotta love these unbiased, well thought out, well constructed Techcrunch posts.

I wonder if Google had done this same study, would the Techcrunch headline read “Google is the best buy for advertisers as the leading starting point of the web (Comscore verified)”?