New Alliance Heralds New Opportunities

How the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance works for advertisers

search alliance logo Yahoo! and Microsoft have received U.S. and E.U. regulatory clearance for their search transaction. The Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance will provide a competitive search platform that we believe will drive innovation in search and search advertising, offer a more engaging and personalized experience for consumers, and create greater value for advertisers and publishers. It will not immediately affect your account.

How this benefits you
Once implemented, the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance will allow advertisers to:

Reach more customers—The alliance will help you reach up to 150 million searchers and get approximately 62 percent more search volume* than on Yahoo! alone through a new, unified search marketplace combining the Yahoo! and Microsoft networks. We’ll continue to innovate and enhance the search experience on our leading Web properties, driving even more search volume.

Save valuable time and effort—Once implemented, you’ll be able log into one place—Microsoft’s adCenter—to manage all your campaigns, for greater efficiency and a better return on investment. You’ll also be able to reach users on both Yahoo! and Microsoft sites, as well as other premium partner sites.

Benefit from rapid innovation—Yahoo! is continually delivering new features and innovations to the world’s favorite online destinations, content, and Web products used by hundreds of millions of consumers to connect to the people and things that matter to them most. That innovation will only accelerate under the new alliance. Microsoft will continue to develop the underlying technologies that drive high quality algorithmic and paid search results, while we will use our resources to improve the advertiser and consumer search experience.

We expect advertisers, publishers and consumers to benefit from this alliance. By establishing a more competitive paid search marketplace, publishers (our affiliate partners) will also benefit through potentially better monetization and stronger innovation, while end users will benefit by our increased focus on creating even more engaging and personalized experience for our users.

What should I do now?
Nothing. There will be no immediate changes to your account. Both companies are committed to making this transition as seamless and beneficial to you as possible. Our aim is a high quality transition of advertisers and partners in at least the U.S. prior to the 2010 holiday season. However, we may wait until 2011 if we determine this will be more effective.

Continue to stay tuned to this blog and your account alerts for news and information on the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance.

For more on the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance, visit:

The Yahoo! Transition Center.

—The Team

*Sources: comScore custom data, December 2009 and comScore qSearch December, 2009, respectively

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75 Comments Add your own

1. New Alliance Heralds New &hellip | February 18th, 2010 at 8:38 am

[...] more information, visit the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog. Posted by [...]
2. Yahoo & Microsoft Rec&hellip | February 18th, 2010 at 8:56 am

[...] Yahoo blogs have discussion around this. They include the Yahoo Search Blog, Yahoo Search Marketing Blog and Yahoo Developer [...]
3. Avromie | February 18th, 2010 at 10:41 am

By moving to “Microsoft’s adCenter” do we loose all of the new features that Yahoo has added over the past year?

What about “Search Partners”?

Content?
4. Mike | February 18th, 2010 at 11:42 am

Yahoo uses their better PPC advertising engine (YSM) and they use Bing’s superior search engine i think I read somewhere
5. Yahoo on Search and Adver&hellip | February 18th, 2010 at 12:40 pm

[...] advertisers, Yahoo says they will be able to reach more customers, save time and effort, and benefit from "rapid [...]
6. Ksm | February 18th, 2010 at 12:53 pm

As one of the YSM! loyal advertisers, I’m concerned about how much I will be affected since this is a move toward Bing. Trading off with more search volume seems to be a good bargain. Hope this will be a great team up against Google.

Good Luck Search Alliance,
Your Customer
7. Administrator | February 18th, 2010 at 1:11 pm

Avromie asks:

“By moving to “Microsoft’s adCenter” do we lose all of the new features that Yahoo has added over the past year?

What about “Search Partners”?

Content?”

Dear Avromie,

Good questions and glad you asked.

As you might expect, Yahoo!’s Sponsored Search platform and Microsoft’s adCenter platform are not identical, but they offer many similar features, tools and reports. Before any advertiser transitions begin, Yahoo! and Microsoft will work together to ensure that our advertisers have a high-quality product that is as familiar as possible and easy to use.

