Yahoo! tries to assert itself globally against Google, it rebranded its advertising network this week, which it says reaches 80% of Web users in the UK and Ireland. Search will be more and more important.

In the UK, search advertising has always taken a higher share of spending compared with other formats than it does in the US. The primacy of search and the strong rise of classifieds, challenges the display advertising category. eMarketer has predicted that search will claim about 60% of online ad spending in the UK for at least a few more years.

“Now that video and other rich media are becoming the norm, banner-type display ads are bound to shrink further,” says Karin von Abrams, senior analyst at eMarketer, whose specialty is the UK market.

Even though Yahoo!’s new partnership deals include display ads on the social networking site Bebo, Yahoo! will have a difficult time taking on Google and its inexorable rise. “Being better at display isn’t going to do the trick,” Ms. von Abrams adds.

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