Archive for May, 2009

Any Excuse for a Party

Writing ads for these unknown holidays could help get more clicks

Some holidays are obvious, such as Father’s Day. But just because they don’t make a card for it, doesn’t mean that some lesser known, slightly more…unconventional events couldn’t also be beneficial to certain advertisers.

As it happens, there are a ton of nationally recognized events that never make it onto your desk calendar. Each year Congress and other groups designate certain dates to promote their industry or cause. Father’s Day, for instance, was designated by President Lyndon Johnson as the third Sunday in June. It’s the biggest June holiday, but far from the only one.

For example, did you know that June is also National Bathroom Reading Month? Or that June 26 is Ugly Dog Day? Or that June 11 to 14 is Superman Week? Well, if you run a bookstore, dog grooming service or comic book site, you probably should.

These events may not make national news, but they’re certainly of interest to specific advertisers and as such, those advertisers may want to consider creating ads tailored to these events. They’re a great way to grow your account, because they’re highly relevant, interesting and, let’s face it, downright fun.

Here are some of the other unconventional dates in June, as well as an example of the type of business that might potentially capitalize on them:

• National Bathroom Reading Month—Bookstores
• Adopt a Shelter Cat Month—Pet stores, sellers of cat-related products
• Superman Week (June 11 – 14)—Comic book and collectible stores
• Meet a Mate Week (June 15 – 21)—Dating sites
• Ugly Dog Day (June 26)—Dog Groomers
• National Candy Month—Candy sellers
• Great Outdoors Month—Sporting goods stores
• National Rose Month—Florists or gardening supply sellers
• Ball Point Pen Day (June 10)—Office supply sites
• National Flag Week (June 14 – June 20)—Flag sellers
• Go Skateboarding Day (June 20)—Sporting goods and skateboard shops
• Fish Are Friends, Not Food Week (June 29 – July 5)—Pet and pet supply stores

Not every unconventional holiday has obvious related advertisers. For example, if you can find advertisers who may be able to capitalize on these events, by all means, let us know:

• Potty Training Awareness Month
• Turkey Lovers Month
• Please Take My Children to Work Day (June 29)
• Vinegar Day (June 20)
• National Go Barefoot Day (June 1)
• Carpenter Ant Awareness Week (June 21 – 27)
• National Old-Time Fiddler’s Week (June 22 – 27)
• International Clothesline Week (June 6 – 15)

While some of these have no obvious commercial potential (although I have my hopes up for Carpenter Ant Awareness Week), some could be a great reason to launch a search campaign that serves as a fun, new way to reach customers. And that could help explain why June is National Smile Month.

— Colin Kingston, Listings Editor

Fatherly Advice

Putting the “Pop” back into your Father’s Day ads

Oates. Tonto. Robin. Father’s Day.

What do all these things have in common? Well, they’re all overshadowed by slightly more famous counterparts. Oates had Hall, Tonto had The Lone Ranger, Robin had Batman and Father’s Day… has Mother’s Day.

But despite the second-banana status they share, they’re all celebrated in their own way—and Father’s Day is no exception. According to a 2008 survey conducted by BIGresearch on behalf of the National Retail Foundation, consumers expected to spend roughly $9.6 billion on Father’s Day gifts. The average person expected to spend $95.54 on the 2008 holiday, which isn’t small potatoes. So apparently consumers do care about The Old Man, and they’ll certainly be grabbing gifts for the 2009 Dad’s Day.

While we can never deliver stern but supportive homilies like Mike Brady did, we hope you’ll consider these tips as you prepare your campaigns for Father’s Day gift shoppers:

1. Be specific, when warranted
Offer broad results for broad search terms. Keywords like “gift for dad” should lead users to ads that suggest a variety of gift options, rather than just one highly specific option. But it’s also a good idea to call out at least some of your specific offers. Ads that simply mention that an advertiser sells gifts don’t generally perform as well as ads that actually give examples of what the site sells.

2. Sell products, not good feelings
Your ads should explain the offer, not the outcome. An ad that promises a happy Father’s Day isn’t helpful if the ad doesn’t also state how that outcome will be achieved. It’s better to focus on what you sell, rather than make promises of what may happen after the sale is made.

3. Make it all about Dad
Father’s Day ads with phrasing that’s generally associated with women may turn off search users. Referring to cologne as “perfume,” or referencing a men’s bag as a “purse” will keep users from clicking. Also, make sure that your keywords and ad copy don’t clash. The keyword “father’s day gifts” that leads to an ad mentioning Mother’s Day will confuse your potential customers.

