Lower Reserves

Minimum bids dropping on some keywords

You don’t need a TV to tell you that times are tough—you just have to take a look at your marketing budget. Money is tight for everyone these days. So we thought you’d want to know about some changes that we hope will help lower your costs and increase your clicks.

Given that certain business categories have been impacted by the current economic conditions, we’ve reviewed minimum bid amounts on a large number of Sponsored Search keywords and reduced the minimum bids on many terms. This review process is a part of our ongoing efforts to optimize our search marketplace.

Some of these changes to minimum bids have already taken place. Please log in and review your account, as you may find that a number of your keyword bids that used to be below the minimum requirement may now be active if their minimum bids have been lowered. These keywords will automatically reactivate (and start displaying your ads), so make sure that your spending limits allow for additional traffic.

Keep in mind that the minimum bid is only one factor in the cost you pay per click. Just as important are factors such as your ad quality, the competitiveness of your term and, of course, the bid you set. Still, at least on some keywords, this should translate into a little bit of good news for you. You won’t get that on the TV.

—The Team

Posted by Administrator

[ Categories: Uncategorized ]

16 Comments Add your own

1. Dave | March 10th, 2009 at 8:48 am

before Yahoo acquired Overture – it was an open marketplace, ie. you saw the bid above you and below you. Now look at this, no open marketplace
2. John | March 10th, 2009 at 2:35 pm

this is a very positive move from Yahoo – now it would be even nicer if the big G did the same…
3. Chris | March 11th, 2009 at 4:18 pm

I have not seen a change in our account yet. However, our daily spend seems to be the same with less conversions, but this looks like a pos. step.
4. Kris K | March 14th, 2009 at 2:01 am

Good news. Lower bids in these times can help the small business owner who is getting hammered!
5. alan | March 19th, 2009 at 7:18 am

Changes are welcomed. Will this stop my account from using the same amount of $$ every 10-11 days religiously? LOL
6. alan | March 19th, 2009 at 7:18 am

Changes are welcomed. Will this stop my account from using the same amount of $$ every 10-11 days religiously? LOL
7. Lobster Recipes | March 19th, 2009 at 7:24 am

The min bids for Yahoo keywords have been and continue to be outrageous. My bids are set to double that what Google is charging. Want more business Yahoo, get rid of the unnecessarly high min bids.
8. John | March 19th, 2009 at 7:54 am

Yes, yahoo needs to use the same bidding structure as Google. They also need to make it easier to navigate their website when you need to make changes or additions. Google is a snap to make changes, but Yahoo is a pain in the whazoo.
9. Brad | March 19th, 2009 at 8:23 am

Hopefully the whole minimum bid idea will go away. Let the market decide what the bids are.

Also please do away with the content network 10 cent minimum bid. Some kws just aren’t worth 10 cents in content.

Would yahoo rather have me pay them for 1000 clicks a day at 5 cents, or 0 clicks a day at 10 cents?

Overall it’s a good move. I’m happy to see yahoo finally make some positive changes over the last few days. They still have several dumb policies in place but hopefully this is the start of some intelligence in the YSM system.
10. Myles Mellor | March 19th, 2009 at 8:27 am

I never liked the changes put in when Overture was bought out. There used to be tools to easily see what the search volume was- you can’t see that any more. Then it became much more complex to monitor your account. It was much easier and simpler before. Final beef- when you search my name- Yahoo pops up “Myles Mellor idiot” as an alternative search category. I took this up with your staff but no one ever took the trouble to fix it. I assumed from that that my company and its business was very unimportant to you.
Result- much less business from me- and I developed other ways to do my own advertising. I hope you will fix this sometime soon. Best wishes, Myles
11. The Unit | March 19th, 2009 at 2:05 pm

I agree that some of Yahoo’s min bids are too high. Good to see that they are having a little common sense these days. Don’t even think that Google would do this.

Also, great to see that Yahoo now has dayparting like Google, but unlike Google, I can’t bid at lower than 100% of normal bid for later in the evening. On Google, once my CTR is up for the day, I have my bids dropped to 90% of my normal bid amount from 8pm to midnight. Yahoo needs to do the same.
12. Chris | March 26th, 2009 at 2:52 pm

Just got an email saying the min bids are going up for a lot of my keywords. Yahoo seems to be talking out both sides of their mouth.

“Dear Advertiser

Minimum bid requirements have increased for some of your keywords in your account…”
13. JD | April 2nd, 2009 at 10:25 pm

Yahoo, you idiots. Why don’t you read all these comments and listen and start making money? Nobody can afford your jacked up min. bids except big business in certain niches and you’re missing out on all our business because we can’t make a profit on your min bids.

I resell software and I barely make a profit on $0.04 a click on Google. If I paid your $0.50 min bid I’d be out of business tomorrow.

It’s no wonder you guys only have 7% of search market share. Next year you’ll wake up and that’ll be cut in half too.
14. chonp | April 11th, 2009 at 5:25 pm

I agree and very good. thang you
15. UK Web Hosting Dude | May 1st, 2009 at 5:18 am

I run goog campaigns and overture ones and I have always found that the yahoo buyers are completely different. All of the metrics in our conversions are tracked separately for overture and there are notable differences.
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