Prior to the transition, we will provide numerous tutorials, educational emails and site content to inform and educate our advertisers regarding all the tools and features of adCenter.

Re: Search partners:

Yahoo! will continue to manage its relationships with distribution partners, and will syndicate adCenter’s ads to these partners as it does now with Sponsored Search ads. Also, Yahoo! and Microsoft will continue to compete for future distribution partners. In addition to your ads showing on Microsoft sites, they will also run on Microsoft’s partner sites, such as Facebook, CNBC and others.

Re: Content:

Microsoft already offers a contextual advertising service similar to Content Match, so after the transition advertisers will bid on traffic from contextual ad placements via the adCenter platform. Yahoo! will have the ability to run Microsoft’s contextual ads on its own sites or partner sites, just as it does currently with Content Match. Yahoo! will also have the right to display contextual ads from third-party companies.
8. Yahoo on Search and Adver&hellip | February 18th, 2010 at 1:30 pm

[...] advertisers, Yahoo says they will be able to reach more customers, save time and effort, and benefit from “rapid [...]
9. a francois | February 18th, 2010 at 1:32 pm

will we be able to just block out all the new traffic, and run our ads as they currently are ?? im doing fine right now as things are
10. BIG NEWS: Yahoo! and Micr&hellip | February 18th, 2010 at 1:54 pm

[...] Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog [...]
11. Nick Gowdy | February 18th, 2010 at 2:14 pm

I think the heart of the “Search Partners” question might be more clearly stated,

“Are we still going to be able to choose the networks on which we advertise? E.g. Yahoo Search, Bing Search, Yahoo Search Partners, Bing Search Partners, etc.”

What about things like negative keywords? Is there going to be a cap at the campaign or ad group level?

There are a lot of unattractive things about the adCenter platform. I’m hoping this transition is not a regression in terms of tools and utility for advertisers.
12. Avromie | February 18th, 2010 at 2:25 pm

Thank you Nick for clarifying.

Also allowing the user to Up/Down bid for Search Partners.

I would imagine that most people would rather that Bing manages the natural and Yahoo managed the paid.

The advantage to the user is not more traffic, since many of us have accounts with both, the advantage is a single interface that is open and transparent and giving as much control to the user as possible.

Anybody know what will happen with SearchMonkey results?
I want to enhance my results, but if it is going to die then I don’t want to waste my time.
13. SEM All Stars | February 18th, 2010 at 4:18 pm

Here is the problem with this…

Bing’s interface is awful. It is slow and the reporting doesn’t have any features that stand out…

With Bing, as you know, we are only allowed 1024 characters on the negative keyword list.. a JOKE!!! I’ve been asking for more characters from my reps for months, and they always say the same thing… “I’ll look into it.”

It is impossible to manage keywords that are broad match with 1024 characters… especially in my verticals…

Another issue. Yahoo allows more characters in an ad than bing does.. Which ad count are we going with…

I use YWA… is that still going to work.

I use a mac. am I now going to have to buy a PC to use the bing offline editor.

This whole thing sounds great when people yahoo and bing are talking about it… but when you look at all the things that need to be addressed so advertisers don’t get screwed… its a raw deal…

Am I going to loose my CTR history and Ad quality scores and “click ability” scores when the switch happens?

I advertise on both search engines..