4. Brag about your “value-adds”
Personalization often appeals to users, so if you offer that on your products, be sure to shout it out in your ads. Likewise, if you offer any type of discounts, coupons or incentives like free shipping, be sure to include those in your copy—searchers really love them.

5. Take your best shot
Golf items are a perennial Father’s Day gift. If you sell golf cart parts and accessories, focus your ads on the accessories. People searching on golf cart keywords are more likely to be looking for a bag holder or ball washer than a new windshield. Also, focus on standard golf supplies rather than novelty items, because more general golf equipment is probably more appealing to users. Advertisers marketing actual golf courses should absolutely use geo-targeted campaigns, which will display their ads specifically to users in their service area. After all, there’s no sense in advertising a golf course in Fargo to a user in San Diego. Geo-targeting makes it a lot easier for your customers to find you if you have a locally based business.

So while Father’s Day may get second billing to Mother’s Day’s, the numbers show that the June holiday is a superstar in its own right. Before the dutiful sons and daughters start their shopping experiences, review your ads and get them ready for Dad’s day. You might even help dads avoid the infamous necktie or bottle of aftershave.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Chris Willis

Display That Performs Like Search

Yahoo! expands Smart Ads program with new partnerships

What if you had a display ad that could be customized for a target audience with a variety of images, colors or messages? What if that ad could evolve as Yahoo! discovers more about the users looking at it? And what if that ad helped your display campaign perform more like your search campaigns?

That’s what an ad can do when it’s part of our Smart Ads program, which we’re expanding this week. Smart Ads takes different elements of ads and combines them in more ways than you can probably imagine to give customized messages to prospective clients. The program now helps deliver Smart Ads at greater scale by combining Yahoo!’s reach and user knowledge with innovative ad-serving technology from third-party providers. Smart Ads is an open platform, but Yahoo! is initially working with two partners, Teracent and Tumri, to make Smart Ads available to PC and mobile advertisers.

“Other publishers will offer so-called smart ad campaigns, but if it’s not running on the Yahoo! Network, it’s not as smart as it could be,” says David Zinman, vice-president and general manager of display advertising at Yahoo!. “We’re giving marketers the opportunity to reach consumers with customized ads on the PC and mobile Internet, and given the high performance of these campaigns in initial testing, it’s as if we’ve put performance marketing on steroids.”

Get specific
You may have a particular group of advertisers you’re trying to reach. But there are lots of different kinds of people within a demographic group, with different interests and backgrounds —and not every consumer will respond to a message the same way.

For example, you could set up a telecommunications ad campaign targeting 18-to-45-year-old cell phone users in Los Angeles. That demographic could contain everyone from a 28-year-old female hipster to a 43-year-old blue-collar male. And they would all see the same ad, which might look something like this:

Yahoo! has 150 million users who spent 43 billion minutes on our site last month—which means we have a lot of data that we can use to break those groups into much smaller behavioral segments. The woman might visit Yahoo! Music to check out The Decemberists, while the man might visit Yahoo! Finance. So we can start figuring out what kinds of messages they might be interested in. (Keeping in mind our privacy policies, of course.)

That’s where Smart Ads’ machine-learning technology comes in. You could prepare a few taglines, offers, images, logos and colors, and Smart Ads technology combines them to create thousands of ads that can be displayed to your potential customers. Our mobile Smart Ads can even take into account things like the local weather.

As people like our hipster and our blue-collar guy click on ads, our systems learn what combinations people like them want to see. Is the hipster more interested in convenience and multimedia? Is the blue-collar guy more interested in cost?

In not too long, the 43-year-old man might see more ads like this:

Meanwhile, the 32-year-old female might see an ad like this:

Display that performs like search
Because these combinations can be finely tuned to match customized messages with users, Smart Ads can help the right ads be displayed to the right users. So far, advertisers testing Smart Ads have seen significantly improved campaign performance based on a variety of metrics, including click performance, conversion and overall return on investment.

For example, after executing several Smart Ad campaigns with Yahoo! and its partners, Hewlett-Packard saw a return on ad spend that was more than 20 times higher than their traditional display campaigns, and on par with their search marketing campaigns.

“The ability to run a display advertising campaign that can match the ROI of my search marketing spend is a potentially game-changing proposition,” says Catherine Paschkewitz, director of demand generation with HP Direct. “The Smart Ad solution has enabled us to increase our ROI by reaching the right set of users with the right message.”

