Online ad spending up
Here’s a little silver lining for agencies and publishers: Online ad spending will see double-digit growth, reaching $61.8 billion worldwide this year and $96.8 billion in 2014, according to an eMarketer report cited by AdWeek. Hopefully that rising tide will lift all boats.

Business schools heart social media
You knew it would come to this. One minute you’re tweeting just for fun about how yummy that bagel was this morning, and the next you’re running a comprehensive social media campaign that “leverages the power of peer-to-peer networks to optimize brand evangelism and foment expanded sales opportunities” for your company. Now it’s official, because B-schools like Harvard and Columbia are offering bit-ticket courses in social media marketing, according to BusinessWeek.

What’s more important? Your keywords or landing pages?
Not surprisingly, the answer is that they’re both vital to your efforts. So says Dan Darnell, director of product marketing at Adchemy. Writing on Adotas, Darnell says that too many advertisers focus on either their paid search ads or their websites, when they should be looking at “the contributions of the entire advertising experience—from keyword selection to bids to ad copy to landing pages.” It’s only obvious after someone takes the time to point it out.

Got an ad for that, señor?
As a marketer, would you willingly overlook a potential audience of 50 million Americans? Well, according to AdAge, some one in six U.S. residents are expected to classify themselves as Hispanic in the 2010 Census. It’s a market with a huge potential—the second largest market in the U.S. Don’t speak Spanish? Don’t worry. Nearly half of that 50 million are perfectly comfortable with English. Muy bueno!

Old Spice sales up 107%
It’s an endless debate in the agency world: What kinds of ads are most effective? Groovy, polished, brand-based ads, or simple “buy now and save” ads? Recently, skeptics had bashed Old Spice’s cool “smell like a man” viral online video campaign as ineffective. But, reports AdAge’s David Griner, your father’s deodorant’s sales are up 107 percent over the last 52 weeks. Coincidence? We think not. (Of course, advertising a sale now and then can’t hurt, either.)

Yahoo! giggles
While sitting in your office today, turn the volume on your computer all the way up, go to the Yahoo! homepage, mouse over the exclamation point in the Yahoo! logo and click. If it doesn’t get a giggle from your coworkers you’re working in the wrong place.

Ad man by day, mohel by night?
On an even lighter note, BNET’s Jim Edwards reports that one lucky Twitter bug has landed a $70K-a-year job at the venerable firm of Saatchi & Saatchi for tweeting, well, a circumcision joke. Ouch.

— Michael Mattis

Editor’s Note: This is another in a series of posts we’re calling “The Best of the YSM Blog.” These are posts containing timeless advice and best practices that never go out of style. Even if you read it the first time, it’s not a bad idea to review this information periodically to help get maximum performance from your advertising.

Originally posted February 13, 2009

When I was a kid, my grandfather always used to say, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” He’s still right, but today the word “free” doesn’t raise as much of red flag as it did in Gramps’ day. In fact, more and more consumers are recognizing the value of free, especially when it comes to their online purchases and how they’re shipped. Because when it comes to shipping, “free” can be the key that unlocks the door between advertisers and customers.

Determining factor
According to a new study of 9,000 shoppers conducted by ForeSee Results, free shipping had a huge effect on holiday sales in 2008. The study showed that free shipping offers play a major role in whether consumers buy in a store or online, and, when purchasing online, where they shop. Avoiding shipping costs was the third most common response for why shoppers choose to buy in a store rather than on a retail website, behind the ability to receive the product immediately and being able to see or feel an item before purchase.

Additionally, consumers gave retailers offering free shipping higher scores than those not offering it—in every satisfaction category. These categories included likelihood to purchase online, brand commitment, likelihood to return, likelihood to recommend, and overall retailer satisfaction.

How to promote free shipping
All of this adds up to one inescapable conclusion: Free shipping can work wonders. So if you offer this option, be sure to scream it out in all of your ads, because your customers will want to know about and take advantage of it.

This is also true for all of the other special deals you offer, from coupons to discounts to free gift wrapping. If you offer it, let your customers know about it! Free shipping and other special deals are the best first impression you could possibly make on potential customers, as well as a great way of ensuring loyalty in the ones you already have.

