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Fighting upstream feed provider exclusivity

Just wanted to bring up an issue that is not often discussed because the current situation is simply taken as for granted – that parking companies are always hostages of one upstream ppc feed provider – that being either Google or Yahoo, which they have to deal with exclusively. Since they know that the relationship is key to their existence, they are very limited in other ways how they can monetize their partners’ domains (the only exception is banned domains for which they can bring in second tier feed providers etc). This prevents innovations in domain monetization.

This arrangement is severealy hurting domain owners and my belief is that certain anti-monopoly style authorities should look into these arrangements. For example I believe that if parking companies would be able to mix both Google and Yahoo together (even on one results page), there would be roughly a 20% uplift of earnings for domain owners. It would also force G/Y to pay out more because they would be competing head-to-head for every click. However both G & Y force exclusivity onto the domain channel with every parking company. There are companies that have both feeds – such as Infospace – but those cannot be used on the domain channel. If Infospace can have both, why not the parking companies?

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