Viacom Taps Yahoo! For Search

In a distribution deal that broadens the reach of Yahoo!'s search advertisers, media conglomerate Viacom has tapped Yahoo! to power both sponsored and organic search listings on the digital properties BET.com, CBSNews.com, CMT.com, MTV.com, NickJr.com, Showtime Online, and VH1.com, the companies said Tuesday.

The search feature operates slightly differently on the individual properties, with number and placement of the sponsored results varying by site. For instance, at CBSNews.com, three sponsored results appear at the top of the results page, and three appear down the right-hand column. But at MTV.com, Yahoo! displays just three sponsored results, all at the top of the page.

The natural results at some of the sites--MTV.com, for example--only include links to pages in MTV.com's own archives. But at CBSNews.com, visitors have the option of using Yahoo! to search either the CBSNews.com archives or the Web, in which case Yahoo! powers the search using its regular algorithm.

The look of the results--including the font sizes and colors--also differs on the various sites.

Dean Stackel, vice president of business development for Yahoo! Partner Solutions Team, said Yahoo! promotes itself to publishers by offering them the ability to customize the results. "We're very much about flexibility with our partners," he said.

Yahoo! publishers in general also have the ability to exclude certain advertisers, Stackel said. "Generally, if there's a specific ad they do not want, we would accommodate that," he said. He said he could not comment on the specifics of Yahoo!'s arrangements with Viacom publishers.

The deal quietly began rolling out in February on CBSNews.com.

Next story loading loading..