I know Pat McCarthy (Conversionrater.com) works at Right Media but somehow, I missed the news that Yahoo! bought 20% of Right Media last October.  I even met Pat McCarthy briefly at TechCrunch 8 in New York City last November (but never asked him about it).  By the way, Conversionrater has been one of the top Web Analytics blogs.

Well….guess what?  Fueled partly by the Google DoubleClick acquisition, Yahoo! announced yesterday it was buying the rest of Right Media for $680 Million Dollars. I think he sounds pretty happy, based on what I'm reading on his blog (I hope he owns stock in Right Media - let's put it that way).

According to the New York Times:

"…Right Media, a four-year-old company, runs an exchange in which advertisers and publishers buy and sell online ad placements in real time through an auction system. DoubleClick, which specializes in serving ads on Web sites, announced recently that it would develop a similar type of exchange. Online publishers are increasingly turning to exchanges like these to sell ad space on their sites.

Yahoo executives said that the company had been using the Right Media exchange since last year, largely to place ads on Yahoo’s Web sites, and had become more comfortable with its capabilities.

….By buying Right Media, analysts have said, Yahoo would accelerate its own efforts to sell and broker ads on other sites. Those efforts began taking shape recently, after Yahoo reached agreements to sell ads on eBay and on some 264 newspaper Web sites. "

Sounds like the acquisition of Right Media was a good move for Yahoo (and good for Pat too).

Today's New York Times article on The Pangs of Two Becoming One (Google's 2.1 Billion deal to buy DoubleClick) suggests that Google faces a conflict of interest in providing search results (via it's search engine) while now owning a SEO Company, Performics, that helps clients improve those same results.

While I see the conflict – I can't imagine Google not selling Performics as soon as it can.

"…Internal conflicts often happen in finance, when investment banks find themselves advising both sides in a merger. And it happens in agribusiness, energy and other industries where giant companies with fingers in many pies are both buyers and sellers of the same commodity. But it is particularly common in technology and media.

The DoubleClick deal has prompted Microsoft and I.B.M. and others to ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the deal on antitrust grounds. And privacy advocates worry that Google will not live up to its pledge to keep the customer data collected by DoubleClick out of the hands of Google’s search managers.

But the thorniest conflicts could arise from DoubleClick’s Performics division.

Performics helps its clients get better position in search results. Essentially, it works to game the systems of Google, Yahoo and other search engines."

The New York Times article then goes on to examine the possibility that Google won't sell Performics and how the leading Search Engine can co-exist with a leading agency that helps optimise for Search.

And personally, I don't see this as entirely out of question – while the writer, Dan Mitchell adds wealth and intelligence to the equation and looks for other examples of when two businesses that are contradictory where owned by the same entity.

"…essay shows that while things have improved since the turn of the 20th century, there is still a way to go. Back then, a maker of rat poison could get away with depicting a Chinese man in Confucian-era garb gobbling up a rat (to “exploit the then-popular urban legend that Chinese people eat rats,” Mr. Segal explains). But as recently as the early 1990s, Stroh Brewery was peddling Crazy Horse malt liquor — disregarding the fact that the 19th-century American Indian leader Crazy Horse was a teetotaler who preached abstinence. In 2001, the brewery sold off the brand and apologized.

Well, Duh! A new study has confirmed what most of us already knew: Wealth and intelligence have little to do with each other."

Getting back to Google – Could Google really own an SEO Company – and the answer is yes – it probably could – but then they'd have to go back and change their stance on how to optimize for Google (now … if you really want to be sure your optimizing for US …. just go to our high priced SEO Company – Performics – and we'll take care of it all for you) which would make Google look more and more like Yahoo (in my eyes).

So…. I think Google will certainly sell Performics; it's much easier than changing it's established messaging about concentrating on content and not on ranking – and Google has been pushing that message for the last 10 years – I don't think they're going to change it suddenly now.

But…I have learnt to never say … never.

Avinash Kaushik wrote a post about how Web Analysts should (ideally speaking) spend their day at work. 

I began wondering how my day compares with the the day I should be spending….according to this chart, below.

Here's what Avinash defines as the ideal Analyst work breakdown (my comments are in blue).

• 20% Reporting – Sorry you can’t escape this, you are still going to do reporting. But on the bright side it is a great way to keep in touch with reality.

Sounds about right; however, I have a couple of projects (Stakeholders) and I can't really say if my time really is 20% +/-.

• 20% Analyze Acquisition Strategies – What is your company doing to attract traffic to your website? SEM? Affiliate Marketing? Banners? Email Marketing? What else?

I'm measuring the effects of some of those things – but I'm not directly involved with any of them – in large corporations most of these functions are / or can be, spread apart, more matrix based.  Let's put it this way … there is no SEM Group that's responsible for all the strategies listed above, per se, where I work – which is a very large corporation.

• 20% Understanding On-site Customer Experience – Using a mix of ClickStream and qualitative methodologies analyze what the customer experience is on your website. Really. Not what you think it is, not what your company wants it to be. But what it is in reality.

Depending on the project it can be more or less, 20% of my time – understanding On-site visitor experience.  One of my top projects, now, a Second Life Sim, will have a large component of understanding the customer experience in Second Life.

• 20% Staying Plugged into the Context – Most Analysts suffer because of a lack of context. They are put away in a corner with Omniture or WebTrends or HBX or Google Analytics and expected to produce earth shattering insights.

OK here – I might not always be provided with the direct context by the business units – but I can usually deduce it.

• 10% Explore New Strategic Options – I don’t know where your company is but you always want to move the ball forward, this chunk of time should be spent in experimenting with new and different ways to move your program forward.

I'm ahead here – right now spending more than 10% of mine tome on New Strategic Options – but I had to work to position myself as someone who can handle that – it was not given to me on a silver platter – and it comes with a lot of responsibility and pressure – but I like those kinds of challenges – that's why I seek challenge – the harder the tasks, the more I like it – but that's me – not everyone is cut out for that kind of job.   I like edges that are not so well defined.

• 10% Bathroom breaks , oh and lunch! I am generous aren’t I. : )

Sound about right.

Based on Avinash Kaushik's breakdown – my job breakdown is not ideal for a Web Analyst… but I don't know anyone whose Web Analyst job breakdown is ideal (according to the chart above).