Preparing for the Transition to adCenter

3 important tasks to complete in your account

Over recent weeks, Yahoo! and Microsoft teams have been meeting with advertisers to solicit feedback and understand their key questions and concerns. One piece of feedback we’ve frequently heard: “Give us more details!” So, in the spirit of providing more information, we’ll address some of the common questions we’ve been getting, along with general advice to help you get ready for your transition.

Time to make a few changes
While Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft Advertising adCenter are similar in a lot of ways, adCenter treats ad copy length and keyword mapping in ways that require some changes as part of the your transition. Making these changes will help smooth your transition and get your ads live in adCenter as quickly as possible.

1) Shorten ad titles and descriptions
This is something that can impact a large portion of advertisers, so we highly suggest you take note of any action you may need to take. You may know that Yahoo! Sponsored Search has a 40-character limit for titles of your ads. However, ad titles in adCenter have a maximum of 25 characters. There’s a small difference with ad description length: Yahoo! ad descriptions can be 71 characters, whereas the maximum is 70 characters with adCenter.

If your Yahoo! ads have longer titles or descriptions than the adCenter limits, they will be cut off at the adCenter limit after the transition, which could cause them to read improperly or be ineligible for display. While it may seem like a time-consuming task, it’s very important to shorten your ad copy now, if necessary, so you’ll have more time to test ad copy variations within the new character limits.

Here are some tips to help you cut things down to size:

Create one clear objective: Focus on the one action you want consumers to take.
Focus on the benefits: Skip the features of your product or service, and go straight to how consumers’ lives will be improved by it.
Highlight your unique selling proposition: Include anything you offer that might give your ad an edge. Mentioning your time in business, free shipping or low-price guarantee can improve an ad’s performance.
Test your ads: Take time now to tighten up your existing ads. By making these changes now, you are giving yourself time to evaluate results. Find out what works best for your campaigns for when you’ll be accessing both Yahoo! Search and Bing searchers with one account.
Keep ads relevant: One way to improve relevance is to use customers’ most popular search terms in your ad copy. If you only sell certain brands, categories or product conditions (such as new, used or refurbished) make sure that you specify this in your ad copy. Your selected keywords should also specify these details.
Use customers’ language: Match the tone of your ad to your product’s price point and positioning, and include the top benefits that your customers are looking for. You should describe what sets the product apart, using words that describe your product’s unique features and why customers buy your product.

By writing compelling ads that target the right potential customers, you can help increase the click-through rates on your ads. Learn more about writing strong ad copy.

2) Expand your keyword lists
Yahoo! maps keyword variations to the primary form of the word, but adCenter treats singular/plural variations and common misspellings as individual keywords. For example: If you currently bid on the keyword “car” with Yahoo!, you can also receive traffic from queries for “cars” and “casr.” To receive the same traffic with adCenter, though, you need to bid on the keyword “car,” as well as the keywords “cars” and “casr.”

While this does increase your number of keywords, it also provides you with a more precise level of control that can help you improve performance. Get prepared now by having a list of keyword variations ready to add to your adCenter account immediately upon your transition. Although you won’t be adding these keywords to your existing Yahoo! account now, you’ll be set and ready to go when it is time to transition.

3) Check your bids
With Yahoo! Search Marketing, the lowest bid you can enter is $0.01, but the minimum bid allowed in adCenter is $0.05. When your account is transitioned, any bids below the five-cent minimum will be automatically increased to $0.05. The good news is that affected ads will be paused to give you an opportunity to confirm the bid change or make adjustments.

Go ahead, ask away…
And now for a little Q&A—these are a couple of the questions we’ve been frequently hearing:

Q. What will happen to a Yahoo! account’s history after the transition?

A: Account history (reporting and scoring) will not be carried over from the Yahoo! Search Marketing platform during the transition. The reason for this is that the two companies have completely different reporting sets, and it wouldn’t be helpful anyway to combine data that came from two different marketplaces. Of course, if you’re already advertising on the adCenter platform, and you continue to use that adCenter account, you’ll retain your reporting and performance history. Naturally, the marketplace will shift when Yahoo!’s traffic is added to the combined marketplace, so advertisers should monitor and optimize their accounts throughout the transition to ensure that they’re achieving the best results.

