Search Alliance Update

What to expect and when to expect it as we move toward the transition to adCenter

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.

Our top priority is to make your transition to adCenter as smooth as possible. This is how we’re planning to do that:

Protect the holiday period – We know how important the holiday selling season is to many of you, so our aim is to complete the transition in the U.S. and Canada before the start of the 2010 holiday season.
Ensure a quality transition – If we determine that we cannot transition with quality before the holiday period, we’ll defer the transition until the early part of 2011.
Provide a window-of-time – To provide as much flexibility as possible, we intend to offer a window of several weeks in late summer, during which you can choose the time to initiate and complete your transition.

To help guide you through the step-by-step process of moving your campaigns to adCenter, we’ll provide you with transition tools within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. We’ll also be sending a series of emails to help you become acquainted with adCenter and everything it offers. Additionally, you can visit the Yahoo! Transition Center, which includes articles, downloadable materials and—coming soon—videos and tutorials about the transition and adCenter.

For now, the two most important things you can do are to manage your Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns as usual, and read all of our transition-related communications, both here on the blog and in your email box. Once the transition is complete, you’ll have one convenient account that will give you access to up to 154 million searchers and approximately 62% more search volume than on Yahoo! alone (source: comScore Media Metrix March 2010).

Please note—as always—that before and during the transition process, Yahoo! will never ask for your private information, including credit card information or log-in password, in an e-mail message. If you ever have questions about the legitimacy of a Yahoo! email, please contact us before taking any action. For more information on “phishing,” we invite you to visit the Help Center or our guide to online security.

— The Team

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63 Comments Add your own

1. JoeJ | May 6th, 2010 at 10:11 am

If we are already running sponsored ads at adcenter.microsoft.com (the same ads we also run at Yahoo)…I am assuming we will just be shutting any Yahoo ads down as there is no need to transfer ads we already have in place at the MSN adcenter. Is this perspective correct?
2. JoeJ | May 6th, 2010 at 10:12 am

Will we be given a refund of any Yahoo Balance if we simply shut down our Yahoo ads (being we already have the same ads at MSN)?
3. SavingMoney | May 6th, 2010 at 11:06 am

I have never used MSN (Bing??). I have only used Yahoo & Google. This is so confusing!
4. Vancouver Search Engine Marketing | May 6th, 2010 at 11:06 am

Of course refund will be given to you. Keep in mind that nothing will happen for some time so no need to rush on anything. Make sure that your accounts are the same on both sides and before anything happens you will be contact and given plenty of time to make any changes you may need to.
5. Marketing Steve | May 6th, 2010 at 11:38 am

I’m actually looking forward to this alliance and the merge into the Adcenter system. I’ve always found Adcenter to be very easy to use and pretty straightforward. Never was a big fan of the new Yahoo system although I did use it. Now it won’t be necessary to manage multiple accounts. Should be good for business.
6. Scott | May 6th, 2010 at 11:44 am

Will Yahoo analytics be used by the new combined search platform? (Yahoo is much better than MSN.)
7. Yahoo and Microsoft Searc&hellip | May 6th, 2010 at 12:09 pm

[...] We have known about a planned search alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft for some time now. However, the rollout of the alliance has been slow in coming. Yahoo’s Search Marketing (YSM) division announced today the planned transition from the YSM system to Microsoft’s Adcenter system. [...]
8. Yahoo-MSFT Advertiser Tra&hellip | May 6th, 2010 at 12:11 pm

[...] its blog post, Yahoo lays out how the transition will proceed: Protect the holiday period – We know how [...]
9. deweykung | May 6th, 2010 at 12:47 pm

Which system will be use when ysm and bing are combined? What I really want is adword desktop, but it seem so far far away from both ysm and bing. Would developer teams have some times to analyze your rival system to check what are you missing? I’m really hate to manage my account when I must change many keywords (for ex 2k up) but ysm and bing system don’t support mass game.
10. Yahoo Gives Update on All&hellip | May 6th, 2010 at 1:15 pm

[...] Search Alliance in a while, but reminding everybody that the integration is still on the way, Yahoo posted an update today via its Search Marketing Blog. The company says priority one is to make the transition to [...]
11. tkdcatch22 | May 6th, 2010 at 2:04 pm

I can say this from experience on ALL platforms (Yahoo, MSN, and Google)…If this merge basically ends up being like running a large MSN adcenter account, and if adcenter still works the way it does not…IT…WILL…SUCK…

