Ad Testing Month

Increased sales start with better ads

Okay, so maybe “Ad Testing Month” doesn’t sound quite as poignant or cool as, say, Alternate History Month (celebrating speculative sci fi), Baby Boomer Recognition Day (no kidding), Cartoon Art Appreciation Week, or I Forgot Day, when you can make up for all the birthdays and anniversaries you forgot during the year. But we’re kind of excited about it.

September is a great time for Ad Testing Month because it comes after the summer break but before the holidays, when you’re getting your business ready for the rush and finding ways to maximize your ROI.

Ad testing, for those of you new to Yahoo! Search Marketing or who have been sipping mai tais in Tahiti all summer, lets you test multiple ads to determine which messages work best. Ad testing happens automatically when you create more than one ad within an ad group. Here’s a handy tutorial on the topic.

Also, check out this past post, which details more about how ad testing works.

Test and Optimize
You can also set the system to display the most successful ads, based on click-through rate, more often. Make sure ad optimization is on (the default setting), log in to your account, choose a campaign and then an ad group. Click “Ad Group Settings” and then click “edit” in the General Information box. Switch “Optimize Ad Display to “On.”

Be sure to take advantage of the helpful new ad writing features that we announced last week and take September to really make your ads as clickable as they can be. It won’t take much extra effort and could help increase your ROI.

—Michael Mattis