Last week’s stack of generally uninteresting vendor mail included an “IMPORTANT LEGAL NOTICE” from a company in a southern MN, near my home town.  Feeling some sense of intrigue and obligation I decided to read before filing in the plastic bin at my feet.  Turns out some folks won a settlement against Yahoo! relating to Sponsored Search and Content Match ad placement.  They claim the terms of service were violated when Yahoo! allowed these ads to be displayed on spyware, domain parking pages, pop-ups/unders, and typosquatting sites.  Naughty naughty!  After years of litigation, millions of pages and hundreds of GB of documentation provided by Yahoo!, testimony from both sides, and all that shtuff, a settlement was reached.

So, what does this mean for all involved?  Here’s the breakdown.

• General public – Yahoo! agreed to develop an “Ad Placement Option” (name subject to change blah blah blah), whereby customers can specify that ads purchased may only be displayed on Yahoo! owned properties or “Premium” distribution partners.  The timetable for the launch of this new option is “as early as the first quarter of 2010, but in no event later than September 30, 2010″, and they agree to maintain the option for at least two years from the launch … or (almost forgot about this part) until the agreement with Microsoft is finalized.  So, in theory, and legally, it may never materialize.  Yahoo! also agreed to post more information about where ads may appear on the Traffic Quality portion of it’s site.
• Class Members still in business – nothing in particular.  It’s not about the money though, it’s the principle.
• Class Members out of business – a $20 refund – the cost of a stamp.  Yahoo! indeed.
• Class Representatives – these three (also referred to as “several”, not the more precise “few”, in the IMPORTANT LEGAL NOTICE) will be awarded $10,000 each.
• Class Counsel – $4,170,000 plus expenses totaling about $100,000.  Remember, it’s not just about the money.  It’s about the principal and the resulting interest, dividends, and taxes.
• Yahoo! – total estimated outlay is $4.3 million plus the $20 payments to class members now out of business.

Learn more about the case and the settlement at www.inreyahoosettlement.com.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Risdall Advertising Agency Interactive, Risdall Online Marketing Group. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.