• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, December 9, 2011

Yahoo and Microsoft both try to catch bad actors in search marketing up front with filtration mechanisms, according to Shawn Evans of Microsoft Syndication and Lindsay Johnson of Yahoo; in a rather pleasing authoritarian turn of phrase, Johnson says that Yahoo is constantly working to "crush" bad actors -- for example, non-human bot networks (which is, as one Tweeter notes, a very District 9 image). However Andries de Villeirs of adMarketplace points out that there can also be policing of bad actors through a "natural selection" mechanism, as long as advertisers have control over bidding so they can bid more for higher-quality traffic. George Michie of the Rimm Kaufman Group predicts that Google will have to cede more control over bidding, or adMarketplace will "eat their lunch."