Plus, after you’ve run a Smart Ad campaign, we can give you reporting data all the way down to the conversion that tells you which groups responded to which messages. That can help you even when you’re setting up traditional offline campaigns, and make all of your advertising that much smarter.

—Jeff Sweat, Blog Editor

The Grown-Up Gamer

Your video game ads should include the middle-aged folks still blasting away

Remember the days when chomping power pellets and throwing flaming barrels at gorillas was strictly kid’s stuff?

Those days are over, according to The Nielson Company’s recent report, “The State of the Video Gamer.” The report says that the average age of video game players has been steadily increasing, and that higher-end gaming consoles like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 attract more engaged gamers (i.e., adults), drawing them away from other distractions such as television. As game consoles have evolved into multimedia hubs, the average age of the user of the game console has steadily increased.

According to Neilson, the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, higher-end systems that tend to attract older folks, have the highest “active user percent measure,” so they see the most use among gamers. The two products also have the highest average usage days and daily number of sessions. That means a lot of adults are gaming on a regular basis.

PC games are also feeling the love from adults. According to Neilson’s December 2008 data, the single largest group of personal computer video game players is females age 25 to 54. That number accounts for approximately 29% of total PC game players. Males age 25 to 54 account for the next largest block, roughly 20% of all PC game players.

So what does all this mean?
As games have come of age, so have the people who play them. If you’re an advertiser who sells video games, you may be missing out on a huge audience if you only target children and teens in your ads. As the Neilson study indicates, game use is on the rise among adults, so if you do sell games, consider creating ads that speak to grown-ups as well.

Whereas things like deals and low price points may not matter as much to the under-18 set, for adult gamers those things can make a huge difference. Call out the things that may appeal to adults about gaming, such as price, variety, versatility, etc. Consider creating unique campaigns for special occasions such as Father’s Day, so that you can run distinct “dad” ads that may appeal to Father’s Day shoppers. Simply put, your audience is bigger than you thought—so you want to make sure that your message reaches all of them.

As gaming continues to evolve, it’s less of a fringe area just for kids, and more of a total family entertainment source, right up there with the TV and the DVD player. Really, who knows how wide the gaming the audience will grow, or who the next group of gamers may be: Grandparents? Babies? The family dog?

Whoever picks up the controller next, one thing’s for sure: Advertisers should be ready to market to those people. Because like most good video games, when it comes to game sales, there’s always another level.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst

Photo courtesy of Flickr user gwire.

Understanding Targeting

5 common questions about our new targeting features

If you’re like some of our advertisers, you have questions about how to use our new targeting features. Fortunately for you, some of your questions have already been asked and answered at our webinars. Below are five of the most frequently asked questions about targeting.

I manage a Web site for teens. Do you allow for targeting of underage users?   
At this time, we don’t offer targeting for teens.  You’re able to block underage users, but not specifically target them.

Can I block an age group—such as users over 65— as you do for 17 or less?        
In age targeting, only users 17 years and younger can be filtered out completely. However, you can reduce the amount of traffic you receive from less desirable age ranges by adjusting your bids upwards for the demographic groups you want the most.

By the way, if you so chose, you can simply block less desirable traffic in geographic and ad scheduling targeting.

How do you determine the age or gender of a user?  
We use anonymous and aggregated information, such as registration data, from Yahoo!’s large user population, to help determine the age and gender of individual users who are viewing your ads. 

Do I need to turn on the reporting for geo-targeting, ad scheduling and demographic targeting?
You are automatically opted in to the ad scheduling and geo-targeting reports for the targets you choose – and into all age and gender reporting as soon as you choose a target.  If you would like age and gender reporting before choosing a target, simply opt in through the user interface.

Can the bid adjustment lower the bid, as well as raise it?            
Not currently.  Bid adjustments allow you to increase your bid for the target prospects that you believe will be most valuable to your business.  They allow you to make it more likely that your spend will be focus on your high value targets.

—The Team

Primping for Prom (and Graduation)

5 tips to help get your ads in the spotlight for spring events

When it comes to teenage rites of passage, can anything beat the prom? That magical evening is a benchmark event in most teens’ lives—even if some of them can’t remember it the next day. Almost as important (though far less embarrassing) is graduation; a day when the sky is filled with the mortarboards of high school and college students preparing to embark on the next chapter of their lives.

Though prom and graduation are important to the under-25 set, they’re equally important to any advertiser that sells items for which prom-goers and graduation gift-givers may be looking. According to a 2008 survey conducted by BIGresearch on behalf of the National Retail Foundation, 32.4% of respondents planned to purchase at least one graduation gift last year, with a total projected spend of $4.4 billion.

