I’ve just checked out (!)Yureekah – an innovative search engine that enables media planners and ad network guys to keep a track of where particular brands are placing their online (banner) ads. You can check out what your competition is doing as well.

 Devaraj Southworth, co-founder, (!)Yureekah, told agencyfaqs that he is confident that the new product will change the way online media is bought in the country. However, this is just the beginning for the company. “Our objective is to develop a collaborative online platform for all online advertising needs,” Southworth says.

No contextual ads can be searched currently on the service, which is free of cost at this point of time.

A word of caution: I don’t think this can be taken as a substitute for media planning. That’s primarily because just by advertising where your competitor is advertising may not be the most fruitful strategy. Also – your competitor may have got it wrong. The product does not tell you anything about traffic, click throughs etc – analysing which is an entirely different ballgame altogether. Where the service can however be helpful if one manually examines all the editorial environments on which the ad is placed and collates a set of insights about the competitors target audience and their tastes and preferences. This can help because you may end up getting a few more insights about your own target audience and also frame specific communication strategies to capture market share of your competitors (if that is your goal atleast).

 Im not surprised that contextual ads are not a part of this ‘free offering’. Companies spend lakhs of rupees perfecting products related to key word performance and key word analysis and tracking to ensure the best possible SEM results.

I don’t think the service does a comprehensive search so far atleast. That may be because it is in an alpha stage. The product will go into the Beta stage soon. The company wants to use viral marketing to become the Google for  advertisers, media agencies, and small and medium sized business owners by creating a level playing field with respect to research.

To work the service, you basically go to the landing page and sign up after which you can do either a specific brand search or you do a keyword search (related to category). You can choose your Geographical Location (India, UK, UAE, USA). The company quite clearly has international aspirations. Monetization will come with the launch of more (relevant and impressive, im assuming) services at the end of 2008.

I checked out a brand search (India) for Nike – nothing appeared. For Hyundai, I saw only 2 results. For HDFC, there were 10 results. Somehow that doesn’t seem right to me. It’s under reported. At this point of time however, there is no alternative, so il have to trust (!) Yureekah. It saves me time. 

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