I think the PPC market is not deeply covered by the traditional tech media. Considering the amount of money flowing through PPC advertising, and the importance of search technology to the success of the internet, you'd think the analysts and press would be all over it.
When speaking to reporter Susan Kuchinskas of internetnews.com, I asked her about her beat. She covers a huge range of technology from RFIDs to Enterprise Software to Google and Yahoo. So she can't spend a lot of time focusing specifically on search and PPC. I don't think there are any traditional tech media outlets that have reporters that have gotten deep into the PPC / Search space. There also aren't really any analysts staking the area as their own. Charlene Li of Forrester may be the closest thing we've got - she covers the marketing space and just touches on PPC.
I think this is a blind spot for the old-school tech media, and perhaps it's an area best covered by bloggers and specialists like Danny Sullivan. Majestic Research is also taking an innovative approach from a financial analysis perspective - and their blog is more informative than their company website. For example, Seth Goldstein provides more support for my "under-covered" thesis:
Jordan Rohan a solitary sell-side analyst came out with a note that claimed paid search keyword prices were rapidly declining. this appears to have been based on a single anecdotal conversation with a 3rd tier search engine off-the-record. The entire sector plummetted.
...Investors are gasping at any evidence of a turn for the worse (or the better) for GOOG and YHOO, and to a lesser extent, EBAY and AMZN. Almost a quarter-trillion dollars of market capitalization is currently being waged on the fortunes of these companies.
There's a lot of leverage for anyone who says anything about the search space, because there is not a lot of reliable, well-recognized coverage. Perhaps Tom Foremski at Silicon Valley Watcher has the right model - by scoping out rumors and news in the space, he'll build a valuable property. There's enough real-estate for somebody to win big, just by being the go-to expert from the traditional tech media.
¶ 3/13/2005