One note though: If you offer free shipping but with restrictions—such as minimum order amounts or only on certain items—be sure to make that clear, too. The ForeSee study showed that consumers don’t like surprises when it comes to free shipping, but they’re far more lenient if the rules are explained up front.

In this time of tightening belts and careful finance monitoring, consumers are more careful than ever about where their dollars are going. Free shipping is a great way to ease consumer concerns and grow customer loyalty at the same time.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst

Right Media, right now
If you haven’t been following the Right Media Open conference in Chicago happening now on Twitter, you should be. It’s been pretty knock-down and drag-out, with the feathers flying, to use a couple hackneyed yet appropriate turns of phrase. Among the choice tweets from our intrepid reporter:

• DJakubowski asks why Google didn’t attend Search/Display panel. Do they want last click attribution model to continue?
• G Fulgoni says the interactive industry has not sold itself as a branding medium.
• McGrory—RM/Yahoo! extending supply side RTB beyond Yahoo! to publishers. Demand Media is in!
• Mike Brunick admits that agencies have not evolved as fast as they should. “A system managing efficiency is tablestakes.”

Social gets “searchy:” the urge to converge
Edelman Digital VP, Steve Rubel, quoted by Christopher Hosford in B2B, says that social is about to get “searchy.” We just love that term. The full quote: “Search is an intent-driven medium, where users seek out what they want. Social networking is where the content finds you through the lens of friends. Those two are separate, but I think we’ll see a real convergence here where search will get a lot more social and social will get a lot more ‘searchy.’” Searchy. We just like saying it.

Online video ads to explode
And by “explode” we don’t mean literally blow up, but grow really, really fast. According to an eMarketer report cited in AdWeek, the video ad market is expected to grow more than 48% this year alone. Four years from now, eMarketer expects the online video ad market to by worth $5.5 billion, up from $1.5 billion this year.

Old Spice, new life
The new buzz phrase is “heritage brands.” These are brands with a lot of history behind them, like Butterfinger and Quaker Oats, that have gone online for a little re-invigoration and re-invention. Old Spice, your father’s navy-themed under-arm fragrance, is among our favorites. They’ve done a brilliant TV, online and social media campaign in the last few years, lead by friend of Yahoo!, Iain Tait of Wieden + Kennedy. According to ClickZ, the campaign “ending” lead to 35.7 million views on YouTube alone. Not bad. Take that as a lesson creativity, agencies.

B2B built for social
Social media is often thought of as a B2C channel. That actually may be wrong, according to BNET Advertising’s British correspondent, Yann Gourvennec. Using social media, says Gourvennec, companies can build tight communities with their customer bases. She offers several tips on just how.

— Michael Mattis

As Yahoo! continues to work closely with Microsoft to implement the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance, we want to call out some important updates and tips to help ensure the best transition experience for you.

Organic search update and tips
A key aspect of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is the transition of Yahoo! organic search listings (those found on the main body of the page). Assuming our testing continues to yield high quality results, we anticipate that our organic search results will be powered by Bing beginning in the August/September timeframe.

If organic search is important to your business, here are three valuable tips to help make sure you’re prepared:

1. Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that work best for you.
2. Decide if you’d like to modify your paid search campaigns to compensate for any changes in organic referrals that you anticipate.
3. Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimize your website for the Microsoft platform crawler, as Bing listings will be displayed for approximately 30% of search queries after this change, according to comScore.

For more on the organic search transition, see the FAQ’s for self-service advertisers at the Yahoo! Transition Center.

Organic and paid search testing
Transitioning complex systems with quality requires a lot of testing, and we’re in the process of doing just that. Fortunately, there’s nothing you need to do, though there are a few things you should keep in mind: In mid-July, we began testing the delivery of organic results from Bing to Yahoo! Search, which may gradually increase to up to 25% of Yahoo! Search traffic. We also began testing the delivery of paid search results from Microsoft Advertising adCenter to Yahoo! Search, which began with a small percentage of traffic and may increase to include up to 2.5% to 3.5% of live Yahoo! Search traffic in the U.S. Please note that testing volumes will fluctuate during this period. Since the traffic percentages are small, advertisers should not draw any conclusions from what they observe during these tests, as the results may not be indicative of the future marketplace with full Yahoo! volume. 
 
