Posts filed under 'Yahoo! News'

Under New Management

Good Luck Terry; Congrats to Jerry and Sue

Yesterday, Terry Semel, our CEO and the man who successfully guided our company through the rocky years of the early ’00s, stepped down. Terry will continue to act as the head of our board of directors. Co-founder Jerry Yang, who has always been our chief Yahoo!, has stepped into the CEO’s shoes. Also, Sue Decker, formerly the head of our Advertiser & Publisher Group and another longtime Yahoo, can rightfully be addressed as “Madame President” in her new role.

It’s kind of big news.

We’re incredibly proud of Terry’s work over the past six years, and we’re glad he’s maintaining an important role on the board. We’re also really excited for the future, and can’t wait to see what Jerry and Sue will do. Expect more cool stuff.

To get the full take, see Jerry’s post on Yodel Anectdotal. Also, check out:

The Official Press Release
Letter from Terry Semel to Yahoo! Board of Directors
Letter from Yahoo! Board of Directors to Terry Semel

Meanwhile, we’re keeping our noses to the grindstone, and this change shouldn’t impact our advertisers. We’ll continue to roll our “Panama” enhancements and offer a first-class experience to our users.

—The Team

Small is the New Big

Ultimate Connection final-list

Though they may never be mentioned by name on CNBC, small businesses have a huge impact. In fact, according to the Small Business Administration, a U.S. government agency, small businesses were responsible for more than half of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) of $11,712,500,000,000 in 2004.

That’s not chump change.

We like the kind of gutsy people who take a chance in small biz, because that’s how Yahoo! was born. Jerry Yang and David Filo originally started this little enterprise called Yahoo! Inc., now 13,000-odd (very odd) Yahoos strong, out of a trailer on the campus of Stanford University in Northern California.

The Big Five
Our passion for small businesses is one of the reasons that we got into the Small Business business to begin with—yes, we sell shovels to gold miners—and it’s one of the reasons we’re sponsoring the Ultimate Connection.

The five finalists for the Ultimate Connection have been chosen, and we want you to have a part in deciding the winners. Here are the five small businesspeople who stood out from the thousands of entries we received:

Glen Halliday, who builds custom “crooked houses” that make children smile.

Chris Pratt, a start-small entrepreneur with a big sweet tooth.

Melissa Belland, who has brought the fantasy world of the fairies to real life.

Elena Neitlich, who offers help for hard working moms, by hard working moms.

Mike Willner, an inventor who has taken typing to a whole new level.

Each one of these entrepreneurs shows a passion not just for the business of business, but for what their businesses share with their customers. Now it’s up to you to decide which three of these five will get the proverbial Golden Ticket to New York to meet with Ivanka Trump, enjoy a power lunch high above the city, and receive a $25,000 Yahoo! Search Marketing budget.

Go to the Ultimate Connection website and vote for your favorite.

—Michael Mattis

Making that Ultimate Connection

It’s not who you are. It’s who you know

That’s how the old truism goes, and rarely has a truer truism been spoken, especially in business. Don’t get us wrong. Hard work, inspiration, dedication, passion and all that are vital. But making the right connections can make the difference between success and Success! And it’s as true for small business people as it is for major corporate execs.

Yahoo! Ultimate Connection Contest
If you could have a power lunch with anyone in business you wanted, who would you put on the guest list? Someone famous, like, I don’t know, Merv Griffin? Perhaps you’d prefer a table full of up-and-coming entrepreneurs like yourself with whom you could talk shop and swap tips. Maybe you’d like both.

Well, win the Yahoo! Ultimate Connection Contest and that’s what you’ll get, and a lot more. Additionally, Ivanka Trump, Trump Organization development leader and daughter of Donald Trump, will participate in the contest and help select the finalists.
 
The prize package includes:

• An “Ultimate Connection” power lunch in New York City with the up-and-coming entrepreneur winners and top-ranking marketing stars 
• A $25,000 budget from Yahoo! Search Marketing to use toward a keyword ad campaign
• Mentoring from a legendary marketing expert throughout the year
• Access to a Yahoo! Search Marketing expert throughout the year
• A website makeover, courtesy of Yahoo! Small Business and Web site development firm FastPivot.

Pencils Down
To win, submit a 500-word essay focusing on what your business needs to be successful, and how winning the “Ultimate Connection” contest can help you achieve that success.

The deadline to submit essay entries is May 30, 2007. Yahoo! will select five finalists from the entries. Members of the Yahoo! community will be invited to vote for their favorites beginning on June 11, and contest winners will be announced in July.

For more information and to submit your entry, go to the Ultimate Connection Contest web site.