Note: Yahoo! advertisers will continue to have access to the last 13 months of their Yahoo! Search Marketing account reporting and history after the transition for an extended time period. This will continue to be accessed through the Yahoo! interface (not adCenter).

Q: Will my ad’s position/rank be the same in Yahoo! and Bing search results? How does adCenter determine ad position?

A: After the transition is completed, your ad rank the Yahoo! search results pages will be the same as on Bing search results pages. Like Yahoo!, adCenter determines ad rank based on several factors, including the amount of your bid, your ad’s relevance, and your ad’s click-through rate. Keep in mind that because each company will control its own consumer search experience, the number of ads that are displayed on each site may be different. For example, for the same search term, Bing could display three ads at the top of the page and two on the right-hand side, whereas Yahoo! might display two ads at the top of the page and three on the right-hand side.

We’ll continue to update you on the search alliance here on the blog, via email and in the Yahoo! Transition Center, so please check back often.

— The Team

Posted by Administrator

[ Categories: Search Alliance ]

51 Comments Add your own

1. wendell | July 7th, 2010 at 5:26 am

Hope
2. Eugene Byun | July 8th, 2010 at 3:39 pm

Hope you guys improve the AdCenter desktop application to handle bulk changes without crashing!
3. Dynamic Website Construct&hellip | July 9th, 2010 at 9:01 am

Does Your Business have a USP, or Unique Selling Proposition?…

I found your entry interesting thus I’ve added a Trackback to it on my blog …
4. TurnBlue | July 10th, 2010 at 5:16 am

Many thanks for the helpful information, is there any information on when the transition will be made in the UK?
5. Simon | July 12th, 2010 at 11:59 am

Will AdCenter continue to discriminate against Mac users or will the new interface allow the use of browsers other than IE?
6. Danny | July 13th, 2010 at 6:56 pm

Please, Please… Take the good points from Yahoo and put them in your Adcenter apps. Yahoo is so much faster to work with compared to MSN.
7. dave | July 17th, 2010 at 3:12 am

I am a bit worried to be honest about this move. i have the same 5 campaigns on adcenter , yahoo and google. the only one that doesn’t work is adcenter. also when i click on my campaigns it takes me to other areas of my account. i have tried many things but with poor performance/conversions and wasted money have pause all but one campaign which staggers along.
i will have another try if yahoo disappears but hope am hoping you stick with your best platform. shame to waste it. how about just sticking different logo top left?
8. Ziah | July 29th, 2010 at 11:15 am

Two things. I have prepaid balances in my Yahoo accounts. What happens to this? Also, I don’t use MSN Adcenter because NO Clickbank URL’s are allowed IN DESTINATION URL and this was reported as a bug that still has not been fixed by the lazy MSN. What do you intend to do about this problem?
9. Dave | July 29th, 2010 at 11:25 am

I would think that between your two companies, you could come up with a good application to merge the two accounts. It would also be great if the MSN Adcenter would at LEAST allow you to make the Cost Per Conversion a default. It’s one of the most important aspects to any campaign. It’s a shame to hide that data.
10. john | July 29th, 2010 at 11:47 am

Is there any mechanism to opt out?
11. Stefanie | July 29th, 2010 at 12:07 pm

WHEN will this transition take place?
12. Maureen Oddone | July 29th, 2010 at 12:15 pm

25 characters – are you joking?
13. Greg | July 29th, 2010 at 1:02 pm

Have similar concerns as Dave and Danny –
Yahoo has many features I like vs. Bing and my campaigns work much better. One in particular is the ability to control the level of content network by percentage.. with Bing it’s on or off.
14. Josh | July 29th, 2010 at 1:08 pm

At Simon: Um, have you ever heard of a browser by Mozilla called Firefox? I work at a company that uses Macs and Firefox works just fine with adCenter.
15. Jeremy | July 29th, 2010 at 1:19 pm

What if we already have an adcenter account? Will you give us an exact date and time for the transition? That way I can just shut off my yahoo search marketing account.
16. Family Tents | July 29th, 2010 at 1:37 pm

You guys seem to be handling the transition very well. I will be curious to see if you can maintain the degree of organization that has been displayed so far. If you do it will make the transition much more seamless.
17. john | July 29th, 2010 at 1:53 pm

Hey, josh did you try the import (sikverlight req), also the downloadable desktop (wtf? This is the wrong direction). We use linux and chrome. Prob a no go with msn bing live yahoo..whatever.

