Goodbye Overture, Hello Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yahoo said goodbye to the Overture brand beginning today, as the transition of its paid search division to Yahoo Search Marketing became official in the U.S.

The move was announced March 1 at Search Engine Strategies in New York. During his keynote speech, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang said the move was designed to present users with a more unified view of Yahoo Search.

“Over the past six months, we’ve introduced new product features and refined our infrastructure to make search marketing easier for our advertisers, and are very excited to continue that progress by launching our new Yahoo Search Marketing site,” said Steve Mitgang, SVP product marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing. Mitgang said the rebranding is “one of many steps” the company is taking to improve the advertiser experience.

The rebranding includes several product name changes, and a new advertiser center at searchmarketing.yahoo.com where all Yahoo’s sponsored search offerings and listings submit products have been brought together. Precision Match, Yahoo’s flagship search advertising product, has been rebranded as Sponsored Search, and Local Match is now known as Local Sponsored Search.

Yahoo’s submission products have been brought into the Yahoo Search Marketing fold and rebranded as well. Its URL submission products are now called Search Submit Express and Search Submit Pro, formerly Site Match Self Serve and Site Match Xchange. The Yahoo Directory submission program, Yahoo Express, is now called Directory Submit.

Also included in the Yahoo Search Marketing suite of products are contextual ad product Content Match; submission programs for Yahoo Shopping and Yahoo Travel, Product Submit and Travel Submit; and the Local Listings local search results. The Marketing Console and Search Optimizer tools are also part of the Yahoo Search Marketing offerings.

Yahoo’s distribution network is now called the Yahoo Publisher Network. The network is currently limited to large publishers, but the company is rumored to be developing plans to include smaller publishers in its network.

Overture’s international markets will be rebranded at a later date, excepting Korea and Japan, which will keep the Overture brand due to complicated partnership structures.