:: Media Viper ::

Microsoft has reported that talks with Yahoo are over and there will be no formal merger. Microsoft wanted to buy only Yahoo Search in the latest round of discussions.

The Yahoo Board of Directors felt that this was not the best deal for it’s shareholders and rejected the idea of selling off only the Search side of their business.

There are also reports of Microsoft wanting to have regulators look at the Yahoo Google search deal that has been stuck, based on Anti Trust laws.
Microsoft took this same tactic with Google / DoubleClick which only extended the timeline to get the deal done with the Government looking into the deal a bit more.

Ballmer is beginning to look like a baby with his actions.

More to come!

Microsoft Drops Hostile Takeover Bid!
Steve Ballmer & Microsoft have packed up their bags and gone and let the building or bidding!Microsofts boss yesterday decided to abandon his $42 billion takeover of Yahoo! After initially raising their offer by $5 billion Friday to $33 a share - and having it rejected again by the Internet icon’s CEO, Jerry Yang. Jerry denied the initial bid of $29.00 as well.

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer,” Ballmer said in a letter to the Yahoo! CEO.

“After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal.”

Negotiations over the price of a possible deal began Friday between the two companies, sources said. Ballmer indicated that he was willing to pay $33 a share but Yang insisted his company was worth $37 a share, or nearly $5 billion more.

Sources have stated that Ballmer had contemplated dropping the bid since early last month after being rejected twice by Jerry Yang & Yahoo’s board of directors.

Most investment analysts and shareholders believed that there was little chance that Microsoft would walk away from the offer and Yahoo! shares traded up nearly 10 percent Friday to $29.70 in anticipation of a deal over the weekend.

The move may be terrible for Yahoo which stands to lose more than $15 billion in market value when the stock markets open tomorrow. Some large investors including hedge funds, were discussing throwing out the Yahoo! board themselves and trying to sell the company to Microsoft.

Many see this as a daring move if Microsoft is really gone for good. “There is no way that Yahoo! gets away with this,” said one large shareholder. “Yang is toast.”

Bt dropping Microsoft’s attempted takeover, Ballmer, decided not to pursue a hostile takeover of Yahoo!, something the CEO had promised when the Yahoo! board missed Ballmer’s deadline eight days ago.

Ballmer said Yahoo!’s promise to enter into a search agreement with Google, the No. 1 search company, would have made Yahoo! “undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.”

The deal, which would allow Yahoo! to carry Google ads, “would fundamentally undermine Yahoo!’s own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system,” Ballmer said in the letter.

“This would also fragment your search advertising and display advertising strategies and the ecosystem surrounding them,” Ballmer added. “This would undermine the reliance on your display advertising business to fuel future growth.”

The takeover, had it been successful, would have recast the power structure of the Internet by forming a more formidable rival to Google, the leader of the $41 billion paid search business.

Yahoo! had hoped its new search technology, called Panama, would help shrink the gap between Google and itself, the No. 2 company in search. But Panama was a disappointment and Google’s dominance over Internet advertising remains.

Yahoo Becomes an Adsense Publisher For Two Weeks!

Good morning readers - One of the first to have the announcement MediaViper.com notes that Yahoo said Wednesday, that they will begin a test running Google ads alongside Yahoo.com’s organic search results.

The two-week trial run of Google’s AdSense for Search service will be limited to no more than 3% of Yahoo search queries, & will not include the company’s network of affiliate or premium publisher partners.

The move leads to speculation that Yahoo is trying to forge a stronger alliance with Google.com which Yahoo hopes will increase efforts to resist Microsoft’s hostile takeover attempt. The move was made following discussion the two companies held about Yahoo potentially outsourcing search ad sales to Google.

Yahoo basically becomes a publisher of Google Adsense yet unlike the rest of us Adsense publishers, likely to earn a majority of the revenue generated within any arrangement.

In announcing the ad test with Google Wednesday, Yahoo re-stated that thier board members are continuing to review their options to maximize stockholder value, including exploration of potential commercial business ventures.

Yahoo also went on to say “the testing does not necessarily mean that Yahoo will join the AdSense for Search program, or that any further commercial relationship with Google will result.” Yahoo also said it would not comment further on the nature or timing of any potential relationship.

Microsoft, just a week ago warned that it would lower its offer price if Yahoo didn’t come to an agreement on the proposed merger, within three weeks time, and immediately raised antitrust questions about Yahoo’s ad test with Google.