I am surprised that adcenter didn’t require live id (or hotmail or msn id or whatever it is called this quarter. That is a huge improvement for them.
18. Amy | July 30th, 2010 at 11:20 am

I have some of the same issues above:
1. I have both Yahoo and AdCenter, will they be merged or do I have to go after the fact and merge together or cancel old accounts. I have two Yahoo accounts and one AdCenter account.
2. How will pre-paid Yahoo balances be carried over?
3. I cannot get AdCenter to work in Firefox. I have tried every single troubleshooting suggestion and none of them work. I still have to use IE to access AdCenter and this is a pain since I do not use IE. I would hate to continue having to open an IE window just to access AdCenter plus my Yahoo accounts.
4. I also find my Yahoo campaigns, though identical to my AdCenter ones, work much better. I get a lot more impressions and clicks whereas the AdCenter ones just do not perform. I’m concerned I’ll lose the momentum I have with Yahoo after the conversion.
5. I think the updates and info about the merge is very good, thank you for keeping us updated.
19. Brad | July 30th, 2010 at 11:23 am

Not happy about this switch… I really hope is doesnt screw me as all my campaigns are run through Yahoo… and adcentre is SKETCHY
20. Web Marketing Marketer | July 30th, 2010 at 11:23 am

I hope MS and YH have accounted for the large percent of customers that think this is BS to make us do the work for your transition. Adwords and the 3rd tier ppc co’s should see a nice sales increase from your total disreguard for the customer.

You better re-think this!
21. Michael Solomon | July 30th, 2010 at 11:27 am

Agreed. Not too fond of MSN…and what is the deal with the advertiser doing work for transition? Why not just merge everything and do it for the advertisers????
22. Brian | July 30th, 2010 at 11:30 am

Haven’t used Bing that much. I did try it a year or 2 ago, It was slow and hard to navigate. I’ll have to check it out again.
23. ray peters | July 30th, 2010 at 11:34 am

MSN is one of my least favorite companies as I have had very poor results with them. Also 25 characters for an ad title is simply not sufficient. You will probably lose me.
24. Mark | July 30th, 2010 at 11:39 am

I’ve used all three services and show up in organic listings in all three as well. I don’t frankly see this helping Yahoo that much. To me they’re taking a step backwards and going down to the MSN/Bing level in all ways. I don’t use them for personal search and I don’t find their ppc system all that great either. Too bad it’s probably going to help Google even more. Afterall, why would I want to find identical results on two out of the three main search engines?
25. Josh | July 30th, 2010 at 11:48 am

At john: I tried the import a while ago – needs work. And I have tried the Desktop Beta on a (my personal) Windows machine – it really, really needs improvement. Hopefully the full release will be better than the Beta. The remark I was responding to had to do with accessing the online adCenter interface with any browser but IE What I would really like to see is the option to opt into/out of each engine – one option for bing, one for Yahoo, or you can select both. That would be great.
26. John URsoleo | July 30th, 2010 at 12:16 pm

I already have an MSN account but have deleted my campaigns do to past lack of impressions. Will the Yahoo campaigns re-populate themselves into my existing MSN account?
27. Bob | July 30th, 2010 at 1:27 pm

We have been converting accounts to AdCenter and the system is a wreck. The desktop application does not run at all and when it does it damages other accounts. The online system has so many bugs that we have yet to have an account move over cleanly. Response time from support is 3-5 days and they rarely solve the problem. The people are nice enough but they have no solutions.

Are you sure this system is ready for prime time?

