Posts filed under 'Announcements'

Questions about the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance

Advertisers and agencies have questions; we have answers

A 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 from our engaged advertising and agency customers. Most of these comments were positive.

Understandably, some of you had questions and concerns about your accounts. But the most important fact for you to know regarding the search alliance is that, as noted in our FAQ’s:

We will begin with the algorithmic search transition, with a goal of completing transition of at least the U.S. market by the end of 2010. We also hope to make significant progress transitioning U.S. advertisers and publishers in 2010 prior to the crucial holiday season, but may wait until 2011 if we determine that the transition will be more effective after the holiday season. All global customers and partners are expected to be transitioned by early 2012.

What do I do now?
This naturally invokes the question, “So what do I, as an advertiser, need to do in the meantime?” The short answer is “nothing.” Keep on doing what you’re doing. During this time, we’ll continue innovating and we’ll ping you when routine updates and enhancements are made available—just as we do now. When the time comes to transition your account to Microsoft adCenter, you’ll be informed about what you’ll need to do, with instructions on how to do it.

What about all of Yahoo’s bells and whistles?
Several of you asked, in short, if all the bells and whistles that you have come to expect from Yahoo! will be ported over to your future Microsoft adCenter account—things like negative keywords, character length of ads, and so forth. Our answer:

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 so that our advertisers have a high-quality product that is as familiar as possible and easy to use.

Finally, here are answers to some of your very specific questions:

Nick Gowdy asks: 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.

Answer: Once Yahoo! Sponsored Search advertisers are transitioned to Microsoft’s search platforms, advertisers will not be permitted to select traffic solely from Bing or solely from Yahoo!

Avromie asks: Anybody know what will happen with SearchMonkey results?

Answer: Yahoo! and Microsoft are sharing ideas for how to advance the SearchMonkey vision of building an ecosystem for developers, publishers, and the semantic web. The landscape is complex, so we’re working hard to determine which path provides the best value for site owners and end users.

SEM All Stars asks: I use YWA (Yahoo! Web Analytics). Is that still going to work?

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

Jo asks: 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?

Answer: Sorry, no: All Sponsored Search advertisers will use the adCenter platform for their paid search campaigns following their transition, and the “Panama” system will no longer be available. The post-transition unified search marketplace will provide numerous benefits to advertisers, including increased volume, greater ease of doing business, and increased innovation.

Brett West asks: 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?

Answer: Approximately three months in advance, advertisers will receive multiple communications from Yahoo! and Microsoft that will provide details on what to expect during the transition process. When the transition date arrives, Yahoo! and Microsoft will work together to transition your account to the adCenter platform. You will have flexibility to keep your existing adCenter accounts or create new accounts for the unified search marketplace.

Was your question not answered?
As the agreement between Yahoo! and Microsoft only recently received regulatory clearance, we have not had the opportunity to fully discuss every one of your questions with Microsoft and make a determination on each. But we will certainly provide more details to both agencies and advertisers before the transition occurs. Stay tuned.

For more, visit the Yahoo! Transition Center.

— The Team

New Alliance Heralds New Opportunities

How the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance works for advertisers

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

Yahoo! Network Distribution and Import Campaigns Webinar

Please join us Feb. 4, 2010 for this free and informative Sponsored Search webinar

We’re offering this free webinar for our Sponsored Search customers, covering two important features: Network Distribution and Import Campaigns.

The Network Distribution feature allows you to target marketing campaigns to the entire Yahoo! Network, including Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Partners. Learn how you can control where your ads appear, use reporting to help you optimize your settings, and adjust your bids, as well as how to set premiums based on the traffic most valuable to you.

The Import Campaigns feature allows you to import your Google AdWords campaign data into your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. Learn how the tool can help you to import your AdWords campaign data, so you can leverage the insights and know-how from your Google campaign data for your Yahoo! campaigns.

To enter the webinar on February 4, you will need the password you created when you registered.

When: Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010, 11 A.M., Pacific Time
Where: The Internet—go here to register
Why: Because it’s great stuff to know for improving your campaigns and results

You’re in Control

Network distribution and import campaigns features give greater control over your campaigns

We resolved to deliver to our Sponsored Search advertisers two great new features in the new year: network distribution control and an import campaigns tool. These items may have been on your wish list for a long time, and as of today, the wait is over. Here are the details:

Network Distribution
This new feature enables you to set up campaigns or ad groups targeting Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Partners, or both.

