Searching the unexplored.

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Search advertising is making headlines, but an article in the Nov. 29 issue of Fortes suggests the technology still has its kinks ("Out of Context," p. 64). The market for advertising revenue generated by search keywords has seen rapid growth, rising to US$2.6 billion (C$3.1 billion) this year from US$1.1 billion (C$1.3 billion) in 2002. Paid links alone now generate US$300 million (C$362 million) and that number is expected to jump to US$1.4 billion (C$1.7 billion) by 2006. Google owns 40% of the search advertising market and generates about US$1.3 billion (C$1.6 billion) â€" half its revenue â€" from AdSense, its ad placement software. But although Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines are fighting to develop the latest technology to cash in on contextual ads (ads that correspond to the content of a page), their properties account for only 5% of Web traffic. In essence, 95% of the Web â€" including e-commerce sites, news sites, chat rooms, pornography and blogs â€" is "underexploited territory for paid links." Smaller search engines can play too, as "the market is still virgin enough for a small firm with bright algorithm writers to unseat even the mighty Google." One that's made a stab at it is Quigo. The firm produces software to help advertisers get better search rankings, in addition to its AdSonar Exchange software, which matches contextual ads similar to Google's AdSense.

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