• by Masha Geller , July 9, 2003

Is there anything hotter in the online advertising arena than search these days? The reigning duo of Google and Overture has been in the news all week, but the second tier of search companies are making some waves as well.

I couldn't possibly talk about all of them in one minute, so I'll start with LookSmart. For one, the company today announced a multi-year search distribution agreement with Lycos, where LookSmart will provide its search product to Lycos beginning late in the third quarter of 2003. LookSmart will become the primary provider of general Web search results for a large number of high-value commercial terms. In addition, Lycos will have the option to resell LookSmart's LookListings to thousands of Lycos InSite customers, Lycos's paid inclusion and paid placement search engine marketing platform.

This comes on the heels of yesterday's announcement of LookSmart launching New LookListings, which will make it easier for businesses of all sizes to purchase cost-effective traffic and manage their campaigns across the LookSmart Network of distribution partners. LookListings replaces the company's former "Small Business Listings" and "Large Business Listings" products.

"Ever since we launched our online small business product last year, we've been hearing from customers who want to list more than just their homepage and have more control over their campaign management, yet didn't have the budget to qualify for our large advertiser solution," explained Peter Adams, chief technology officer for LookSmart. "New LookListings will let these customers drive traffic to any number of category and product pages, increasing sales and improving ROI, while also giving large advertisers increased flexibility in the way they manage their campaigns."

Basically, businesses of all sizes may now add search listings for multiple pages on their website, including home page, category- and product-level pages. LookSmart also offers pre-set cost-per-click (CPC) pricing based on the advertiser's business category, which may be quite attractive to the advertisers who aren't big fans of auctions and bidding wars.

LookSmart serves more than 1.5 billion searches across a network that includes Microsoft's MSN, About.com, Road Runner, CNET, InfoSpace and search services such as Inktomi.

More search stuff to come.