MIVA To Use Google Adsense Service

Posted on | March 29, 2008 | Comments Off

In a regulatory filing on Wednesday, MIVA said that it “agreed to exclusively use Google Inc.’s WebSearch and AdSense services for approved Web sites and applications.” according to the AP.

Of course the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed…when are they ever.

MIVA hopes to earn revenue off of displaying Google Ads on approved web sites and applications, starting out with Miva Direct, which manages tool bar, screen saver, smiley and other applications and websites. So in a nutshell, MIVA has decided it is easier to become a distribution partner for Google, than it is to take it head on.

Shares jumped in early morning trading but perhaps prematurely. Anything connected to Google seems to jump at first. However, the validity of such jumps does not always pan out. Think about it. This is both a positive and negative sign.

It is positive because perhaps MIVA will make some money, which can only help since its current revenue model has been struggling for some time. It is also a sign that MIVA may be showing signs of humility and situational awareness, which it has lacked recently and that perhaps, just perhaps this is the starting point for an eventual acquisition by Google (weirder things have happened).

It is negative because just to make some money and possibly stay in business, MIVA has had to bow to the hand that feeds the market and take a stance that will continue to help its largest adversary Google grow. What does this say about the long term survivability of its pay-per-click program? Which has traditionally been a solid feature filled service for advertisers.

One scenario is that this might be a sign of a forced large scale model change, in that MIVA will move from connecting advertisers and publishers, to exclusively dealing in distribution as time goes on.Â By leveraging its deep entrenchment of its Miva Direct products, perhaps it will evolve into nothing more than a distribution partner of those players that outgunned it. If so, it’s a sign that they are loosing advertisers hand-over-fist.

Or perhaps this is simply nothing more than an effort to offset declining revenue and what ever happens from here is a result of corporate management on the fly, as they try to save one of the pay-per-click industryâ€™s founding companies from falling victim to those that MIVA itself helped give birth to.

What ever the case is, the more revenue right now the better so good luck MIVA.

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