I know they want to compete with google… and that’s great… but do it in a way that doesn’t bite the hand that keeps feeding every time a click happens…

Anybody else feel this way?
14. Nick Gowdy | February 18th, 2010 at 5:35 pm

That pretty much sums it up above…

This “Alliance” has a real shot to be taken more seriously as a competitor to Google and draw people to this side of the fence that right now only bother with AdWords — but they’re simply not going to get there if they force people to use adCenter in its current state as far as negative keywords, segmentation, reporting, and shoddy conversion tracking. They might actually LOSE people that way.
15. Seo Search | SEO Tyro&hellip | February 18th, 2010 at 5:35 pm

[...] Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog » New Alliance Heralds New Opportunities [...]
16. Rank High In Google With &hellip | February 18th, 2010 at 5:47 pm

[...] Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog » New Alliance Heralds New Opportunities [...]
17. Yahoo on Search and Adver&hellip | February 18th, 2010 at 6:34 pm

[...] advertisers, Yahoo says they will be able to reach more customers, save time and effort, and benefit from "rapid [...]
18. Bing Results Showing on Y&hellip | February 18th, 2010 at 7:26 pm

[...] http://www.ysmblog.com/blog/2010/02/18/search-alliance/ [...]
19. Tyler Thomas | February 18th, 2010 at 9:10 pm

Will there be any way for agencies to get our hands on some experience and more information before the transition is complete? I would like to have the knowledge to serve my advertisers as soon as possible. Please have someone contact me.

Regards,

Tyler Thomas
Chief Operating Officer
Silver Scope Promotion
20. Raheel | February 18th, 2010 at 9:59 pm

I think that’s a reason why Yahoo slowly facilitating its advertisers and not giving what they wants over the years I believe its not the MORE visitors an advertisers are looking for from Yahoo rather then MORE quality visitors.

I also believe that Yahoo always want that i.e to become a part of Google or Microsoft rather then work alone in this industry.
21. » Yahoo on Search a&hellip | February 19th, 2010 at 12:08 am

[...] advertisers, Yahoo says they will be able to reach more customers, save time and effort, and benefit from “rapid [...]
22. Ben | February 19th, 2010 at 2:10 am

adCenter (unlike Yahoo) do not have Wire Transfer option as payment method. This can be serious problem for couple of companies!
23. Canadian SEO | Local Cana&hellip | February 19th, 2010 at 8:07 am

[...] Yahoo Search Press Release… [...]
24. Microsoft Yahoo Alliance &hellip | February 19th, 2010 at 9:10 am

[...] more information on the announced Microsoft Yahoo alliance (click [...]
25. Keith | February 19th, 2010 at 10:03 am

I have received 2 emails stating that Yahoo Search will be partering with PriceGrabber as of 3/10/10, and that Yahoo customers will need to sign up on PriceGrabber come that date.

I’m confused!
26. Dave | February 19th, 2010 at 3:33 pm

I’m not really excited about this either. YSM has been performing well for me and I am happy with it. I also advertise using adcenter on bing and it’s not good at all. I hardly get any sales from adcenter and a lot from YSM. Why would I want to switch to a platform which doesnt work as well as the current YSM. I say give us an option to keep things the way they are instead of forcing us to go over to adcenter. People who want to switch can but let the ones who like things the way they are to be able to continue doing what we do because I’m not sold on adcenter.
27. AJ | February 20th, 2010 at 12:14 pm

Being a Mac user, I have a problem with having to use the Microsoft AdCenter user interface to access both my AdCenter and YSM accounts, mainly because I am unable to use the customer service panel from within the AdCenter user interface. The only way to get questions answered by AdCenter customer service is to access the customer service panel via a PC using Microsoft proprietary hardware and software. This alone was enough to keep me from using my AdCenter accounts, favoring my YSM advertising accounts.

Can someone please see to it that this type of problem is addressed?

Thanks!
28. steve | February 20th, 2010 at 3:07 pm

KICK GOOGLES ASS. Bury them alive please!! Wipe them off the internet
29. Miranda | February 21st, 2010 at 6:29 am

Microsoft’s ad center is horrible. I haven’t been there in a few months and I hope it changes dramatically before the switch. With so many resources, how could they get this so wrong. I dread the fact of using MS adcenter!