If you select Yahoo! Search, your ads will appear only on Yahoo! search results pages. If you select Yahoo! Partners, your ads will appear across our partners’ pages, including WebMD, Buy.com, CNBC and CitySearch.

With the network distribution feature, you can choose for your ads to appear only on Yahoo! search results pages, only on Yahoo! partner implementations, or across the entire network. Even if you choose to target a campaign or an ad group to the Entire Network (i.e., both Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Partners), you have the ability to fine-tune your bids with different bids for Yahoo! Partners.

If you’re familiar with our system of pricing discounts, you know that your clicks are automatically priced according to our assessment of the performance of traffic coming from various sources within our distribution network.

While your campaign objectives will determine the best use of network distribution, we recommend that advertisers target the Entire Network to maximize traffic volume, while retaining the ability to bid up or down on Yahoo! Partners. For more control and optimization capability, you may wish to duplicate key campaigns, with one targeting Yahoo! Search and the other targeting Yahoo! Partners.

The following tools can help you get the most out of this new feature:

• Network Distribution Performance Report – Enables you to view reporting by traffic source at the campaign, ad group and keyword levels.
• Ad Delivery Report – Provides insight into where your ads are showing on our various partners’ sites, and domain-level performance.
• Blocked Domains – Block up to 500 domains that aren’t working for you.
• Conversion-only Analytics – Allows you to track conversion events by domain, and record revenue that might be associated with a transaction.

Import Campaigns
This new tool is designed to help you easily and efficiently convert your campaign data from Google AdWords into Yahoo! Search Marketing formats. Simply download your third-party file, then import it from your computer into the Sponsored Search interface. You can import your file by selecting the “Import Campaigns” button, which is located on the Dashboard and the Campaigns tabs, or by selecting the Import tab.

Once the import is complete, you’ll be able to view any errors and pause the campaigns for review. Learn more about converting and importing your third-party campaign data.

Free Webinar
To get more details on the network distribution and import campaigns features, sign up for our webinar, scheduled for Thursday, February 4 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time.

— Jeff Hecox

Mobile Reach for Your Ads

Your Yahoo! Sponsored Search ads now appear on iPhones and Androids

You’ve probably noticed that for a lot of consumers, surfing the Web increasingly doesn’t depend upon the PC. That’s why, as of today, we’ve tweaked our Yahoo! Sponsored Search system to serve your ads to iPhone (all models, including iTouch) and Android mobile phones.
 
The coolest part is you don’t have to do anything to expand the reach of your ads. We’ve done it for you. As of today, your ads should begin appearing immediately on these devices for relevant searches, if they have not already.

With this tweak, standard Sponsored Search ads (40-character header, 70-character description, the host URL—you know the drill) will appear on these mobile devices, giving your ads wider appeal and more relevancy to people on the go—potential customers searching for your offerings, whether you’re offering dry cleaning or a dry martini.

Of course, you can still specifiically target mobile users with Yahoo! Mobile Sponsored Search.

This upgrade goes part and parcel with our recent efforts to provide better experiences to mobile users and advertisers. And they’ve gotten rave reviews across the wireless information superhighway. Check out these reviews from The New York Times (Yahoo! Fantasy Football), ABC News TechBytes (Flickr’s new mobile app), and this audio interview with our senior director of mobile applications, Sandeep Gupta, on The Boot Camp Report.

But, please, no “there’s an app for that” jokes.

— The Team

It’s You

Yahoo! CMO Elisa Steele unveils new global marketing campaign

Yahoo! chief marketing officer Elisa Steele announced our largest branding campaign ever in an IAB Mixx keynote address, telling the Ad Week audience that our message to consumers is: It’s you.

“We’d like to provide consumers more of what they want, and less of what they don’t,” Elisa said. That means bring them the best of their worlds (their friends, families and interests) and the world (news, information, and entertainment).

Elisa pointed to recent launches of our front page, Mail, and mobile apps are good examples of how we’re bringing both together. “Everything needs to be grounded on this concept of personal relevance.”

In the keynote, Elisa unveiled a video and still images that will be part of a global campaign. “The Internet is under new management: Yours,” one ad said. She also played new versions of the Yahoo! yodel.

