Posted by 20 December 2004

Attorneys Bid Up Keyword ‘Celebrex’

From ambulance chasers to keyword chasers — Bambi Francisco has written a follow-up of sorts to here article about the bidding up of Vioxx ads back in September. Some interesting snippets:

Keywords can be like momentum stocks.

They can triple in day or two, especially when personal-injury lawyers get involved.
[SNIP]
That day, the keyword Celebrex was worth 95 cents to advertisers on Yahoo’s (YHOO: news, chart, profile) Overture.

As this column noted on Friday, this keyword might become one of the hottest keywords to bid on.

Indeed, it was. By Monday morning, the keyword was $4.02, and climbing.
[SNIP]

If past is prologue, Celebrex may top $10, as attorneys seek to capitalize on the opportunity to target one of the world’s most profitable drug companies. Pfizer is expected to have more than $50 billion in sales and roughly $15 billion in profit this year.

The same thing happened when Vioxx, Merck’s $2.5 billion arthritis and painkiller drug, was withdrawn in September. As soon as the news broke, law firms seeking Vioxx takers to represent in lawsuits against Merck began bidding on the term Vioxx.

The term Vioxx, which started at $2 prior to the Merck announcement, soared to more than $40 within weeks. The term Vioxx is worth about $9 today.

GOOG and YHOO are just raking in the dough with these ad sales.

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Comments

  1. Posted by Byrne on December 20, 2004 at 4:33 pm

    So, has anyone created an exchange for these keywords? I’d assume these are basically illiquid and non-transferrable, so there’s probably demand for a securitized version. Someone outta consider it…

    -Byrne

  2. Posted by Michael on December 20, 2004 at 5:14 pm

    I see Overture, AdWords, etc. as the exchanges for keywords. Perhaps this could be something that a company like InTrade could set up a market for.

  3. Posted by demnuts on December 21, 2004 at 8:39 am

    forget the words, when will pfe & mrk bottom? mrk may have allready, but pfe has a way to go imho.

  4. Posted by Byrne on December 21, 2004 at 10:17 am

    The only issue with the search engines themselves doing it is that the only buyers are people who intend to use them, because the cost of selling an ad to someone else is enormous compared to what you’d get from selling it. Creating an exchange, wherein people can bet on the prices of ads instead of buying the ads themselves would make it easier, raise ad demand, and possibly stabilize prices (simply because liquidity does that, sometimes).