I wonder if they did any usability tests. It’s frankly an embarrassing product.
30. hildiid | February 21st, 2010 at 10:17 am

Very good news. I hope, this is the start of a journey to catch Google.
31. Smart-E-Blog&hellip | February 21st, 2010 at 3:53 pm

[...] (blog was taken from Yahoo’s Search Marketing blog – link here for more details). [...]
32. Mike | February 21st, 2010 at 10:46 pm

I can’t wait to see someone finally stands up to Google and knock them off their perch! Marketers build them and now they hate them.

They need to come back down to mother earth once and for good!
33. Lich King Gold | February 21st, 2010 at 10:49 pm

Looking forward to the joint venture between Yahoo and MSN. Hope you guys can Calm down big boy Google.
34. wow leveling guides | February 21st, 2010 at 10:51 pm

It’s about time we have a fair fight. Well this might not be one but as big as they are…this can pass as a fair one!
35. Micheal | February 22nd, 2010 at 12:47 am

“you’ll be able log into one place—Microsoft’s adCenter”? I actually hate microsoft adcenter. It has a slower connection over here. If they can develop ( in which i think they would ) a new and fast control panel, that’d be great
36. John | February 22nd, 2010 at 10:34 am

Yahoo’s PPC interface leaves quite a bit to be desired. Unfortunately, even adCenter has nothing on Google’s system and people, including me and my clients, will continue to put the majority of our budgets toward Google until other systems start to stack up.

Google makes something like 98% of their revenue from their advertising platform. I’m not sure why creating an equally feature-rich platform for both Yahoo and adCenter wouldn’t be the number one priority over there. But hey, I’m just a customer…not like I’m running the place.
37. AnneMarie | February 22nd, 2010 at 1:09 pm

Yahoo…have you ever USED the Microsoft interface??? It is the most poorly designed reporting interface I have ever dealt with. Please please use your own!
38. Jo | February 22nd, 2010 at 3:35 pm

I second Dave’s comments below. Why not give people the choice – those who want to switch can, but those who want to stay with YSM should be able to have that option as well.

Is this possible?

—–

I’m not really excited about this either. YSM has been performing well for me and I am happy with it. I also advertise using adcenter on bing and it’s not good at all. I hardly get any sales from adcenter and a lot from YSM. Why would I want to switch to a platform which doesnt work as well as the current YSM. I say give us an option to keep things the way they are instead of forcing us to go over to adcenter. People who want to switch can but let the ones who like things the way they are to be able to continue doing what we do because I’m not sold on adcenter.
39. DeWitt's Media » Mi&hellip | February 22nd, 2010 at 5:39 pm

[...] it was announced by Microsoft and Yahoo! that they have received the go-ahead to implement their new search alliance. This means that the two will be clear to continue their plans for their search agreement, without [...]
40. Todd Rodenborn | February 23rd, 2010 at 10:27 am

As I understand it YSM goes away and Microsoft adCenter stays. We prefer YSM, but to the victor goes the spoils. Obviously Microsoft will not admit that the YSM interface is superior. None-the-less I’m glad we will only have to be knowledgable about 2 interfaces going forward instead of 3. I just hope they merge sooner rather than later, or there won’t be anything left to merge.
41. russ | February 23rd, 2010 at 10:28 am

That is big news for sure…
42. Gaz Hutchinson | February 23rd, 2010 at 10:35 am

I wish it was the other way round and we keep the YSM back office. It is so much better. Also I find Yahoo advertising way way more profitable and adding identical campaigns to both YSM and MSN usually only provides a trickle of traffic from MSN compared to Yahoo, so not sure at all where the advantage is going to be?

