The past few weeks have reminded us once again of the massive hype that develops when a revolutionary new product hits the mainstream marketplace. Apple’s iPhone is no exception. The so-called “Jesus Phone” has dominated online and offline news in the past weeks, with one person even attempting to steal a device during a live interview on FOX.

Beyond the hype of the launch itself, there have been an equal number of industry pundits and experts predicting that iPhone will “change the way we think about phones and wireless“. So, in the spirit of bold soothsaying (such as predicting a single product will turn a multi-billion dollar industry on its head), here is one more:

iPhone will change…

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Yahoo CEO Terry Semel steps down from the helm of the search/media giant. Yahoo founder Jerry Yang (otherwise known as “Chief Yahoo”) returns to
head the company for the first time in more than a decade.

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On Monday AdWeek published an article pondering the question - ‘Does Search Get Too Much Credit’. The article discussed the rising popularity of search engine marketing, how it relates to larger branding initiatives, and the tendency of marketers to apply too much credit to the “last click” leading to a sale or conversion.

From the article:

…if you go upstream from (search) clicks, a lot of users have been to the advertiser web site before because they’ve been exposed to other advertising…

This article couldn’t have come at a better time. Search marketing budgets everywhere are expanding and more organizations are devoting resources to the interactive space. It’s nice to see that a leading publication such as Adweek is taking notice, and their commentary on the last click debate sheds
light onto an increasingly complex scenario - who gets the credit for success?

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Back in March, Microsoft announced the release of a limited public beta of their new mobile browsing platform through the Live .com Labs division of the Redmond giant. The application aims to bring the desktop browsing experience to the mobile platform by offering fully-rendered versions of a webpage within the Deep Fish browser.

We were included in the beta release and had a chance to preview the Deep Fish experience on our mobile platforms here at Azul 7. First impressions were, unfortunately, not good.

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In a widely anticipated move to counter Microsoft’s entrance into the on-demand application space, Google and Salesforce have teamed up on a global partnership and announced “Salesforce Group Addition featuring Google AdWords” today.  This jointly developed product will allow a connection between Google AdWords accounts and Salesforce accounts, offering smoother integration and linkage between AdWords and Google accounts.  This first release of a co-developed product is targeted at SMB’s who may already be customers of SalesForce but haven’t hooked AdWords and Salesforce together.

The buzz on the Internet has been speculating that Google and Salesforce would join forces, but many thought it might be more than just a simple integration between SF and AdWords.  Microsoft has been making a strong push into the hosted-apps space with their Live platform, and is expected to move forward with a strategy to offer it’s Dynamics software suite as a hosted application.  This would be a direct competitor to Salesforce.   With Google pushing it’s “Apps” platform, a merger between Google and Salesforce seemed like a natural fit, in part to stave off the looming threat from Microsoft as well as to diversify it’s revenue streams.

First steps in partnerships are often much less glamorous than most would like.  Many were expecting a larger initial engagement between Google and Salesforce right out of the chute and today’s announcement is more evolutionary than revolutionary, but it’s likely to get more intense moving forward.

Salesforce.com, Google Launch SMB Tool via [PCWorld.com]

Which came first - the chicken or the egg…the advertisers or the buyers?

Following in the footsteps of Google, Yahoo has rolled out Quality Pricing for their “Panama” search advertising platform, and is betting that if advertisers jump on their bandwagon, the buyers will soon follow.

The basic premise is the more time advertisers spend in making sure their ads are highly relevant to users’ queries, the more they will be rewarded by receiving higher levels of traffic at cheaper rates. Says Yahoo, “Spend more time creating great ads that generate traffic, and we’ll cut your prices”.

The move by Yahoo comes at a time when their search engine share is a distant second to Google (at least in the US), and Microsoft, Ask, and other 2nd and 3rd tier engines are slowly but surely siphoning away customers and traffic. Part of their strategy to stop/reverse this trend is based on the premise that if advertisers start crafting better campaigns, the searches will be more productive, users will be presented with better search results, and traffic to Yahoo and its other web properties would grow.

In doing so, they’re playing the chicken or the egg game in a space that’s boiling with competition and innovation. All of their eggs (pardon the pun) are in one basket. They’ve turned over the future of their online advertising business to the one group of people that are directly responsible for revenue - the advertisers.

But what incentives to the advertisers have to write better ads if the traffic isn’t there to begin with?

In the not-so-distant past, Yahoo/Overture advertisers could spend as much time optimizing their campaigns as they would engaging in a cat and mouse game of click price inflation. The old Overture platform gave so much information that advertisers could see exactly what their competitors were paying per click for a specific position in the search results. With a watchful eye, savvy advertisers could position their ad campaigns to receive tremendous exposure at a fraction of the cost of a competitor. But for others it was a constant battle to manage exposure and cost.

Then came Panama, and those days were over. Competitive click pricing was out, and cost trends and projections (similar to Google AdWords) were in. Instead of seeing fixed cost for a specific position on a search results page, advertisers had to pay more attention to the quality of their ads and get back to search marketing basics - optimization and testing.

The latest move could be forcing the hand that feeds Yahoo one too many times. With Panama, the change was needed. Smaller players with little web advertising experience or resources couldn’t compete with the larger behemoths that had the people and finances to throw at online campaigns. Panama changed that and provided more equal footing to all advertisers.

But though its intentions are good, Yahoo has gone one step too far in the wrong direction by placing responsibility in the hands of advertisers. Searchers want to see good content, search results, AND good ads - not just good ads. Yahoo isn’t losing traffic because their ads aren’t attracting visitors, Yahoo is losing traffic because Yahoo isn’t attracting visitors.

The fundamental behavior of web users is changing from passively receiving information to actively exploring and seeking out information. With the rise of “Web 2.0″ sites like Digg and YouTube where users are responsible for elevating and demoting content, the marketplace is shifting from the behemoth portal model to one that’s more fluid and dynamic.

Users no longer cry to be spoon fed “Picks of the Week” or “Hot Sites”. Search engines and other discovery tools have enabled web users to control their own online journey, regardless of the information they’re seeking. And it’s not uncommon for people to use one service for search, a different for email, and yet another for news or entertainment.

To presume increasing the quality of advertisements will miraculously draw back all the users Yahoo has lost is misguided. Despite the financial incentives to advertisers, Quality Pricing places too much responsibility for solving Yahoo’s problems on advertisers, and not enough on Yahoo itself.

Overview: Quality-Based Pricing via [Yahoo.com]

Upsetting those who were may have been looking for something more uncivilized, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs made nice during their much touted dual interview at the Wall Street Journal’s “All Things D” Conference.  Watch the video after the jump.

Apple’s Jobs, Microsoft’s Gates Make Peace at “D” Conference via [Appleinsider.com]