—The Team

Yahoo! Increases Quality Initiatives

The new VP of Marketplace Quality shares insights on Yahoo!’s higher traffic quality goals
 

As an advertiser or publisher, you may have some concerns regarding traffic quality. Yahoo! places a great importance on quality traffic and we’ve dedicated significant resources to create the world’s highest quality search and display advertising network.

We also hear that you want more transparency and dialogue with us, and that’s part of my new responsibilities in leading the company’s marketplace quality efforts and helping to drive the industry forward on these issues.

Click fraud is an industry-wide issue and there’s no question that click fraud is receiving increased media coverage recently, casting a dark cloud over the industry. I want to make it clear that we hear your concerns, and we’re putting a vast amount of resources to combat click fraud.

Since 1998, our Click Protection System has operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, monitoring all traffic with the goal of filtering out click fraud, as well as other clicks that we believe shouldn’t be billed to our advertisers.

Today at Search Engine Strategies New York 2007 Conference (SES) we’re happy to announce that in the next few months, we plan to launch the Yahoo! Marketplace Quality Center, an online resource designed to help provide more visibility into what we’re doing to help define, prevent and protect against click fraud, plus provide information on other aspects of traffic quality.

Its features will include:

• Directions on how to submit a click investigation request
• News on traffic quality
• Tips on how to detect click fraud
• Articles on best practices and more

We plan to continue expanding and enhancing the Marketplace Quality Center with more features in the following months after the official launch.

We are also working with the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) to develop industry standards around click fraud. Once agreed-upon standards are in place, we’re fully committed to undergoing regular audits to provide advertisers with greater visibility into our protection efforts.

At SES, I’m gathering feedback regarding key areas of concern around traffic quality, and I want to give you the same opportunity here—just add your comments below, and I will read every one.

I’m excited about the opportunities to work with and help our advertisers and publishers in this area, and I want to assure you that we’re listening to your feedback and concerns.

—Reggie Davis, VP, Marketplace Quality

Say Moshi Moshi!

Overture Japan Launches a Blog of its Own

Moshi moshi—say it real fast—is the charming Japanese phrase for “hello!” when answering the phone. Well, on Wednesday, Overture Japan (Yahoo!’s search marketing operation in Japan), launched its own blog and we’d like to say “hello” to the team over the Internets.

Kicked off with a post from our own Mark Morrissey, the Overture Japan blog opens a new line of interactive communication between Overture and its search advertisers in the Japanese market. 

So to our friends across the Pacific, moshi moshi. Tonight we raise a cup of saki to you and say kanpai!

—The Team

Yahoo! Searchlight Award 2007 Winners

Avenue A | Razorfish wins award for “Choose Chase”

Last month we had the pleasure of presenting the good folks at Avenue A | Razorfish as the winner of the 2007 Yahoo! Searchlight Award for their work on the “Choose Chase” campaign.

It was our second year putting on the Yahoo! Searchlight Award showcase, which is highlighted by our top agency partners duking it out for the best advertising campaign that utilize search marketing. The awards are our way of celebrating the creativity and innovation of our search agency partners. Whoever says search isn’t creative, thought-provoking and innovative hasn’t had the pleasure of seeing our clients’ incredible work. We really couldn’t have been prouder of this year’s finalists.

This year Avenue A | Razorfish demonstrated that search campaigns can be used to build brand awareness, and that the message in search creative matters. This campaign made the case for developing “branding” search ads for high-volume keywords. Avenue A | Razorfish proved that a campaign building awareness around their client’s credit card program through search could be just as useful as one that drives users to sign up for the program.

Furthermore, the search creative reflected the branding messaging that was used in other media, both digital and analog. This is an incredibly powerful lesson, as the credit card acquisition space has historically been laser-focused on direct response metrics. The winning Avenue A | Razorfish campaign “shines a light” on a new strategy for measuring the power of search marketing as an awareness-building medium.

The other worthy finalists this year were:

• “Sprint-Talladega Nights,” presented by NeoSearch ‘
• “Special K,” presented by Leo Burnett
• “Lexus. All-new LS Launch, Unprecedented,” presented by Team One

All of the finalists presented  interesting, powerful campaigns, which were augmented by their search marketing components. For example, Leo Burnett’s offline advertising included TV spots, prints ads (in magazines like Shape and People), and re-branded cereal boxes, which all highlighted a very specific call to action: Search Special K at Yahoo!

Yahoo! implemented a custom-branded placement at the top of the search results page for searches on “Special K,” and the links drove users to SpecialK.com and the “Better in ’07” Yahoo! Health pages sponsored by Special K for an engaging brand experience. 

Team One’s Lexus campaign maximized the effectiveness of its online advertising with a holistic search and display campaign that echoed offline brand advertising.

