Here are the top three search terms Vonage is buying

OK, what's that?

Internet marketing research firm Nielsen/NetRatings has begun to calculate what it terms "Top 25 Companies By Top Three Search Terms." 

Let me defog this confusing terminology for you.

This list is an extension of Nielsen/NetRatings "Top 25 Companies By Sponsored Link Impressions."

N/NR says: "text-based ads that often appear as a result of a keyword search either on a search engine or associated site. These ads are often displayed alongside natural search results but identified under specified headers (e.g., "Paid Sponsor", "Sponsored Link", "Sponsored Sites" or “Sponsored Results")."

So to make a long story short, what I am showing you is a list of the three search terms that are most likely to generate a sponsored link for each of the respective 25 most sponsored-link users as ranked by impressions.

Now that we got that out of the way, let us consider these results.

Apparently, Vonage considers it a strategic imperative that when users go to a search engine such as Google or Yahoo! and perform a search for "Verizon + DSl," "at&t" or "Sprint," that they should see a Vonage ad. Even just a text-based one.

This approach akes perfect sense to me. Plainly, the searcher is looking for telephone services, so why not put an alternative - i.e. Vonage- in front of their face?

I can also glean from this that Vonage considers the traditional phone companies as their main competitors, not the IMs and not even Skype.

And did you notice I specified, Sprint? Vonage seems to believe there's potential subscribers in folks looking for, and at, Sprint. Unlike at&t and Verizon, Sprint does not have their own VoIP. Yet another reason why Vonage should sell to SprintNextel- if they'll have 'em. 

Speaking of Skype, and their parent eBay, note that eBay considers it important for their ads to pop up on My Space searches. Still trying to figure out, though, how "fireworks" searches lead to Yahoo! Hmm, probably because this survey was for the month of June, and fireworks were a hot item on Yahoo! Shopping?