Marketing Pilgrim

ClickZ reports on a new initiative by Yahoo to encourage marketers to use search for branding.

The company has been quietly beta testing two new tools with 10 to 15 of Yahoo!’s top advertisers and agencies for the past two months. Buzz Index — not to be confused with the company’s existing consumer-facing tool of the same name — is a keyword discovery tool with attached demographic data, and Search Share of Voice is a metric analogous to the traditional marketing measurement. The tools are expected to be ready to be offered to a broader base of advertisers in the coming months.

A smart move to ensure the growth of paid search. Instead of search marketing being considered only for ecommerce situations, Yahoo can now tap into all the money being spent on branding and company awareness.