Converting from Yahoo to AdCenter is going backwards.
28. Peter | July 30th, 2010 at 1:51 pm

Like many people here, I have used both Yahoo and AdCenter in the past months. And let’s be hionest, Yahoo Search Marketing is far superior to AdCenter! So why migrate from Yahoo to AdCenter? The opposite would have make more sense. Let’s hope this works well, but I have so many doubt right now.
29. Saula | July 30th, 2010 at 1:51 pm

Sounds good to me. Best of luck Yahoo!
30. Anil | July 30th, 2010 at 1:52 pm

I don’t see even one positive point for the advertisers with this change.
40 words to 25 – Who benefits?
.01 to .05 min bid – Who benefits?
Add lot more key words – Who benefits?

I see a flood of people leaving Yahoo to go to Adwords
31. Joe | July 30th, 2010 at 2:04 pm

Simply put, adCenter is terrible. A number of commenters have detailed their problems with that interface on this blog. I’ve had most of those problems and some of my own. When the transition goes into effect, I’ll simply delete all my YSM campaigns and advertise elsewhere.
32. Pro17 Engineering | July 30th, 2010 at 2:29 pm

Longer text boxes was one thing I likeed over Google. Now, I’ll have to cut those down. I’m apprehensive.
Keith
http://www.pro17engineering.com/services/boundary
33. Jon | July 30th, 2010 at 6:24 pm

Looking forward to the merger and hope everything pans out for the best.
34. Ed Dart | July 30th, 2010 at 8:22 pm

What’s the big deal? I have ads on Yahoo and MS. When it happens I will just delete the Yahoo account. By the way the reason Yahoo is handing over its search program is it is trying to stay in business. Haven’t you been paying attention the last few years?
Yahoo will someday be the AOL of internet history if it doesn’t do something soon.
35. Brian | July 31st, 2010 at 5:26 am

I have the same campaigns on both Yahoo and adCenter.

They are exactly the same, but the business I get from Yahoo is about 40-50 times greater than adCenter. Yes, thats 40 to 50 times greater.

I hope I don’t lose this when the switch happens.
36. Peter Fenton | July 31st, 2010 at 8:48 am

We must be dumb – despite everything we have read we have no idea what we are supposed to do.

We have a small MS Ad Center account – similar keywords as Yahoo and Google but it does nothing at all – almost literally zero

Do we have to actually cancel our Yahoo account? If so when? Do we have to re-enter all of the hundreds of keywords into the different Campaigns in Ad Center? I was assuming this was done for us?
37. jerome | July 31st, 2010 at 4:43 pm

I currently have both a Yahoo and Bing Account, and the Yahoo Account way out performs the Bing and the bids on PPC are A lot more reasonable.
If this Merger raises my Cost per Click on my PPC Accounts, you will drive me and Many, Many Customers back into the waiting arms of Google!
38. Devon | August 1st, 2010 at 8:32 am

I have both Yahoo and AdCenter marketing, Yahoo actually works and AdCenter is a joke. Two ads will run on the top and 3 ads to the right, yet my ad is no where to be found with AdCenter. Same ad on Yahoo at the same cost gets me on the first page every time. There are aso about 8 ads to the right with Yahoo instead of 3 with AdCenter. I spoke with the AdCenter techs for about 2 months to attempt to resolve my ad from not showing. The ONLY great advice I got after all that time was that my ad would not even show up on the right (even though there was plenty of room) because my bid was not high enough. So we ended to 2 month process with teh determination that AdCenter was discriminating against my ad because they did not want to show it below another ad that was paying much more. Really? Isn’t that the whole purpose of a “bidding” process. I get to be next in line below someone more expensive? As others are pointing out all over the place, this transition to AdCenter technology is a BIG mistake. Yahoo’s product is FAR superior. STOP this now Yahoo! AdCenter is really a sub-par product. Yahoo was the first to come forward with PPC and they are just better at it! AdCenter should migrate to Yahoo’s technology! Please read all these comments guys! Many will be forced to leave and stick with Google only…
39. Mel | August 1st, 2010 at 8:46 am

After reading about the “Merger” It looks like I will be avoiding the expense and time involved in changing and increasing my presense with Google
40. Nancy | August 1st, 2010 at 11:23 am

I’m glad to see that many of my concerns are common. One unique issue I have is in changing ad copy for one specific client we have to obtain regulAtory approval before we can display any of our ads. This is a lengthy and expensive process. For now as we have not yet received approval, we are tuning off our yahoo campaigns.
41. best rate source | August 2nd, 2010 at 6:42 am

My first and only suggestion would be go and study Google’s interface…they make it SOOOO much easier to use than either Bing or Yahoo have grasped to date…
42. Laura | Bitsmith | August 2nd, 2010 at 1:31 pm

I’ve been with YSM since it was Goto.com. I’m sorry to see it die.