Why? Let me count the ways:

1) First off, they don’t have a desktop that runs on OS-X (Mac)…How can you be that stubborn and ignorant in this day and age? Apple products, and the OS that runs them, are here to stay, and growing at a rate that’s making Bill Gates (or rather, now, Steve Ballmer) soil himself…

2) Even when I run Adcenter on XP, I continually get errors (primarily related to SQL 2008) that Microsoft tech are completely unable to fix…their answer has become “reinstall all of windows and that will fix the problem”…WTF? Are you kidding me? The answer to a software installation problem should NEVER require you to clear your system out and start all over…what kind of crap are they programming? (Don’t answer that, I’m already aware of Vista…)

3) The Adcenter Desktop, when it’s working, lacks a number of crucial features…not least of which is the ability to adjust the bids on multiple keywords by an amount OR a percentage WITHOUT exporting/importing to a spreadsheet….THAT’S RIDICULOUS! There are far more issues I don’t have time (nor patience) to list here…Microsoft, you can contact me if you really want to know, and if you’re really interested in creating a desktop that actually has a CHANCE to compete with Adwords (Google)…

Let me sum it up this way: Download Adwords, and COPY IT…It works perfectly, and there’s NO REASON you should renege on any of the features they offer…IF (A HUGE IF) you made Adcenter work the way Adwords does, I would be your biggest fan (instead of your biggest detractor) and would absolutely love working in my MSN (and eventually Yahoo) account…As it is now, I wrestle each day with shooting myself, or working with adcenter…so far, I haven’t shot myself, but the way Adcenter works, who knows how long that will last…
12. » Yahoo Gives Updat&hellip | May 6th, 2010 at 3:00 pm

[...] Search Alliance in a while, but reminding everybody that the integration is still on the way, Yahoo posted an update today via its Search Marketing [...]
13. Administrator | May 6th, 2010 at 3:44 pm

@JoeJ (#1): Yes, if you already have an adCenter account with all of the same campaigns that you’re using in Yahoo! Sponsored Search, you won’t be required to copy the Yahoo! campaigns over in your transition. As to your second question (#2 above), in most cases, any pre-paid funds in accounts not managed by an account team will be transferred into your adCenter account when you accept Microsoft’s Terms & Conditions. More details about how funds will transfer will be provided as the transition date approaches.

@Scott (#6): Yahoo! and Microsoft plan to provide high-quality, competitive search analytics, but the details are still being determined. As transition plans are firmed up, we will communicate in more detail about what you can expect in terms of analytics tools.

@deweykung (#9): All Sponsored Search advertisers will use the adCenter platform for their paid search campaigns following their transition, and the Yahoo! Sponsored Search system will be decommissioned. Yahoo! will provide advertisers with direct access to 13 months of historical data from our Sponsored Search platform for a specified time period following completion of the transition in each market.

Microsoft has committed to continuing to improve its products to enable Yahoo! to deliver a quality experience to its advertisers. Additionally, Yahoo! will update, improve or develop new tools, processes and products that will use Microsoft’s products, to provide quality support to the transition.
14. Dilip | May 6th, 2010 at 9:39 pm

Does Microsoft adCenter accepts payments by PayPal?
15. mr a | May 6th, 2010 at 10:32 pm

How can i manage the ads text title?
title for ysm is 40 ,but title for bing is 25
please thinking of this problem
16. deweykung | May 6th, 2010 at 11:29 pm

What about singular and plural word that ysm see them as same word but bing does not?
ps. If it possible I would like to ask that, could you set up the “live call center team” please?
17. JustBuyTickets.com | May 7th, 2010 at 4:38 am

I look forward to making my life a little easier. The alliance could be a great thing and could be a horrible thing who knows.
18. Ranjan | May 7th, 2010 at 4:56 am

Will liquor advt keywords which we currently used on yahoo work on msn. MSN’ss current policy does not allow liquor keywords like scotch, liquor baskets, etc.
19. The Archery Bow Buyers Gu&hellip | May 7th, 2010 at 6:21 am

[...] Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog » Search Alliance Update [...]
20. The Archery Bow Buyers Gu&hellip | May 7th, 2010 at 6:22 am

[...] Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog » Search Alliance Update [...]
21. Beetle Bailey | May 7th, 2010 at 6:35 am

