Posts filed under 'Announcements'

Short Descriptions Coming

Modify Your Ads Now

As a frequent blog reader, you’ve probably already read that, come May, we will be requiring short descriptions (70 character or fewer) on all new or modified ads, whereas before this was merely an option. We’re doing this (to quote myself) because “we’ve found that ads written more concisely give users a better experience and perform better for advertisers. When users are exposed to higher quality search ads you, the advertiser, may attract more interested and enthusiastic potential customers.”

This is a little reminder on how you can modify your ads and add short descriptions. The basic procedure is:

• Log into your account
• Click the Campaigns tab
• Click on a campaign containing the ad(s) you wish to modify
• Select the specific ad group containing the ad(s) you wish to modify
• Click on the Ads tab
• Click on the name of the ad you wish to modify
• Write a short description in the box indicated on the “Create Your Ad” page
• Click “Save Changes”

Short (Description) Cuts
There is also an “edit” button in the Most Displayed Ad box on the Ad Group page, Clicking it will take you directly to that ad’s Create Your Ad page, where you may add a short description and make any other modifications you desire.

You can get to the ads in your top ad groups from your Dashboard by selecting “Top Ad Groups” from the drop-down menu above the bottom box, selecting an ad group and then clicking on the Ads tab.

—Michael Mattis

Upgrades and Enhancements

New Keyword Bidding page, Editorial Status Download and an Entirely New Report

It’s a busy time here at Yahoo! Search Marketing. Last week, we announced our new Technology Solutions Center, where you can apply for our API access. Today, we have a veritable cornucopia of new releases for you to explore.

New Keyword Bidding and Ad Preview Page
First up, we’ve updated your keyword details page and the keyword bidding tool. The old screen looked like this:

Your new keyword bidding tool looks like this:

We’ve made this change to make the bidding tool easier to use in response to your feedback. Look for more details here in the coming weeks on how best to take advantage of this enhancement. In the meantime, play around with the forecasting tools; we think you’ll get the feel of it in pretty short order. Also, the Keyword Details page now reflects edits related to alternate text on the fly.

This new screen is designed help you work with the new 70-character limit for short descriptions (which includes punctuation and spaces). If you go over the 70-character limit, the system will automatically revert to the previously saved text.

Editorial Status Spreadsheet
Those of you who have had multiple keywords in editorial limbo know that it could be a pain to have to go through each one individual page to check their status. We now offer a way to download these in bulk in a single spreadsheet.  You can download from the editorial status page. Navigate to the Campaigns tab and click the “Editorial Status” link. The download link is on the top right hand side, marked “Download Keywords and Ads”.

New Ad-Level Reporting
Some advertisers can get fixated on keywords, but we’ve found that the quality of an ad—its “clickability”—tends to be more important in generating qualified leads. To help you generate higher quality ads, we’ve created a whole new report that shows how your ads are performing in terms of conversion rate. Just select Ad Performance under the Reports tab.

Look for lots more updates and enhancements coming your way in the near future.

 —Michael Mattis

Faster, Simplified Online Customer Checkout

Yahoo! PayPal Checkout Program Launches 

Imagine a customer in a busy store, perhaps a grocery store. They walk in to find one or two items, a store worker points them to the product they want. As they head for the check out counter, one opens up just for them. They hand over the product, swipe a card and are on their way. What a great experience!

Imagine offering that same shopping experience to your customers online. Now you can, with the newly launched Yahoo! PayPal Checkout program that enables a streamlined purchase process for the over 130 million PayPal customers on the Internet.

Here is how it works: When a user goes to Yahoo! Search to find an item or service, the results page may include Yahoo! Sponsored Search results matched to the user’s query. If the merchant has joined the Yahoo! PayPal Checkout program, a blue shopping cart icon will appear next to the merchant’s name in the Sponsored Search results. By clicking on the ad, users will have direct access to a safe, secure purchasing process that does not require any additional credit card information and can be completed in just a few mouse clicks.

