While Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) killing off its Overture brand isn't news -- we have known this for more than two months now -- I still can't get used to the new moniker. Yahoo! Search Marketing? It's not very catchy, is it?
Sure, eventually it will get shortened to YSM, but even that's a dangerous proposition. It may not be a coincidence that Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Time Warner's (NYSE:TWX) America Online have seen their three-letter MSN and AOL acronyms overtaken in popularity by seemingly absurd-sounding brands like Yahoo! and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG).
Yesterday Yahoo! emailed its affiliate marketers, asking them to lend a hand in the translation process by rebranding any marketing efforts designed to draw in new advertisers to YSM.
Paid search is still huge -- as long as you're either Google or Yahoo! The divide between the have and have-nots in contextual advertising has widened over the past few quarters, with second-tier players like Looksmart (NASDAQ:LOOK) and Mamma.com (NASDAQ:MAMA) now trading as penny stocks.
So I guess I will have to learn to say "Yahoo! Search Marketing" a few times more before it starts rolling off the tongue. As long as sponsors have no problem finding it -- and clearly the Web-surfing audience isn't having any problem finding Yahoo! -- YSM may be the acronym that breaks the curse.
Some more catchy headlines to browse through:
- Back in March the company had announced that the Overture brand was biting the dust.
- Last month Yahoo! produced another great quarter thanks to Overture, er, I mean Yahoo! Search Marketing.
- Talk about the company's latest moves in our Yahoo! discussion board.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz doesn't think that YSM is A-OK, but he also doesn't think Yahoo! investors will be writing out an IOU as a result. He does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story. The Fool has a disclosure policy. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.