If MSN/Bing will not allow our company to advertise due to an overly absurd policy, but Yahoo does…what can I expect from Yahoo in the future?
22. Jason | May 7th, 2010 at 9:06 am

Hello, I currently manage many Yahoo and Bing advertising accounts for customers. I know there will be one log in however, since there will still be two search engines, will there still be two platforms, within, Microsoft Adcenter, to manage bids and so on for Yahoo and Bing? I hope I am making sense here!
23. Deal Alert | May 7th, 2010 at 9:28 am

I for one is personally hoping this transition happens next year. I don’t think bing is ready. I find it very hard to use.
24. Matias Leiva | May 7th, 2010 at 11:39 am

Hello there,

Will the new platform allow us to run FLASH driven and video capture pages?

Currently Adcenter pauses campaigns that have video driven capture pages since they can not read the file.

This has been a drag for marketers, as the web continues to transition to video than actual “web copy”.

Thank you for the update!
25. Imran | May 7th, 2010 at 11:44 am

I am onto both YSM! and Adcenter…I usually see low searches on Adcenter compared to YSM now how will i know how much impact will happen on my searches… it it going to be YSM+Adcenter or either of the one… so confusing.. Help.

Thanks,
Imran Pasha
SEM Account Manager
Powerweave.com
26. Microsoft, Yahoo prep for&hellip | May 7th, 2010 at 12:08 pm

[...] “To provide as much flexibility as possible, we intend to offer a window of several weeks in late summer, during which you can choose the time to initiate and complete your transition,” according to a Yahoo blog post. [...]
27. Microsoft, Yahoo prep for&hellip | May 7th, 2010 at 2:03 pm

[...] “To provide as much flexibility as possible, we intend to offer a window of several weeks in late summer, during which you can choose the time to initiate and complete your transition,” according to a Yahoo blog post. [...]
28. Work from Home Idea ̵&hellip | May 7th, 2010 at 2:13 pm

[...] Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog » Search Alliance Update [...]
29. Bosco | May 7th, 2010 at 2:41 pm

I use both but Adcenter does not have Tracking URLs. Is this going to get fixed? Also, ad scheduling is better in Yahoo. Are all features, that are currently missing, going to get implemented in Adcenter?
30. Jeffrey Hain | May 7th, 2010 at 3:13 pm

We are a heavy search advertiser on both Bing and Yahoo.

As I understand it, with the combined platform, we will be using one interface to manage accounts on both portals. Unfortunately, we will only have one set of tracking parameters.

The Yahoo and MSN portals have different audience profiles. And people start their search on the portal home page, not in a vacuum.

We have been tracking results by engine, keyword and landing page for 2+ years. I say the following with confidence: There is a difference in performance for the same landing pages and same keywords across different search engines.

We have achieved success because we are able to track results and adjust bids by individual keyword and engine. Without this visibility and functionality in the combined platform, we will be forced to manage to the average.

The outcome will be reduced search spend because blended results won’t allow us to increase spend on the portal that’s producing optimal results.

If this union is to work for sophisticated search marketers, please set up separate accounts for each portal so we can manage bids by portal.
31. Sue | May 7th, 2010 at 4:38 pm

I completely agree with Jeffrey Hain. I hope they are talking to some of their clients big and small and taking these matters into consideration. If there is any sort of negative impact due to this alliance, this will be a huge opportunity for google to gain even more ad share since we will spend our money where we get the best return.

Even if it is in the same account, we at least need to be able to bid differently based on Yahoo conversions vs. MSN conversions. They differ by quite a bit from my experience (as google conversions differ from ysm and msn).

Lastly, MSN’s editorial guidelines vary greatly than Yahoos guidelines. I truly hope MSN keeps the guidelines separate or I for see a lot of angry advertisers.
32. Christine | May 8th, 2010 at 4:03 am

I see a HUGE difference in click volume advantage YAHOO for the exact same ads run on both adcenter and yahoo. I am really dreading this merger and see mostly a downside. After countless hours with microsoft adcenter support to determine why the clickthrough is so low it turns out that they layer on search relevance algorithms onto the ads. In other words, they do not run your ads based on matching the user’s keywords to your ad but on the a combination of the relevance of your ad to your site pages and users keywords. Needless to say, the really messes up the frequency and hence the click through etc of your ads. PLEASE PLEASE do not let microsoft drive this thing. At least have someone on the YAHOO side who know what they’re doing be in charge, else this will be a monumental disaster for YAHOO customers.
33. John | May 8th, 2010 at 6:43 am