All told, these integrated campaign strategies reveal how well search can work with a wide array of marketing needs. With all the progress we’ve made as an industry, we’re convinced there are still many new ways to make search useful for brands. I am sure that next year we’ll celebrate a new round of ground-breaking ideas that will push the industry further ahead. 

We plan to announce the call for entries in the Fall for next year’s awards, so stay tuned.

— Ron Belanger, VP, Agency Development

Quality is His New Job, For One

New VP to help ensure that all of our constituents benefit from a focus on marketplace quality

As an advertiser, you know quality traffic when you see it. You want highly qualified clicks from trusted sources by users most likely to become customers. That simple statement is our ongoing challenge.

The sites where your ads are displayed, our publishers, want quality, too, in the form of ads that fit their content and appeal to their users. And those users know a little about quality, as well. They want relevant content, products and services that meet their needs, wrapped into an engaging, trusted experience—all of which are vital to overall quality.

In fact, Yahoo!’s click-through protection system proactively identifies and does not bill advertisers for between 12 and 15 percent of clicks on average. This includes not only click fraud, but also other types of clicks that Yahoo! believes should not be billed to advertisers 

We’re Panamaniacs
Unless you’ve been advertising from under a rock for the last several months, you must know that we recently rolled out a new search advertising system, sometimes called “Project Panama.” This new system gives you, the advertiser, considerably more visibility into your ads’ quality, as well as more control over your campaigns.

But “Project Panama” is far from “stick-a-fork-in-it” done. New features and organizational enhancements will roll out over the coming weeks and months, providing you with even more control and visibility into your ads’ quality.

One of the new features is quality-based pricing (which will help ensure that traffic is priced consistently with the quality it delivers) and domain blocking. Also, we’re developing an advertiser marketplace quality council made up of selected advertisers who will travel to our search marketing HQ and advise our quality teams on their approach. Finally, we’re enhancing our customer care and claims review teams to help them be more efficient and responsive to your needs and concerns.

A Man, a Plan…
To help us implement these new features and enhancements, today we’re pleased to announce the appointment of a new vice president of Marketplace Quality. The new VP, Reggie Davis, will be 100 percent dedicated to ensuring quality across for Yahoo!’s Advertiser, publishers and end users. Reggie will drive all of our quality efforts, hiring a dedicated staff that will coordinate quality teams across the organization.

Welcome aboard, Reggie.

—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

The Yahoo! Searchlight Awards

Be a part of the glamour while learning from search advertising’s best

The Awards Season is in full swing—the People’s Choice, the Golden Globes, the Grammys, the Screen Actors Guild, the Oscars, etc. Right in the midst of this time of glitz and glamour enters the second annual Yahoo! Searchlight Awards. This entertaining and interactive show celebrates the best and brightest in search advertising over the past year. It’s a great opportunity for you to learn about combining search and creativity to help you achieve the results you want from some of the top online agencies. As part of the competition, a panel of industry experts will evaluate four search advertising finalist campaigns and the audience (you) will vote for the winner.

And the nominees are:

Who will win? Be there and help decide!

When: Thursday, February 22, 2007
Where: Time-Life Building, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York City
Admission: Free

For more info, click here.

—Michael Mattis

An Important Change to the Way Ads Are Ranked in the U.S.

Bid amount and ad quality will determine an ad’s rank in search results beginning February 5, 2007 in the U.S.

In search advertising, user satisfaction and advertiser value are two sides of the same coin. To help create a better experience for our users and help encourage you to create better, more focused ads that are more appealing to your potential customers, we are changing the way that ads are ranked in the U.S. market. Ads in search results will be ranked by both bid amount and ad quality. This change, which will impact all advertisers, is designed to allow you to focus less on competitive bidding and more on the quality of your ads. By improving the quality of your ads and making them more relevant to users, you may be rewarded with a better ranking and reduced cost for your ads.

An ad’s quality will be determined by:

• Its historical performance—the ad’s click-through rate relative to its position in search results
• Its expected performance—determined by various relevance factors considered by Yahoo!’s ranking algorithms, relative to other ads displayed at the same time

You’ll be able to gain an understanding of your ad’s overall quality by looking at its quality index in the new search marketing system.

Ad ranking raison d’etre
When users engage with highly relevant ads, advertisers receive interested, valuable potential customers. This new ad ranking model should, in the long run, help bring up the value of our network for everyone: advertisers, partners, publishers and consumers alike.

To learn more about the quality index and the new approach to ad ranking, please click here. Also, be sure and check out the Yodel Anecdotal post from our CEO, Terry Semel, about what “Panama” means in the grand scheme of things.

Please note: If you would like to request an upgrade, please submit your request on our Online Reservation Page, and we will try to accommodate you.

—The Team

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