Individually, the average consumer buying graduation gifts in 2008 planned to give gifts to two graduates, and expected to spend an average of $52.12 on each present. While we’re still in an economic slump, the fact remains that graduates still need gifts and prom-goers still need supplies. Buyers may be a tad more conservative this year, but they’re still out there looking to spend.

Which means that if you’re an advertiser who may appeal to graduation gift-hunters or prom-shoppers, it’s time to put on your dancing shoes and get your prom and grad listings ready for a night on the town. Here are five things to consider:

1. Users searching on keywords like “graduation cards” are generally looking for greeting cards, rather than formal graduation announcements. So if you happen to sell both, consider putting the emphasis on actual cards in ads for card keywords.

2. Card sites that offer customizable card options should be sure to stress those options in their ad copy. Users seem to like the personal touch, so if you offer the chance to add photos, logos or anything else your customers can customize, shout it out.

3. Floral sites should consider putting the emphasis on non-floral items (gift baskets, candy, etc.) in their ads for male keywords such as “graduation gift for boy.” We hate to gender stereotype, but typically guys would rather have a big ol’ basket of candy than a lovely bouquet of flowers, so if you have options that go beyond floral, now’s the time to call them out.

4. Dress sites that sell maternity as well as prom dresses (and we’re declining to speculate on that connection) should put the focus on their prom offerings in their ads for prom keywords. This can be done by front-loading “prom” info in the title or description, or creating a specific ad group just for prom keywords. This will serve up a prom-specific ads to people searching on those terms.

5. Advertisers that sell designer prom dresses may want to avoid ad copy that only specifies one particular designer. While this is great for users who know exactly what they’re looking for it, it may deter users who are new to the world of prom dresses. Offering a wide variety of choices could make “prom dress” appealing to both types of users.

As always, the usual rules of thumb apply: Be sure to use keyword insertion to ensure that the ad copy contains the keyword, as well as alt text, to make sure that keywords appear as desired. Call out any competitive advantages you may offer, such as free shipping, special sales or coupon codes. If you’re an advertiser that only serves one specific location, consider creating a geo-targeted campaign, which will display your ads specifically to users in your area, bringing you much more targeted traffic.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Andrew Kitzmiller.

The Favicon Marks Your Spot

Yahoo! tests favicons with popular search ad results

It’s good for everybody when a user searching for your website can quickly identify that your ad belongs to you. That’s why we’re rolling out a new icon that helps searchers spot your site at a glance.

We’re testing a program that uses favicons, the little icons that show up on your browser next to the address window when you’re on a page—say, on Expedia.com. These favicons are already widely in use on the Web. Now, when a user searches for “Expedia,” or another search that matches your domain name, that same favicon will show up next to the URL in your ad. It’ll look something like this:

What good does that do anyone? Well, it’s just one more way for users to know they’re really looking at your site, which will improve the search experience. And if they know you’re really what they searched for, they may click on you more frequently, helping your click-through rate and improving your quality score.

Keep in mind that this is a test, and we’re only trying it out on select advertisers. As such, you can’t sign up for it just yet if you’re not one of the early advertisers who are piloting the project. However, if you’re bidding on your own domain name and you have a favicon.ico file on your site, you may be eligible to participate. 

Not interested in participating? Just contact us to let us know that you’d like out. (Or, for that matter, if you’d like in when it opens up further.)  We’ll be sure to keep you posted as the program evolves.

  —Jeff Sweat, Blog Editor

Advertising to Dads and Grads

Yahoo! experts give you Father’s Day, graduation advice in our webinar

Mother’s Day is almost here, which in the marketing world means that you should stop thinking about Mom and start thinking about Dad. If you don’t have your campaigns ready for Father’s Day and graduation season, you should attend our free Dads and Grads Webinar tomorrow to help make the most of this heavy shopping season.

During the webinar, Yahoo! experts will provide you with valuable Father’s Day and graduation-related information that can help you prepare and improve your holiday campaigns. The one-hour webinar will cover the following:

• Trends in Father’s Day and graduation consumer spending habits
• How to write strong, targeted ads, including adding “father’s day” and “graduation” keywords to your holiday campaigns
• Best practices for this season.

Date/Time
The webinar will be presented one time only, on Wednesday, May 6 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time/2:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Yahoo! Search Marketing staff will be available during the webinar to answer your questions with our online chat feature.

Space is limited, so please register for the webinar today. If you want to know about our other webinars, check out our webinar archive.

—The Team