Yahoo! Network Distribution and Import Campaigns Webinar

Please join us Feb. 4, 2009 for this free and informative Sponsored Search webinar

We’re offering this free webinar for our Sponsored Search customers, covering two important features: Network Distribution and Import Campaigns.

The Network Distribution feature allows you to target marketing campaigns to the entire Yahoo! Network, including Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Partners. Learn how you can control where your ads appear, use reporting to help you optimize your settings, and adjust your bids, as well as how to set premiums based on the traffic most valuable to you.

The Import Campaigns feature allows you to import your Google AdWords campaign data into your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. Learn how the tool can help you to import your AdWords campaign data, so you can leverage the insights and know-how from your Google campaign data for your Yahoo! campaigns.

To enter the webinar on February 4, you will need the password you created when you registered.

When: Thursday, Feb. 4, 2009, 11 A.M., Pacific Time
Where: The Internet—go here to register
Why: Because it’s great stuff to know for improving your campaigns and results

Ad News and Views from Around the Web

Selling the Super Bowl; digital ad budgets to increase; keeping it simple; promote your blog

Selling the Super Bowl
This Sunday is arguably the biggest sporting event of the year, Super Bowl XLIV. Advertisers, according to AdWeek, have shelled out nearly $3 million each for 30-second spots during the big game. “The game is the only significant TV showcase for commercials left in today’s media-fractured environment, and advertisers are frantically putting the final touches on their plays for the day,” writes Eleftheria Parpi. How are they are building buzz around their creative? Hint: the initials are S.M., and we don’t mean the naughty kind.

We’ve got good news and bad news
Remember those old good news/bad news jokes? (Like, the good news: the captain aboard a Viking ship doubles rations for the guys on the oars. The bad news: he wants to go water skiing.) Well, the good news for digital marketers is that two-thirds of marketing execs in a recent CMO.com/Society of Digital Agencies survey say they’ll up their digital budgets in the face of current economic conditions. The bad news? Those conditions still suck.

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Don’t Set it and Forget it

Four simple steps to help your campaign keep up with new searches

I can’t possibly be the only person that remembers the line “just set it and forget it”.  Those were the good ol’ days—the same days as when you could just set up a search marketing campaign and leave it alone. 

Not anymore. Users are more sophisticated in their searches now, and we’ve seen that up to 20% of searches in any given month can be search queries never seen before by a search engine.  This means if you leave your campaign untouched, you could be missing 20% more traffic.

So what’s the best way to keep up to speed with the changing search tide while maintaining your sanity?  Here are our four simple steps that will help your Yahoo! Search Marketing campaign keep pace.

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Ad News and Views from Around the Web

Quantifiable creative; blogging enhances SEO; search surges; kids more plugged in than ever; celebrating Guy Day, and more

Three simple steps to better creative
Let’s face it, a lot of agency creatives like to blather on about “inspiration” and the “creative process.” But, says iMedia Connection blogger, Robert Boman, (who is also Javelin’s Interactive Creative Director), “Marketing is a profession, not an art show. Your work’s got to be far more than just eye candy. It needs to be smart. It needs to be trackable.” He offers a handy, three-step process for creating measurable marketing.

Survey says: Blogging enhances SEO
Writing on TopRank’s Online Marketing blog, Lee Odden reveals the results of a TopRank survey that asked 326 marketing pros if they thought blogging had a positive effect on their SEO. Most did. In fact, more than 87 percent of respondents said blogging had “successfully increased measurable SEO objectives.” A common reason why some companies don’t blog or quit blogging? Resources.

Search usage jumps 50% in one year
According a new PC World report, Web search jumped a full 50% from 2008 to 2009. In fact, last year there were more than four billion searches each day. “We knew this was going to happen,” says Tribble Ad Agency blogger TheFounder, “and it’s going to get bigger and bigger for quite some time. Search has become the definition of marketing and advertising.” All true, but you heard it here first.

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You’re in Control

Network distribution and import campaigns features give greater control over your campaigns

We resolved to deliver to our Sponsored Search advertisers two great new features in the new year: network distribution control and an import campaigns tool. These items may have been on your wish list for a long time, and as of today, the wait is over. Here are the details:

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New Search Improvements for the New Year

Yahoo! rings in 2010 with search advertising enhancements that deliver

Last fall, I answered the question “Does search still matter to Yahoo!” with a definitive YES.  But words only go so far, which is why Yahoo! is rolling out new search enhancements for users and advertisers.

All about control
Next week, we’ll update our Sponsored Search product with two new features aimed at giving advertisers more transparency into and control over their accounts. Our Network Distribution feature will let you run your ads on Yahoo! search pages, our partners’ sites, or both.  If you run your ads on our entire network, you can also set different bids for Yahoo! or its partners.

We’re also launching a new tool that makes it easier for you to get started with Yahoo! Search Marketing. We know there are many advertisers who use other search marketing providers such as Google Adwords, so we’ve built a feature allowing easy and efficient conversion of your AdWords campaign data into Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns. You can import your files by simply clicking the “Import Campaigns” button. We believe the ease of launching campaigns with your existing data will encourage more advertisers to use Yahoo! search. You’ll hear more about both of these new features in the coming weeks.

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Navigating Your Way to Better Quality

Using the ADR and blocked domains to your advantage

Back in the day, family road trips were incomplete without maps. Actual, paper maps. The kind that were supposed to fold neatly into a rectangle when not in use, though in most cases, probably ended up crumpled on the floorboard or dash of the sedan.

Luckily for most of us, technology took over, and instead of relying on a state atlas or old-fashioned city grid, we can now print out door-to-door driving directions online, or even fancier, rely on a GPS device. And though some probably still prefer the thrilling adventure of just hitting the open pavement with no specific destination in mind, most of us like to know where we’re going, and the fastest, most logical way to get there.

This is the idea behind our recently launched Ad Delivery Report (ADR.) By navigating to this spot in the account interface and selecting a date range, you’ll get a list of all of domains in our network that are driving traffic to your account. If you’ve installed Full Analytics, you can also access domain-specific conversion data, which is another bonus.

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New Year, Original Content

Yahoo! and Electus’ Ben Silverman announce new content, ad delivery concept

Three words: Content, content, content.

Over the past decade, cable TV has experienced tremendous growth because of its ability to develop programming for very specific audiences, telling the stories that those audiences love to hear. At the same time, it has provided opportunities for advertisers to reach their core audiences, telling the stories that advertisers need to tell. 

Like cable, online today is poised to do just the same, and more. Yet, despite the targeted programming capabilities available, online publishers and advertisers have yet to take full advantage of the medium in terms of content development. That’s where today’s announcement comes in.

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Dear Abby for Web Advertising

The top 7 how-to’s of 2009

Well, it’s not quite like “Dear Abby,” but last year’s how-to posts from the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog and the Yahoo! Advertising blog are the next best thing. In the last year of the “aughts,” we tried to help show you the way to more effective Sponsored Search, and more effective Web advertising in general, with a bevy of posts that answered your most pressing questions—everything from how to develop strong keywords to how to keep those keywords and descriptions from facing rejection, to how to use social networks like Twitter and Facebook to get your messages out.

Here’s just a sample of what we shared (for more, visit the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog archive):

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The Best of Yahoo! Ads, ‘09

What can you do with a Yahoo! display ad? More than just display, for starters

Whether video, Web or mobile, Yahoo! display ads are rocking the house down, branding your products, sending the messages you want and getting the ROI you want, as this video shows. Enjoy, and happy new year!

—The Team

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