Business Week reports on a German web startup that is challenging Google's search technology to provide better content matching for PPC advertisers. Proximic uses pattern-matching technology to deliver content targeted adverts which, it says, will provide better, more relevant results, than currently seen with Google's AdSense system. And it appears that Yahoo! and eBay believe them, as they have signed a deal to use Proximic's new search technology within their shopping websites.

Yahoo Shopping and eBay's Shopping.com websites will use Proximic's technology and provide the German company with an inventory of 50 million individual product items - each of which could attract a context-specific advert alongside the online content. Google refuses to reveal the total number of content targeted adverts that it handles, although Proximic believe that the Adsense inventory is only around 1 million ads. They therefore claim to be able to handle more adverts but also match them much more effectively, so time will tell whether this business really becomes a lynchpin of an expanding area of search marketing.