Keynote Highlights

• Introducing new research into consumer perception of different types of advertising media – including print, broadcast TV, and Web – Elisa noted that, when it comes to the Internet, there’s a huge “expectation gap” between what people want from advertising and what they get.
• Consumers not only want ads to be relevant, but they also want to be ad content to be informative, be easy to find, store and find again. (In fact, 77 percent of respondents said they wanted to be able to find an ad again but didn’t know how.)
• While consumers are getting more of what they want out of the Web, they are not getting what they want from advertising on the web. As a result, ad dollars lag. This gap, Elisa noted, is where Yahoo! comes in.
• The intersection of “my world” and “the world” is where people find what matters to them the most, and that’s where Yahoo! will be, for both consumers and advertisers.
• Elisa cited four big to-do’s for Yahoo! and for advertisers: 1) Provide actionable insights for consumers down to the individual level. 2)  Continue to create innovative products to “bridge the emotional divide.” 3) Solidify metrics for performance marketers. 4) Push for industry standards and ways for all of us to work together.
• The shift is away from demographics to interests. “Whether you’re 15 years old or 50, it’s about shared interests…”
• Yahoo! will stay focused on individual relevance combined with massive scale. Bringing those two together is “what gives us the opportunity and the calling card to compete for your business and earn your business…”
• Yahoo! SVP Tapan Bhat said, “In the past, the site was the dominant paradigm on the Web. Now you, the user, are the dominant organizing paradigm on the Web.”
• One key to realizing that paradigm, Tapan said, is making search and integrated “discovery experience” that follows the user and by providing integrated experiences across the Web that appeal to shared interests among users.
• The new “It’s You” campaign will roll out to 10 countries around the world, creating a global/local brand that appeals to “all cultures, all ages and all interests.”
• Yahoo!, said Elisa, will be the “place that will launch a billion yodels…” (And, yes, the yodel will live on, but in many different and more democratic forms.)
• Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz ended the presentation by reinforcing the Yahoo! promise to our more than 500 million monthly visitors and to our advertisers, pledging to make Yahoo! easier to work with, smarter, more insightful, and better targeted. “The you,” said Carol, “is also you,” the advertiser.

For more about the branding campaign, see Elisa’s post on Yodel Ancecdotal. Or to see Elisa for yourself, check out the keynote and the presentation—including a sneak peak at the new video ad.

— The Team

Trust a Professional

The new Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network offers an easy way to get help with your campaign performance measurement

Most people don’t fix their own refrigerators, or know how to gap a spark plug on their cars. We hire trained professionals to do these jobs, and what we pay to have them done correctly is well worth the cost.

For many online advertisers, the same may be true regarding the tracking and analysis of their campaign performance. Sure, you might be able to gather a bunch of data, but what do you do with it?

Here again, trained professionals are available to show you the way. And today we’re excited to announce the launch of a group that is certified by Yahoo! to provide high-quality services in this area, the Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network (YWACN).

The YWACN is a network of independent third-party specialists who can help provide analytics consulting services to our valued customers, including assistance with analytics planning, implementation and usage. Look for this YWACN member emblem on participating consultants’ websites:

Whether you’re a large organization or a small ecommerce merchant, you may be able to benefit from a more intelligent leveraging of analytics with YWACN. The consultants in the network can help increase your qualified website traffic, achieve more conversions and sales, and improve your overall ROI.

About Yahoo! Web Analytics
The YWACN is an offshoot of Yahoo! Web Analytics, which provides audience insights while tracking the performance of all of your campaigns, from click to conversion—and not just your campaigns on Yahoo!, but also other providers’ search ads, display ads and even email.

But don’t just take our word for it. Forrester Research, in the July 23, 2009 edition of The Forrester Wave: Web Analytics, Q3 2009, said of Yahoo Web Analytics: “[Yahoo! Web Analytics] clients can derive immense value through custom reports, detailed segments, and unlimited scenarios for eCommerce and other forms of analysis.”

Yahoo! Web Analytics is currently offered free to all Yahoo! Small Business Merchant Standard, Merchant Professional and Store merchants, and all Sponsored Search and display advertisers that are supported by a Yahoo! account manager. It’s best suited for those with complex analytical needs and the resources to set up and manage analytics. If you think that Yahoo! Web Analytics is the right tool for you, please contact your Yahoo! account manager to get started. To learn more, visit our Yahoo! Web Analytics site.

If you aren’t eligible for Yahoo! Web Analytics directly from Yahoo!, you can contact a member of the Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network as described above to get an account and leverage professionals to get the most out of your analytics. Alternatively, you may also wish to consider the Full Analytics and Conversion-Only Analytics options available in our Sponsored Search user interface.

