As per this New York Times article, AOL has made quite a bold move by shifting $50 million of the marketing budget for its portal properties from TV to Search. Wow!

Google and Yahoo must be loving life right now. So far most of the Blue Chips of this world have largely ignored search. But with this move by AOL, and this week Google becoming the world’s largest media company, it may just stir these sleeping giants into action.

I love this bit:

"We started seeing the results and said, 'Oh, my God, what if we took this money and put it into search engine marketing,' " Mr. Miller (AOL's chief executive) said. Now more than half of AOL's marketing budget for the portal will be used to pay for ads on search engines and formatting Web pages so they appear in the free search results.

Duh!

On one hand this sucks because it will mean increased bid prices for the rest of us, but on the other hand the profile of the search industry can only rise and that can only be a good thing.

This is only the beginning. TV advertising put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye!