Now that Advolution has officially launched, some quick background on where it came from...
We have been pondering some of the concepts behind Advolution for several years now, but it was just recently that John Battelle's book ("The Search") and Jakob Nielson's article ("Search Engines as Leeches on the Web") crystallized everything.
Namely, if you were to go about creating a new type of search engine capable of competing with Google, how would you go about doing so?
First was the recognition that nearly all of Google's revenue comes from people clicking on ads.
That alone is a clear indication that a very large number of people perceive those ads to be more relevant than all of the other stuff on the page.
The question then was why the ads are more relevant, and thus a quick detour as to why pay-per-click ads are so effective that advertisers willing pay for them and searchers willing click on them...
There are essentially three components to pay-per-click ads:
1. They are associated with specific search terms
2. They are ranked in bid order
3. They are only paid for when clicked upon
The first two points make the ads relevant.
The third point seems like a good deal for advertisers until you reflect that it is because of just the first two points that the ads work so well and this third point only results in them having to keep on paying and paying and paying and paying and paying and paying... In the end, it pretty much only benefits the search engines that sell the pay-per-click ads (which is why everyone and their brother is now trying to create pay-per-click ad networks!)
So then it came down to how could you have the goodness of the first two points without bothering with the third - and that is how the advertiser model of Advolution arose - where an advertiser needs to only pay once to have their listing associated with a search term (but always has the option of adding to that bid to maintain or move up in the rankings for that search term and/or to change the search term that the bid is associated with).
The additional bonus is that the ever growing problem of competitor click fraud is thereby completely eliminated.
As an advertiser, would you prefer to pay just once or to keep paying and paying...? Would you prefer a system that has a zero possibility of click fraud or one where you could never be sure whether or not your competitors are clicking on your ads to deplete your pay-per-click ad budget?
That solves the first half of the challenge.
Second was the recognition that Google is able to take such a huge surplus of revenue from advertisers because of the size of their audience - which makes it more convenient to advertise there than at a collection of many smaller sites.
Our answer to that is the Advolution Affiliate Program - where anyone and everyone can profit by sending traffic to Advolution.
Since it is not contextual pay-per-click ads, anyone can put up affiliate links and search boxes anywhere they want - including alongside AdSense (so they do not need to make a choice between the two.)
Also, since it is not a pay-per-click network, it completely avoids publisher click fraud, once again making this method more beneficial to advertisers.
And instead of making pennies per click like they do with AdSense, publishers have the potential of making significantly more with the Advolution Affiliate Program.
Even with a relatively small affiliate network, the traffic to and from Advolution should prove to be well worth advertisers giving it a try - especially since, for a limited time, they will receive credit for 5 times whatever they actually bid for a listing (or they can wait until this 5X special is over and then have to pay full price to try to catch up with their competitors who did take advantage of this head start...)
The above is a very quick and simple intro. There is still much more to all of this, but 'nuff for now... please stay tuned for more!
UPDATE
We were honored to have John Battelle link to this post, so here are some updates in response to comments left by his readers (thanks!)
As to the Advolution name, there are a few reasons for it, including:
1. Clarity of message to attract the right searchers for our advertisers.
Much like Southwest Airlines is very clear about what they do and what they don't do - and are thus able to make their preferred target audience very happy while not having to worry about pleasing everyone else...
Advolution is not meant to appeal to the people who never click on ads at Google or Yahoo, but rather to those people who recognize that, for many searches, things such as the paid listings in the Yellow Pages phone directory can be a rather valuable resource.
In other words, search engines have very different ad conversion rates (see the 2/15/06 WebSideStory press release for more about this) - and we aim to be crystal clear what we are all about so as to attract the best searchers for our advertisers.
2. A purposely non-conventional name to draw attention to the underlying cause.
Advolution is all about changing the underlying economics of search engine marketing back in favor of the advertiser (and searcher and publisher!)
Pay-per-click is an incredibly lucrative business for search engines - which is why everyone and their brother (except for us) is trying to get into the game.
We are instead changing the rules to keep the goodness of why pay-per-click works (ads attached to search results, sorted by bid order) without having the advertiser have to keep paying and paying and paying and paying and paying ("the benefits of pay-per-click, without the actual pay-per-click")
3. A purposely non-conventional name to draw attention to the affiliate program.
We are not aiming for Advolution to necessarily be a destination search engine for the bulk of searchers who will be using the results.
Rather, by making it very lucrative (50% of revenue) for affiliate partners to send traffic to us, we are anticipating Advolution affiliate search boxes and links to become fairly prevalent around the net.
This is an Advolution of a different sort - one where publishers can lessen their dependence on contextual ad programs like AdSense by also offering the Advolution Affiliate Program alongside.
This is also a revolution of sorts for affiliate programs - where now any word on your site can easily become an affiliate program by making it an affiliate link to the Advolution search results for that term...
4. The Advolution is only just beginning...
While the Advolution site is an end in itself, it is also only a first step - think AdWords or Overture (Yahoo's pay-per-click division that is the "ad engine" for the rest of its services) - of something bigger - think Google or Yahoo...
Also, when you see a search engine that does not have "ad" in its name, but is powered by the Advolution ad engine, note that it does not necessarily need to play by the exact same rules as do Advolution listings (which are sorted by bid order with ties decided in favor of the older listing), but can also have some alternate/additional algorithmic goodness in the sorting of results. In that way we can give advertisers exactly what they sign up for on Advolution PLUS the added bonus of also appearing on another search engine that has more of a "searcher-friendly" name and user experience.
There is still much more to all of this, but, once again, 'nuff for now... please stay tuned for more!