As an advertiser, this is great news for you. The blue shopping cart icon that will appear next to your ad not only helps the ad stand out, it also lets customers know which merchants offer PayPal Express Checkout, from the brand known for security.

As a merchant, you want the online shopping and buying process to go smoothly and quickly, and connecting Yahoo! Search Marketing with PayPal Express Checkout accomplishes that.

Yahoo! and PayPal are launching this new program with a series of special offers for merchants and since there is no cost to join, it’s definitely worth checking out (pun intended).

— Rich Riley, Sr. Vice President, Online Channel & Small Business Services, Yahoo!

Think Short

Short Descriptions to be Required Starting in May

I’m sorry this letter is so long, but I did not have time to make it shorter.

—Mark Twain or Blaise Pascal

Scholars differ about the source of the quote above. Some think Twain said it. Others think Pascal said it. It doesn’t matter, because either way, it’s spot-on. Writing concisely is harder and often more time-consuming than writing verbosely. But it’s also more effective. English teachers have been saying so for a century or more.

Selling Short?
Our users’ search experience is key to your success: We’ve found that ads written more concisely give users a better experience and perform better for advertisers. When users are exposed to higher quality search ads you, the advertiser, may attract more interested and enthusiastic potential customers. 

As an advertiser, you have two options for your ad descriptions, one long (up to 190 characters) and one short (70 characters or fewer). At present, you may use either. Starting in May, however, a short description will be required, while a long description will be optional. This means for all new or modified ads you must provide a short description.  And starting in June, ad descriptions longer than 70 characters may automatically be cut off in Yahoo! Sponsored Search results. We will shorten the description at the nearest complete word to 70 characters, followed by an ellipsis (”…”).  Long descriptions will continue to be shown on some of our external distribution partner web sites. 

It’s Best to Start Early
The long and short of it is that if you have not provided short descriptions (fewer than 70 characters) for your ads in the past, we recommend that you do now, before June, when the change occurs in Yahoo! Sponsored Search results. Ads that are “truncated”—or automatically cut off after 70 characters—may not be as relevant and may get a lower Quality Index score and, potentially, a lower ranking in search results.

To add a short description to a given ad:

• Log into your account
• Click the Campaigns tab
• Click on a campaign containing the ad(s) you wish to modify
• Select the specific ad group containing the ad(s) you wish to modify
• Click on the Ads tab
• Click on the name of the ad you wish to modify
• Write a short description in the box indicated on the “Create Your Ad” page
• Click “Save Changes”

The “Create Your Ad” page looks like this:

Here are a few tips for writing effective short ad descriptions:

Shorter is Sweeter
Web copy should only be 25 percent as long as print copy, in ads as well as other text.

A Short Sentence
What do they say about marriage? It’s not a word, it’s a sentence? Well, your short description is usually better off as a sentence than a fragmented set of words. Instead of “Discount chocolates from Mike. Starting $4.99 per box. Sale! For limited time only” try “Enjoy Mike’s gourmet chocolates, now on sale at just $4.99 a box.”

Strunk and White Were Right
Follow these simple rules from William Strunk and E.B. White’s famous writing guide The Elements of Style:

Make every word tell—Every word should be to-the-point and none wasted
Omit needless words—See above
Use the active voice—”Give the gift of sweetness with Mike’s affordable gourmet chocolates” is better than, “Mike’s gourmet chocolates are known to be the sweetest treats around, are quite inexpensive and make a great gift.”
Put statements in positive form—Instead of saying “Mike’s chocolates are known to be loved among gourmets,” say “Gourmets love Mike’s chocolates.”

For more tips on writing good ad descriptions, see the post “Creating Ad Copy that Clicks” from Mona Elesseily, author of the Yahoo! Search Marketing Handbook.

Please note that after the introduction of truncation in May, the space limit for titles will remain at 40 characters, while display URLs will be reduced to a maximum of 35 characters. We’ll go more into that later. And, of course, we’ll post a reminder to include short descriptions if you haven’t already. 