This is going to be a mess. MSN’s reporting does not work. It currently tells you the wrong match type being delivered. Also, CPA’s are much higher with MSN than Yahoo. Not a good deal for SEM people.
34. Greg White | May 8th, 2010 at 3:47 pm

I advertise on both yahoo and google. Msn also but I think its a waste. Sorry to hear about adcenter taking over. I will most likely dump all my money in google.
35. Winter Park Vacation Rentals | May 8th, 2010 at 8:44 pm

I’m a little worried about this transition, as other experienced paid advertisers seem to be. I’ve been really happy with Yahoo’s interface, but I’m not real impressed with MSN’s AdCenter. I hope you roll the Yahoo system over to MSN, not the other way around.
Thanks Yahoo!
36. Ibnu | May 8th, 2010 at 9:10 pm

Generally, which traffic is better, from YSM! or MSN?
37. Rod | May 9th, 2010 at 4:47 am

I agree with Christine. I get great results with Yahoo and the same ads and keywords don’t even display on MSN.
38. wes | May 9th, 2010 at 4:56 am

I am not sure about others but in my case Yahoo offers a better product than Microsoft. Microsoft keyword targeting system is so broad that I have to use exact phrase targeting to get quality clicks. Otherwise I get allot of junk.
Yahoo does a better job and I’m afraid that once the deal is done I will find Yahoo to be as valueless as Microsoft.
39. G | May 9th, 2010 at 7:42 am

Both are good and each has a weakness. The weakness at Yahoo in my opinion is the multitude of affiliates and the lack of quality clicks from them. The EXCLUDED feature helps but affiliates propagate like rabbits on birth hormones. Yahoo proprietary search engine by itself is excellent. BING is not generating affiliate clicks…I hope it remains that way.
40. G | May 9th, 2010 at 7:53 am

Bing has been good about recognizing bad ppcs and giving credits. I have not experienced Yahoo in this situation. But the worst in my honest opinion is Google, even showing them the logs and proof of erroneous ppcs they refuse to give credit back. I no longer advertise on Google. Yahoo inherited Google budget. So far Yahoo shows greater promise than Google. Now Bing has a much lower click rate…but I find the quality and conversion rate to be remarkably high.
41. M$ | May 9th, 2010 at 11:46 am

What about Yahoo search partners, is Yahoo going to keep them? Will we still be able to block them? Will there still be an Ad Delivery Report? Currently Yahoo has over 45,000 search partners and I hope they dump them all! Yahoo search partners are worthless for the most part and they just suck up money.
42. joey | May 9th, 2010 at 12:11 pm

What happens to mac users who cannot advertise on bing? Does that mean we are forced to download internet explorer?
Also no one uses bing. For the most part google and yahoo are the top search engines.
43. contour ab belt | May 9th, 2010 at 9:11 pm

I think the search alliance will be beneficial for all advertisers… one portal to manage 2 major search engines! Can’t wait for the roll out.
44. hostgator | May 10th, 2010 at 10:53 am

I would put this off to 2011.
45. laura baker | May 10th, 2010 at 12:02 pm

whatever you do i support you if it would make small businesses become successful.
i don’t care what transition you will do as long as its easy to understand and is much better than the last one. make sure you do your best to keep economy goin
46. Paul | May 10th, 2010 at 1:41 pm

After the way Google treated me and a lot of my colleagues I look forward to a service that will give them a run for their money.

I will learn whatever is necessary, and adapt as much as possible to make the new service as successful for me as much as humanly possible so I never have to even think of those people at Google again
47. bob | May 10th, 2010 at 5:52 pm

this adcenter is crap…..real crap..yahoo is ok but less crappier than adcenter..what are you guys doing over there anyway?Make it like google or prepare to lose big market share all the way around.you don’t even have enough space to write the ad….it take a few words and it’s all filled….this really sucks big time………real garbage..Hope google buys you guys out in the search dept..
48. Web Analytics | May 10th, 2010 at 9:48 pm

Advertisers will lose pricing power but hopefully the efficiency gains will offset the gains Yahoo and MSFT are seeking here.
49. A lire dans la blogosphè&hellip | May 11th, 2010 at 12:59 am