If only we were given a choice of carrying on or switching rather than it being forced upon us. Maybe they will reconsider the way they implement this after listening to users comments?
43. jerome wilkerson | February 23rd, 2010 at 11:04 am

I hope you-all keep Bing’s LIVE PHONE SUPPORT. They do an Excellent job…and during the upcoming transition would sure be nice to have around.
Also, it will be interesting to see what happens to Bid Costs.
44. Jimmie Warnell | February 23rd, 2010 at 11:11 am

When you say you have an alliance with Microsoft search, are you referring to BING? This is important to me because I pay for sponsored searches with both Yahoo and Bing. Thanks.
45. Lovens Joseph | February 23rd, 2010 at 11:22 am

The live phone support is much better for small business owners who have no experience
bidding. That would make Yahoo Search Mktg have more customers helping business owners advertise and there’s more trust in between because they help you out step by step on what to do.

From Lovens.
46. Brett West | February 23rd, 2010 at 11:44 am

When the alliance takes effect, will it be necessary to maintain advertising accounts with both Yahoo and Bing/Microsoft or will they be merged somehow?
47. Brett West | February 23rd, 2010 at 11:46 am

I agree with the previous posts regarding LIVE PHONE SUPPORT. This single aspect offered by Microsoft makes me far more loyal to them than the customer service joke known as Google.
48. Max | February 23rd, 2010 at 12:01 pm

I run all adult ads on Yahoo and MSN does not currently allow adult ads, how will this transistion work for people like me? Will I be able to continue to run the adult ads on Yahoo? Yahoo and MSN? Neither? Thanks!
49. Yahoo! and Microsoft R&hellip | February 23rd, 2010 at 2:24 pm

[...] another update was sent out by the Yahoo! Search Marketing team, further promoting the Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance. The three main points in this blog article [...]
50. Kads | February 23rd, 2010 at 2:39 pm

I look forward to this Search Alliance, and for Microsoft and Yahoo to take on Google and increase their market share. I have been awaiting this for a long time and its great to see that progress is finally being made to close the gap with Google. Good Luck!
51. Fabian Ahmadi | February 23rd, 2010 at 2:45 pm

I think that this alliance will help us (marketers) in accessing the combined audience more effectively. I know of plenty of advertisers who don’t even bother to spend their time advertising on adcenter. Going forward, these advertisers automatically have access to this audience. Where I really see a benefit is the innovative power Microsoft can bring to the table. Microsoft might not always get it right, but their ability to manage large engineering teams and deliver functioning products is something to consider.

We haven’t exactly seen a lot of innovation from Yahoo! since the introduction of Panama, which was still lacking some basic features we had gotten used to from AdWords by the time it was finally released in 2006. Microsoft has a better track record of innovation in almost every industry it is in. Considering Microsoft’s deep pockets and its ability to build go big from scratch, we might be in for a treat.
52. Find People For Free | February 23rd, 2010 at 4:56 pm

This should be interesting to see how this will affect my PPC advertising. But with Google being as large as it is I hope yahoo and bing will make a good team.
53. Irving Sarreal | February 23rd, 2010 at 6:27 pm

The alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft should be a good partnership. I look forward in utilizing the new search network that Yahoo and Microsoft will create. Irving Sarreal
54. Irving Sarreal | February 23rd, 2010 at 6:32 pm

The next challenge for Yahoo and Microsoft is to create a new Admin interface for the online Marketers that is as robust as google.com/adwords. Irving Sarreal
55. Ad News and Views from Ar&hellip | February 24th, 2010 at 6:36 am

[...] and Microsoft Search Alliance coverage By now you’ve no doubt heard about the Yahoo! and Microsoft search alliance. It’s kind of a big deal. So big, in fact, that this blog saw a 100-percent increase in traffic, [...]
56. Yahoo! Search Marketing B&hellip | February 24th, 2010 at 6:43 am

[...] and Microsoft Search Alliance coverage By now you’ve no doubt heard about the Yahoo! and Microsoft search alliance. It’s kind of a big deal. So big, in fact, that this blog saw a 100-percent increase in traffic, [...]
57. Irving Sarreal | February 24th, 2010 at 7:16 am