I have used Adwords, YSM/Overture, and MS adCenter. Google brings in lots of sales. YSM brings in a few. AdCenter brought in none.

As others have reported, I hardly had any impressions from adCenter. Their algorithm appears to favor big spending bidders to the point of not displaying the little guys’ ads at all so that end users can only click on high-paying ads.

I closed my original adCenter account a while ago. Based on my past experiences, I’m not willing to put much time into the transition with no prospect of even getting impressions.

RIP Goto.com.
43. The Advizer | August 3rd, 2010 at 9:27 am

I have read all the comments about comparing the two and currently I have the same poor results. Adcenter Content network gave lots of clicks that seemed to be bad, but still had to pay.
I am hoping that adcenter is still on limited network, once the merger happens adcenter will start showing everywhere YSM currently does. Free Website Business Training
44. elottery | August 6th, 2010 at 12:22 am

Thank you for this latest update. They are very helpful.
45. Euro millions result | August 6th, 2010 at 12:24 am

I am now confused between Microsoft Ad Centre, Bing and Yahoo Search Marketing.
46. JIm | August 9th, 2010 at 7:01 pm

25 CHARACTER AD TITLE IS USELESS !!
I THOUGHT YOU WERE TRYING TO GIVE GOOGLE A RUN FOR THEIR MONEY NOT GET EVERYONE TO RUN TO GOOGLE !!
47. John Scalise | August 12th, 2010 at 11:44 pm

First time I haven’t opened a different topic/ hyperlink in a new window or tab… somehow I ended up here fr a sperm bank website… wishing my genetics were as valuable as HERS… or maybe if I could donate to a few selected photographs?
48. SexToysinCanada | August 17th, 2010 at 8:09 am

Sounds like a lot of work… but I can’t see the problem here… what I more worry about is how much traffic we will lose from not having the organic traffic from yahoo… if we are not yet ranking well with Bing…
49. Perry | August 17th, 2010 at 8:46 am

This is exactly why Microsoft and Yahoo have went down the crapper over the years. They do not give a F*#% about there customers. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? 71 to 70 characters? This is how stupid they are, have thousands of customers change instead on them changing from 70 to 71. Brain dead idiots. Same thing with the title. There isn’t a single person with a brain running either company.
50. Wayne | August 17th, 2010 at 9:09 am

Yahoo’s PPC backend was very efficient and quick loading. MSN’s ad center is horrid. It’s slow and awkward. Why on earth would MSN can Yahoo’s efficient system? That’s like needing to trade in one of two cars, a lexus and a kia and deciding to keep the kia and ditch the lexus.

Sounds to me that MSN has a big an ego.
51. Anthony | August 17th, 2010 at 9:23 am

I have the same issues as many other posters, but all I see here is the complaining and no responses from Yahoo! Are they addressing the tittle-length issue? What about the issue of adCenter ads not appearing? And what about the issue of ads no longer handling plurals?

I have Google, Yahoo and adCenter, and I pay $600 a month to Google, $100 a month to Yahoo and $2.50 per month to adCenter for the same ads.

I just import my Google ads to the other providers because it’s too much work to maintain all the keywords separately. I understand they have their differences, but Google is far superior and the others should be able to handle the same keywords in much the same way. If they don’t then they are just losing revenue.

If I can’t import my Google ads and have them work the same, then I won’t be using any other PPC provider anymore.

Lastly, I’m guessing that this is just a way of complaining, and yahoo isn’t really listening, because there isn’t a single response to these issues that I can see.

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