New editorial guidelines to take effect in August
There have been numerous questions from advertisers, wondering whether certain types of editorial content—such as gambling and contests—will be permitted once the transition takes place. To that end, Yahoo! and Microsoft have created new joint editorial guidelines that will begin taking effect for both Yahoo! and Microsoft paid search advertisers in early August. It’s best to review them now.

You can do that here.

Mobile update
As part of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance, Yahoo’s mobile organic and paid search results will soon be powered by Microsoft in the U.S. The transition is expected to coincide with the online organic and paid search timing. And, as with all Yahoo! Search experiences, Yahoo! will continue to innovate and enhance the overall consumer experience around those core listings. Once this transition is complete, you’ll be able to manage both your Yahoo! Search and Microsoft mobile campaigns from a single platform, adCenter. For more, take a look at the mobile FAQs on the Yahoo! Transition Center.

Transitioning with quality
We know that the holiday season is important to you. It’s important to us. While we’ve made good progress toward our goal of a quality transition for advertisers in the U.S. and Canada this year, as we’ve mentioned before, we may defer this transition until after the 2010 holiday season, if we believe that it will improve the overall experience.

More Alliance info from the Yahoo! Advertising blog

• Preparing for the Transition to adCenter
• More Questions and Answers about the Search Alliance
• Search Alliance Update #2 
• Questions and Answers about the adCenter Integration
• New Alliance Heralds New Opportunities

— The Team

Combining scale with the convenience of a single platform, the Microsoft and Yahoo! Search Alliance can help advertisers reach more consumers more easily. This new video illustrates how.

For more, visit SearchAlliance.com.

 — The Team

Goal! The comScore numbers prove what Paul the Octopus could have predicted—Yahoo! Sports World Cup was the US leader in FIFA World Cup coverage for three consecutive weeks.

The combination of great coverage, exclusive contributions from David Beckham, bloggers, Yahoo! Fantasy World Cup, special Yahoo! World Cup Toolbar, and the Yahoo! Penalty Shootout game ensured that fans could got their entire soccer fix all in one place. And did we mention David Beckham?

Several other Yahoo! properties also took the trophy in their respective categories, according to June 2010 US comScore data. To choose just three, Yahoo! Movies took over its group’s top spot for the first time and grew its audience by 11.3 percent month over month. Entertainment news is still ruled by omg! with over 25 million users. Yahoo! Finance is still the undisputed leader in Finance News/Research, reaching over 46 percent of that category’s users.

On top of all that, Yahoo! Network retained the No. 1 rank in comScore’s Ad Network report, putting the Yahoo! Network ahead of both its main competitors. Overall search volume grew by 7.1 percent, boosting US market share to 18.9 percent in June (up from 18.3 in May).

June was a great month for Yahoo! in other ways, too. Over 96 million people use Yahoo! Mail, for instance, making it the most popular such service by far. That holds true even when people are on the go, since more consumers use Yahoo! Mail on their mobile devices than any of its competitors.

— Chris Marlowe

Social and search, together at last
The world is indeed getting smaller and smaller. The worlds of social media advertising and search advertising are merging, and fast. Luckily, there are tools you can use to measure your performance in both worlds at once, says Laurie Sullivan on MediaPost’s SearchBlog.

Is social media corporate blogging’s death knell?
True, we’ve had a few positive things to say about corporate blogging now and then. We’re doing it right now, after all. But we may be dinosaurs before we know it. Simon Mainwaring, who, not incidentally, has been featured on our blog recently, says on his blog that they are going out of style and offers eight teasers on how “the online presence of a brand will increasingly become the sum of its social exchanges across the Web.” Dude, this is all so self-reflexive.

Millenials grow up on social media
Millenials. Gen-Y. Generation Next. “The kids these days.” Call ‘em what you will. Fact is, the young folk born in the 1980s and ‘90s are leading the charge in social media and, moreover, are unlikely to get sick of Facebook and Twitter—and whatever it is that will come two years down the pike to replace ’em—well into middle age, according to a recent Pew study. Agencies take note.