You can learn more about YWACN and its members here. You can also stay updated on the latest news by following our Yahoo! Web Analytics’ tweets at http://twitter.com/ywebanalytics.

— Jeff Hecox

Microsoft, Yahoo! Change the Search Landscape

More information on today’s announcement

Yahoo! and Microsoft today announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. For more information, check out our CEO Carol Bartz’s post on the corporate blog Yodel Anecdotal here.

— The Team

Counting Clicks

Yahoo! click processes comply with new IAB click measurement guidelines

If it talks like a click, walks like a click and looks like a click—it must be a click.

Or is it?

For many online advertisers, the business of measuring clicks can be frustrating. And since Sponsored Search bills advertisers for any valid clicks they receive, this “counting business” is just as important to us as it is to you.

To improve this experience for advertisers, and to help foster trust within the online advertising space, Yahoo!—along with a slew of other companies—has been working with the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) to develop and publish a set of click measurement guidelines. These were released last month, and today Yahoo! is announcing that it has received certification that its click measurement processes and policies comply with these guidelines.

How does this affect me?
This certification should help you know you’re getting what you’re paying for. When you purchase a product, any product, chances are you leave the store with something in your hand. But clicks from online advertising are a lot less tangible, and the IAB guidelines are designed to provide objective standards around how clicks are measured and counted.

The IAB guidelines can be summarized in two points:

1. They provide definition around the way businesses measure and count valid and invalid clicks.
2. They call for more transparency for online advertisers, so they can feel more comfortable knowing that they are, in fact, getting what they pay for.

If you’re already familiar with Yahoo!’s traffic quality processes, then you know that we’ve had a sophisticated click counting system in place for years. But now you don’t have to take our word for it.

—Malin Kennedy, Senior Manager, Advertiser Experience

Display for the Rest of Us

Yahoo! My Display Ads offers self-serve display ads

Display ads have not always been the friendliest form of online advertising for the little guy—you had to have hefty advertising budgets, and you had to have agencies or other creative types around to build your ads in the first place. But our new Yahoo! My Display Ads, with a lower spending minimum and do-it-yourself graphic ads, just made display advertising a lot friendlier.

Yahoo! My Display Ads, a pilot program being launched this week, puts display advertising within reach of advertisers who were previously limited to search marketing. Advertisers can upload existing  ads, or build their own from more than 700 templates. And, unlike traditional display, you can get started with as little as $30 a day.

Display for people who like search
If you’re a search advertiser, why would you want to run display ads, even if you can build them? Some search advertisers are under the impression that display doesn’t perform as well as search. But that’s not quite true—display can make your search campaigns more powerful.

Display can reach users at a different point in your sales cycle than search does—at the beginning of the purchase process, when they’re still open to multiple products, rather than further along when they’re looking for a particular product. Getting in front of someone with display ads when they’re in an open mindset can influence whether people search for you or not when they are ready to buy. According to a 2008 Specific Media study, people who saw a display ad for a product were 155% more likely to search for that product than those who didn’t.

If you want to tie your display campaign to specific performance goals, though, Yahoo! My Display Ads lets you choose from two pricing models: cost per impression (CPM), the traditional display model, or cost per click (CPC), which is more like search marketing. With a cost per click model, you’re not paying for people to look at your ad—you only pay when your ad is clicked.

Creatives for the non-creative types
Even if you don’t have a creative bone in your body, you should be able to build an ad with Yahoo! My Display Ads. You pick a display ad template for your type of business—education, consumer products, travel, and so on. If you don’t know what will work, you can get a sense of which templates are working well for other advertisers. Then you can customize the template with your logo, headlines, copy,  colors, even other images. The Ad Customizer tool will show you what your ad will look like in multiple display ad sizes.

Once you build your ad, you can run it on the Yahoo! network as a non-guaranteed display ad. (Advertisers who are managed by a Yahoo! account team can also run their ads on other sites through the Right Media Exchange.) You can also select the demographic, geographic  and content segments you want to target. (Keep in mind, though, that the more you target, the less potential traffic you may receive. We recommend starting broad and working your way smaller.) Our managed model also allows for additional targeting features such as behavioral targeting and ad scheduling.

Not sure if this is for you? The best way to figure that out is to go to our demonstration site and check Yahoo! My Display Ads out for yourself. You can play with the ads and customize them any way you want before you sign up. If you want more information or are ready to get started, visit the Yahoo! My Display Ads home page or contact your account manager.

Time to get creative!

—Jeff Sweat, Blog Editor

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