“Any agreement between Google & Yahoo would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands,” said Microsoft in a statement. “This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo.”

U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, voiced his thoughts on the Yahoo - Google venture, further vindicating Microsofts stance.

“We will be following closely the results of the short-term test alliance between Yahoo and Google,” he said in a statement. “Should there be moves to make this agreement permanent, we will examine it closely in the Antitrust Subcommittee to ensure that it does not harm competition.”

Yahoo’s board of directors has rejected Microsoft’s $31-a-share offer as “substantially undervaluing” the company, in its response Monday to Microsoft’s ultimatum. In exploring alternatives to a Microsoft acquisition, Yahoo has had discussions about a possible deal with companies including News Corp. and Time Warner Inc.

Two sources, paidContent and Silicon Alley Insider were reporting late week that Yahoo is in serious talks with Time Warner, which may see a Yahoo-AOL merger agreement which could be announced as soon as next week. A Yahoo-Google search partnership would only sweeten the deal, with Google already owning a 5% stake in AOL. Whether that deal will actually come together remains unclear.

Yahoo could possibly see its’ ad trial with Google, will push Microsoft to boost its offer price. Earlier on Wednesday, a large Yahoo investor criticized Microsoft for threatening to lower its bid.

Yahoo today has announced a new set of features for advertisers within Yahoo Search Marketing.

• Blocked Domains (New!)

Yahoo.com now allows advertisers to specify which websites in the Yahoo partner distribution network, where they do not want their ads to appear.

• Pricing Discounts

Advertisers may now automatically receive pricing discounts based on their assessment of the quality of traffic from their partner distribution network.

• Click Protection System

Yahoo wil now track click and search patterns across many data points to identify clicks that advertisers should not be billed for due to issues Yahoo has found. The click protection system generally discards charges from 12 percent to 15 percent of clicks.

• Blocked Continents

Yahoo.com currently excludes traffic from continents other than North America automatically for North American based businesses. If global traffic is important to your business, you can opt into this traffic.

• Traffic Quality Center

This new site Traffic Quality Center from Yahoo is for advertisers to learn traffic quality tips, tools and news. This is the place to go, for instance, if you want to learn how to submit click investigation requests.

This is great stuff to see coming from the Yahoo Search Marketing team!

Yahoo Publisher Network Offers Paypal Payments!

Yahoo! Publisher Network offers publisher payments with convenient PayPal payment option.

One great thing is it requires a minimum earning of only $50, instead of $100, so you don’t have to wait as long for your paydays!!!

There are other benefits of choosing PayPal, too:

• Same-day payment—no waiting 7-10 days, when receiving payments via a check.
• No-fee transfers to your PayPal account. So you don’t pay more for added convenience.

I think this is a great thing for Yahoo to do for it’s publishers and it certainly kicks Google Adsense down a peg!

How soon till Google offers same day payouts via Google Checkout?

Can You Really Spy For Cash?

I just picked up a copy of an eye-opening report called “The PPC Spytool Conspiracy” by a guy named Mark Roth.

I had never heard of Mark before… but this report is bound to get some people’s attention, because he claims to expose the truth behind the spying tools that have come out recently like Undercover Profits and Google Cash Detective.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much… but then I found out that Mark has quietly become a PPC Super Affiliate in just two years, even breaking the $1 million dollar mark in his first year online. I really started listening after seeing the certificate Google sent him when he got his 1 millionth lead with Google AdWords… that has to get your attention.

I sat down to read the thing through… and I was shocked at the content Mark is giving away for free in this jam-packed 30+ page report.

It seems that Mark just wants to set the record straight once and for all about spying tools… what they can do, what their limits are, and how they can cost you big time if you don’t know what you’re doing.

The report would have been great if he stopped there… but he dropped some of his secrets to attaining PPC Super Affiliate status that really blew me away. Here is a guy who’s not trying to come off as a guru, he’s just talking from experience about how he mastered the PPC game.

This report is worth so much more than most $47 ebooks out there, so I highly suggest downloading your copy while Mark is still crazy enough to reveal these secrets for free: Free Report

To your success!

PS- There is a lot of controversy surrounding spying tools, so I would seriously hurry to get your hands on this before Mark has to take it down: PPC Tool