[...] sur l’alliance search avec Bing – Ysmblog L’intégration des campagnes Yahoo! vers l’AdCenter devrait être terminée aux US et [...]
50. The Yahoo! and Microsoft &hellip | May 11th, 2010 at 1:24 pm

[...] has updated it’s blog to reflect the Yahoo! and Microsoft adCenter search alliance a.k.a. partnership. Basically, for the next 10 years Bing will be the host for Yahoo! search [...]
51. Thomas | May 11th, 2010 at 1:47 pm

Do NOT follow in google steps, they keep knocking my ads off, been with yahoo & Bing for years. Good move!
52. Dustin - language Software | May 11th, 2010 at 4:04 pm

this is exciting can’t wait to see you guys stik it up G
53. Chitta Ranjan Dash | May 12th, 2010 at 5:29 am

I hope it will help us to save our time as we need to manage one interface & the result will be displayed in both Yahoo & Bing.

Whereas need to check the Sponsored listing Rank & Bid amount whether they are same in both the search engine or the rank will vary. As per current standard we are bidding less amount in adcenter to get the same rank as we have in Yahoo.
54. Wendell Cruickshank | May 12th, 2010 at 9:34 am

dellwellgiftshop.net
55. Edward Young | May 12th, 2010 at 9:44 am

Archery is an age old game that requires lots of practice and focus if you want to excel on it. ,:”
56. that guy | May 12th, 2010 at 1:43 pm

too bad. msn will let you track, only if you use thier brand logo on your checkout page. NO WAY. that means we will have to rely on google analytics even more so. been with all 3 for years… yahoo going to msn will MOST probably get our budget gone to google… from the pan into the fire yahoo… what a waste
57. Kris | May 13th, 2010 at 12:11 am

I’m actually very exited about the merge
you only mange one Account.

Not so much exited about the yahoo shopping and pricegrabber merge….
Yahoo or pricegrabber removed all the costumer review and ratings, some dated back in 2003….
Work so hard to build up your company ratings and one merge all gone……
oh well you win some and you lose some
58. John Kucik | May 13th, 2010 at 4:18 am

I currently have accounts with Yahoo and Google. I also do Facebook and You Tube. I used to do MSN but I HATED their self service ad center. I found it much more difficult to manage then others and results were not worth the effort. I most likely will look for other avenues to spend my ad dollars if I have to deal with MSN/Bing ad center….HATED it!
59. Paul | May 15th, 2010 at 5:56 pm

For the people complaining about MSN – have you checked it lately. It’s not the pain in neck it used to be.
60. Bosco | May 19th, 2010 at 3:44 pm

Is anyone from Bing/Yahoo SM going to address the concerns and questions here?

1. Tracking URLs
Adcenter does not have Tracking URLs. Is this going to get fixed?

2. Scheduling times by day.
Ad scheduling is better in Yahoo. In Bing you can target by day of week or target by time of day, not both, which can be done in YSM.

Are all features, that are currently missing, going to get implemented in Adcenter?
61. gary shapiro | May 26th, 2010 at 6:10 am

we have run ppc on all three for 6 years.
google gets 80% of the money as they have the isp providers like comcast.net, verizon etc as search partners so we of course use google and their search parnters.(never the irrelevant content).yahoo at least let us free of their search partners which were a joke. so now comes the lowliest of the market share guys msn.com/bing.on bing you dont have the option to run serach bing only..but i have to say their ctr does match up better with google than yahoo which is ok if you run just yahoo search and now we dont have to spend so much time blockting the partner sites each day..i really hope that
bing gets their platform to be user friendly we dont go there much just leave it run.
will the new platform allow us to use just search and not the partner sites>
62. Rod | May 30th, 2010 at 2:01 pm

How are you going to make sure my ads show up??? I tried advertising on MSN (Bing) in the past and my ads did not display. I gave it lots of time and nothing. MSN (Bing) tried telling me it was the amount I was willing to spend per click so I bumped up my keywords to $1.00/click and still nothing. It was a huge waste of time. I want to make sure all of my Yahoo keywords (1200+) are going to display otherwise I will go back to Google which I would hate to do because I get twice the conversions on Yahoo. However, half the conversions on Google are better than no ads even displaying on MSN (Bing).
63. Aruna | July 2nd, 2010 at 9:20 am

I have already created Adgroups in MSN & left out few Adgroups in Yahoo as well. So do i need to create the left out Adgroups in Yahoo or not required? Pls help me out with this.

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