For more information, please visit this page or call Customer Solutions at 1-866-YAHOO-SM

—Michael Mattis

Gone Phishing

Hopefully, one day phishing will be gone; until then, beware
 

All you need to do is wire a few hundred bucks to the office of the finance minister of the tiny nation of Twitbuktu, located on the border between Bikini Atoll and Denmark, and email him your bank account number, date of birth and mother’s maiden name, and a few days later a million dollars or more will materialize into your bank account like manna from heaven. 

Right. And if pigs twirl their tails fast enough, they can fly.

By now we’re all pretty familiar with email scams, those too-good-to-be-true offers that multiply like romance-happy gerbils in your inbox. Most of them are pretty easy to spot, even to the untrained eye.

Scam I am
But what should you do if you got what looked like a legitimate email from Yahoo!—or from a business that claimed to be affiliated with us—asking for personal or account details such as a password or credit card info?

Don’t respond to it.

Neither Yahoo!, nor any business we are affiliated with, will ever send you an email or call you proactively asking you for contact, account or other financial information. If you do get such an email or call, it likely comes from a crook who is “phishing” for your information in order to bilk you of your hard-earned cash.

If you think you’ve been “phished” for info, please let us know by emailing phishing(at)cc.yahoo-inc.com, or forward the email in question to the same address.

To learn more about how you can keep from getting reeled in by “phishermen,” and how to guard against other Internet-based scams, visit these resources:

• Common Abuse Issues
• Yahoo! Security Center

—Michael Mattis

New Bidding and Ranking Tutorial

Taking the Stigma out of Tutoring

When I was in school, being “tutored” had a stigma attached to it. It seemed to imply that a student was slow, behind in his or her lessons.

Today, technological change moves with head-jerking speed. Just about everyone these days needs a tutorial in order to stay ahead.

To help advertisers keep up with all the changes going on with their accounts and help them stay ahead of the competition, we created the comprehensive Upgrade Center. Here you’ll find material on all of the “Panama” basics—How the upgrade will affect you, multimedia upgrade tutorials and webinars, FAQs, a Quick Start Guide and more.

Just posted on the Upgrade Center is a new tutorial on the recently introduced ranking model in the U.S. This interactive tutorial, “How Bidding and Ranking Works,” is designed to help you learn how to improve your ads’ quality. It covers what determines an ad’s rank, offers examples of how ads may be ranked, using the Quality Index to help understand your ad’s quality, setting your bids and other important details.

But wait, there’s more…
For more detail on improving ad quality, be sure to check out “Editorial Guru” Michael Egan’s series here on the blog:

• Improving Ad Quality, Part I: The Equalizer
• Improving Ad Quality, Part II: Finding the right message for your customers with Ad Testing
• Improving Ad Quality, Part III: Using the Insert Keyword feature
• Improving Ad Quality, Part IV: Structure Matters

—Michael Mattis

New Ranking Model Launched

This afternoon, the Yahoo! Search Marketing team began rolling out our new ranking model across the US network. This roll-out is a major component of our company-wide search initiative, code-named, “Panama.” As mentioned in our previous post, both bid amount and ad quality will now determine an ad’s rank in search results.
 
The new ranking model is designed to help both our search users and advertisers. How? By generating better results, users will receive higher quality search ads. When users engage with these higher quality search ads, advertisers will receive more interested, valuable potential customers. We hope this further encourages you—our advertising customers—to continuously improve the quality of your search ads for users.
 
We realize that this is a big change for you. To help make your transition to the new ranking model successful, we’re offering numerous resources, both here on the blog, within the core application and elsewhere.
 
We hope the new ranking model will offer a continually improving search experience for all our customers and look forward to your feedback.

—Tim Cadogan, Vice President of Search

Upgrade Webinar Now Live

Extra! Extra! Learn All About It!

To help get advertisers up to speed on their account upgrades, we’ve created a live webinar that is now available for any advertiser to view. This interactive session, which lasts about 90 minutes, is moderated by Karen Sharkey and Marc Stevens, two of our customer solutions champions. The presentation takes you through the upgrade process and shows you how to navigate—and take advantage of—the new interface.

