Canada’s largest publisher of daily newspapers has launched its own Internet search engine, hoping to attract traffic by clicking patriotic hot buttons.
Southam is touting Canada.com as a user-friendly tool that differs from other search engines because of the depth and breadth of its Canadian content. In other words, all of the information scanned by the base search utilities on the site – from stock exchange quotes to weather – will be Canadian. Featured in the news section for example, are re-purposed cover stories from 12 of the chain’s largest dailies.
And if u.s. trends are any indication, it might be a miniature money tree for the company. A recent study shows that a full quarter of all Internet ad spending in the u.s. – about us$147 million – went to four search engines: Yahoo, Excite, Infoseek and Lycos, and that search engines are considered almost ‘a default buy’ for Web advertisers because they consistently offer the largest audience at a single location.
‘There is a tremendous flow of Canadians to u.s. search engines,’ laments Michael Pilmer, director of new media for Toronto-based Southam. Pilmer wants to repatriate these wayward surfers with an appeal to homegrown content and local relevance.
Created by Toronto-based Grey Advertising, the theme of the national advertising campaign says as much: ‘Start your search from home.’
A full-page color ad in Southam papers broke last Wednesday and will continue with billboards, trade magazine and on-line ads.