On Wednesday, Google and Yahoo! announced that they are not going through with the advertising deal they had proposed earlier in June. With little support from the advertising community the deal was intended to benefit, as well as legal concerns around monopolization, the failed proposition wasn’t faced with too much disappointment.

Robert Liodice, president and chief executive office of the Association of National Advertisers, shares his thoughts on the announcement with CRM magazine:

So what’s the general feeling at the ANA?
We are pleased. There are a couple of things at play here and the most important is that we got a meeting of the minds. What I mean by that is when propositions like this are of consequence, it’s important to get full participation and full integration on the implications to the marketing community. The opportunity to be able to weigh in on the proposed deal that Google and Yahoo! provided was an appropriate way to go. They saw that there could have been some risks to their initial proposition and they gave many parties the opportunity to weigh in, including the Department of Justice, which was the original reason for the delay because it at least had the appearance of potentially being monopolistic or certainly [having] a level of concentrated of power. So we welcomed that opportunity, and we weighed in against the proposition because we felt that it was not beneficial to advertisers from a variety of standpoints. In the end, the Department of Justice seemed to agree with our posture as well as the postures of other organizations around the world, including the World Federation of Advertisers and the Association of Canadian Advertisers.

So yes, that’s a long-winded way of saying we’re happy.

Was nobody really buying into the idea that it was actually going to be a “competitive auction,” or a successful one at that?

First of all, nobody of consequence that I’m aware of on the advertising side bought into the proposition, period. That was what was the most intriguing thing out of this whole situation. There were no major advertisers that looked me square in the eye and said, ‘Yea, this is a good thing, we can’t wait!’

That really was, I think, the stark reality that both Google and Yahoo! faced. There were no real takers, no believers that this was going to be beneficial to the industry. It was a situation where if the community wasn’t going to stand up and rally behind it, then how could Google and Yahoo! proceed forward? So the belief, or at least the rational, that these organizations were saying, that this would lead to a higher return on investment for marketers, was, at best, a conceptual one and not one that was demonstrated in fact, data, or reality. There’s no way you could go into something of this consequence with the potential marketplace implications of bringing the two largest guys together and think this could be beneficial to everybody in the long run.

The other thing is…this is not a staid and stale market. As we look at both competitors, they’ve done a lot for the industry, and we’ve been very grateful that search advertising has been as well-developed and well-defined as it is. But when these situations develop, we have to respect the fact that technology is going to continue to bring the level of innovation and creativity to make the marketplace even more beneficial and more productive for advertisers and marketers. We had some ongoing discussions with Yahoo! about this to say, ‘Yes, we recognize that there are reasons you may want this deal. Obviously, we don’t concur.’ The reality is that there is a natural momentum that’s taking place by innovation and innovative people, and the ability for technology to evolve,that’s going to make this a win-win for everyone.

Even without this partnership, does the advertising industry fear what industry pundits have called “Googzilla”?
I applaud Google for their competitive victory. They’ve done a magnificent job with taking this marketplace and winning, and consistently winning, and beating out some pretty good competitors. Anytime you can get to the 70 percent-range of any market, you’re obviously doing a lot right.

Is Googzilla just a myth?
The question is, what happens from here? Obviously one would never like to see someone control 98 percent of the marketplace because your options become limited. But on the flip side, the beauty of where we are from a technology-based media and marketing marketplace is that things will evolve and things will change and you may be the big gun now but you may not be 3 to 5 years from now. If this were a stale market I’d think it’d be tough for someone to knock them off or challenge them. [But] the future is always in doubt, some young upstart will come up with something better. [We'll] continue to have that happen as technology filters its way through all aspects of the broad media spectrum.