This is biggest news in search marketing since Yahoo.com purchased Overture.com. Good luck Yahoo.com on the partnership. Irving Sarreal-www.iwswebsolutions.com
58. surety bonds | February 24th, 2010 at 4:16 pm

Both yahoo and Microsoft has a big effect on internet marketing.Yahoo as the search engine and Microsoft for softwares that can be use by marketers to improve their campaign on the web.
59. Nuanjee | February 27th, 2010 at 11:15 pm

Not giving up easily to google? Great, we’ll wait and see what cards you’ll reveal.
60. Yahoo! and Microsoft Adve&hellip | March 8th, 2010 at 2:12 pm

[...] Yahoo!’s search blog has more details on how the merger affects your PPC efforts. [...]
61. Air Purifiers Direct 2U | March 8th, 2010 at 2:37 pm

Finally, the time has come and I am looking forward to the combined efforts for advertising.
62. BIG NEWS: Yahoo! and Micr&hellip | March 9th, 2010 at 10:40 pm

[...] Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog [...]
63. Questions about the Yahoo&hellip | March 11th, 2010 at 8:58 am

[...] few weeks ago, we announced U.S. and E.U clearance for the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. This was, naturally, big news in the search marketing world. That post garnered some 60 comments [...]
64. Ad News and Views from Ar&hellip | March 17th, 2010 at 1:03 pm

[...] on the up and up By now you’ve no doubt heard about the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search alliance. There have been a lot of questions about it, naturally. But it looks like we’ve chosen a good [...]
65. Yahoo! Search Marketing B&hellip | March 17th, 2010 at 1:14 pm

[...] on the up and up By now you’ve no doubt heard about the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search alliance. There have been a lot of questions about it, naturally. But it looks like we’ve chosen a good [...]
66. Ad News and Views from Ar&hellip | March 23rd, 2010 at 5:22 pm

[...] on the up and up By now you’ve no doubt heard about the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search alliance. There have been a lot of questions about it, naturally. But it looks like we’ve chosen a good [...]
67. Ad News and Views from Ar&hellip | March 24th, 2010 at 4:14 pm

[...] on the up and up By now you’ve no doubt heard about the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search alliance. There have been a lot of questions about it, naturally. But it looks like we’ve chosen a good [...]
68. John | May 2nd, 2010 at 5:42 am

We are not getting as much clicks, conversions, or even use of the account funds since it switched to pricegrabber. And we are enabled for Yahoo only, so it should have been a smooth and even change, as our products did not get added to the PG engine.
69. John | May 2nd, 2010 at 5:42 am

We are not getting as much clicks, conversions, or even use of the account funds since it switched to pricegrabber. And we are enabled for Yahoo only, so it should have been a smooth and even change, as our products did not get added to the PG engine.
70. Yahoo! Search Marketing B&hellip | May 6th, 2010 at 10:05 am

[...] Since February, hundreds of folks at Yahoo! and Microsoft have been working diligently to bring our search alliance to life. We wanted to give you an update on our progress, and let you know what to expect in the coming months. [...]
71. Niphon | May 8th, 2010 at 7:44 pm

Hope that changes this. It will improve our sales. It still is quite a good new start.
72. pensions Birmingham | July 8th, 2010 at 3:40 pm

Two of the best names on IT world.Saying search engine yahoo is on top then Microsoft for softwares.Bringing together will surely result to a more awesome technological advancement.
73. barkod okuyucu | July 18th, 2010 at 2:51 pm

Both yahoo and Microsoft has a big effect on internet marketing.Yahoo as the search engine and Microsoft for softwares that can be use by marketers to improve their campaign on the web.
74. barkod | July 18th, 2010 at 2:51 pm

This should be interesting to see how this will affect my PPC advertising. But with Google being as large as it is I hope yahoo and bing will make a good team.
75. barkod sistemi | July 18th, 2010 at 2:52 pm

We are not getting as much clicks, conversions, or even use of the account funds since it switched to pricegrabber.

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