The webinar is archived in the Help section. Anyone can view an archived webinar, whether they are a Yahoo! Search Marketing advertiser or not. All you need to do is enter your first and last name and your email address.

—The Team

New Year’s Downtime Reminder

Customer Solutions closed on New Year’s Day

Just a reminder, Yahoo! Search Marketing’s Customer Solutions department will be closed on New Year’s Day, Jan. 1, 2007. We encourage you to manage your account online that day, or submit a support request and we’ll respond as quickly as possible after we reopen on January 2.

Happy New Year!

—Yahoo! Search Marketing Customer Support

New Advertisers, Welcome Aboard

The new Sponsored Search platform is now available to all U.S. marketers who open new accounts with us

Step by step, the introduction of Yahoo! Search Marketing’s new account interface and platform continues. This time, the event we’re celebrating is the launch of the upgraded sign up experience for new U.S. advertisers who have not used our product in the past. Beginning today, all new U.S. Sponsored Search sign-ups will use the new flow and immediately begin managing their accounts through the easy-to-use, more powerful platform.

Hey, What about Us?
If you are a current U.S. advertiser who hasn’t yet upgraded, your time is coming. We began the process of upgrading U.S. advertisers to the new Sponsored Search in October, and invitations to upgrade will continue to be sent in stages to U.S. advertisers over the remainder of this year and early next year. You will receive your individual upgrade date via email at least one week in advance. But if you want it now, you can still request an early upgrade, and we’ll try to accommodate your request.

The Big Five
Ready to sign up? There are five basic steps to getting your campaign up and running with Sponsored Search:

1. Target ads by location
Geo-Targeting allows you to target your ads to potential customers located or interested in particular geographic areas. Example: If your business sells real estate within the state of California and you select California as a geo-targeted region, your ads will be shown to potential customers located in California, as well as to search users that may be located outside of California but enter search terms such as “California Real Estate.”(1)

2. Select keywords for your ad groups
You select the keywords that best describe your products and services.

3. Set pricing and budget
Because you determine the price you are willing to pay for each click, Sponsored Search can offer an affordable way for your business to reach customers. You only pay when your ad is clicked, and your spend should not exceed the amount you budget for each ad group.

4. Write the ad copy for each of your ad groups
Your ads are comprised of titles, descriptions and display URLs that describe your site and what you have to offer. Effective ads are short, factual and objectively written. Remember to include your company name in your descriptions.

5. Review your ad(s) and create your account
After you review your ads and provide us with some basic information to get your account activated, we’ll run them through a standard editorial review, then your ads are distributed across our vast network of sites. A Sponsored Search buy can display your listings on popular sites like Yahoo!, CNN.com, Disney.com, Infospace and many others.

For more information on a new account sign up, please view our Sign-Up Tutorial.

Leave the Driving to Us
Need some help getting started? With the assisted setup sign-up option, Yahoo! Search Marketing specialists will build a campaign that’s customized to your budget and goals. Our specialists will:

• Select relevant keywords.
• Write effective ads (titles and descriptions).
• Determine bid amounts that work best with your budget.

To take advantage of assisted setup, just select “Assisted Setup” on the sign-up page and follow the instructions. You’ll receive a proposed campaign in two to five business days, and a specialist will contact you to discuss it.

With more than 38 million people using search engines daily(2), and 67% of U.S. adults who research online before making a purchase decision using search engines as a research tool(3), it seems clear that search marketing is one of the best-performing Internet marketing tactics.

— Jeff Hecox

Footnotes:
1. Geo-targeting accuracy is not guaranteed, and may vary depending on the level of targeting selected, as well as other factors.
2. “Search Engine Users,” PEW Internet & American Life Project Report, January 2005
3. “How America Searches: Online Shopping,” iCrossing, based on Harris Interactive poll, August 26-30, 2005

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