The More the Merrier

Using More Features Can Help Make Your Campaigns More Successful

We’re always studying how advertisers are using Yahoo! Search Marketing tools and features, getting feedback and adjusting to current demands. Our ongoing roll-out of new features is a big part of this effort.

In our research we noticed a few interesting trends:

• A significant percentage of advertisers may have been reluctant to use some existing features and to try new ones
• Some advertisers may not have been aware if they were using certain features or not
• Most importantly: Advertiser who took advantage of certain features were generally better satisfied with their performance than advertisers did not use those features

Take for example, ad testing, sometimes called A/B testing. Ad testing allows you to test different versions of your ad to see which one receives the highest click-through rate and can help you improve your quality index score. However, we found that some advertisers may not have known whether they were using ad testing or not. That’s probably because ad testing occurs automatically but only if you have more than one ad in each ad group.

If you don’t have more than one ad in an ad group, there’s nothing to test against. To take advantage of ad testing, you have to have at least two ads in each ad group, and preferably more (up to 20).

You can see which ads are performing best by clicking on the Campaigns tab and going into a specific ad group. There you can compare the ads in that ad group and see which ones are performing best.

But you can save yourself the trouble of manually checking on your ads all the time by making sure ad optimization is turned on. With Ad optimization those ads in ad group that have a higher click-through rate (CTR) may be displayed more often than those with a lower CTR. To find out how to turn on ad optimization, consult the Help Center.

Here are some helpful hints on ad testing. There’s also some useful info in the help section, and a “How Ad Testing Works” tutorial.

Then there’s geo-targeting. While this is a very in-demand feature, we found that fewer of you were using it than should be. Geo-targeting lets you restrict your ads to users who are either located in, or who are interested in, a specific geographic area. You select that geographic region for each campaign. Once selected, that targeting is applied to all of the ad groups and the ads within that campaign. For more on geo-targeting check out our previous posts, here and here, as well as our “how geo-targeting works” tutorial.

Lastly (but certainly not least-ly) there’s your quality index score. You’ve probably seen the little “five bars” graphic in your secure account interface. This isn’t a feature that you can turn off and turn on, like geo-targeting, but one that’s always on and indicating your ad quality relative to competing ads in the network. Basically, your quality index score (to quote our FAQs):

…reflects your ad’s ability to meet the needs of users by looking at how relevant your ad is to each keyword and also its click-through rate relative to its position and other ads displayed at the same time.   

And:

Your ad’s quality index also impacts how much you need to bid and the position in which your ad appears—in some instances, ads with a higher quality index may require a lower bid and/or receive better placement on the results page

In short, maintaining a high quality index score can help you achieve better placement and cost savings. Some advertisers, however, may still be in a bit of a quandary over what constitutes a quality ad. But help is on the way. Here are number of resources:

For basics, there’s our Bidding and Ranking tutorial

For tips on improving ad quality:

Improving Ad Quality, Part I: The Equalizer

Improving Ad Quality, Part II: Finding the right message for your customers with Ad Testing

Improving Ad Quality, Part III: Using the Insert Keyword feature

Improving Ad Quality, Part IV: Structure Matters

Think Short

—Michael Mattis