Yahoo! Tower of Babel
Ever wonder how Yahoo!—with many sites in many languages around the globe—gets to know its users? Yahoo! Web Analytics, which recently celebrated its second birthday, has the answers—answers that smart advertisers can benefit from.

Wise guy
Speaking of analytics, in his new role as CEO of MediaBank, former Yahoo! GM, Bill Wise, opines on AdExchanger.com on how technology and analytics can help manage your media efforts. We love our analytics here at Yahoo!, as Bill well knows. Kudos to our old friend, Bill, and best of luck with the new venture. We’re sure to be working together in the future.

Is your agency in a media tizzy?
Writing in Adotas, film director, Ernie Mosteller talks about the frenzy in the market today, what with all the different kinds of media customers have to choose from. “Media and creative are now a maze of micro-strategies and mini-tactics that each work differently for different types of people, depending, of course, on time of day and whether the sun is shining,” he writes. “The fact is, there are just too many different types of media out there to focus a crystal ball on what will work for a given brand, and how.” The key to success? Good content—which is still king.

— Michael Mattis

(Marble image by seeks2dream via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Editor’s Note: This is another in a series of posts we’re calling “The Best of the YSM Blog.” These are posts containing timeless advice and best practices that never go out of style. Even if you read it the first time, it’s not a bad idea to review this information periodically to help get maximum performance from your advertising.

Originally posted February 26, 2009

If you want to know whether to accept a wedding invitation if it doesn’t say whether there’ll be an open bar, we recommend Yahoo! Answers. If you want to know more about how your Sponsored Search account works, though, our free online webinars are the way to go. We hold these regularly and post the archives online, but for a quick taste of the give-and-take, you can peruse the following Q&As about ads that advertisers often toss our way:

How do I change the display URL on my ads?
The display URL is the web address that is displayed with your ad instead of your destination URL, which is typically lengthy. A display URL can provide your ad with a more concise, visually appealing URL. The display URL appears below the ad’s description and must correspond to a page on your site.

You can actually change the display URL on two levels: the account level, which will become the default URL for your whole account; and the ad level, which will individually override the account-level display URL. You can change the account display URL on the Administration tab in your account by clicking the “edit” button in Account General Information section.

You can change the ad display URL by navigating to the ad group containing the ad, clicking “Edit” next to the ad, and clicking on the black arrow next to the Display URL field.

What happens if my ad title plus an inserted keyword creates a title of more than 40 characters?
When you use the insert keyword feature, you are required to enter “default text.” If using the inserted keyword in your ad would cause the title to exceed 40 characters, then the default text will be used instead.

How often is the quality index re-calculated for my ads?
Quality index scores are constantly re-calculated (every time your ad is displayed or considered for display) based on relevancy factors, along with the ad’s click-through rate relative to its position and to other ads displayed at the same time.

When receiving traffic via the Advanced match type option, is there a way to find out the exact search term that searchers used?
If you enable tracking URLs (located in the “Administrative” tab under Tracking URLs), you will be able to see what terms were searched on and the ads they matched to in your account. Read more about tracking URLs.

What are long descriptions used for?
While your long description may be shown on some Yahoo! distribution partner sites, only your short description will be shown in search results on Yahoo.com. Thus, creating a long description is optional for each ad you create. A long description can be added to provide more detailed information about your products, services and offers, but it may be seen by fewer users.

— The Team

We’d like to share some of the spectacular upcoming events around the globe in July, and also show you how you can find more local events and communities for Search and Social near you. We’ve included the Twitter pages for the events, so you can follow chatter from the event organizers even if you can’t go. Hint: be sure to follow the hashtags for the events too.

Social Media Marketing Conference, San Francisco
Website: http://socialmediamarketing.co.uk/sanfrancisco/
Where: San Francisco, CA
When: July 8
Cost: $395
Twitter: (hashtag: #smmsf)
Event Description: During this one-day event, a team of renowned marketing experts will provide guidance on how to effectively engage with customers via social media, give tips on how to maximize the impact of your campaigns and offer insights into new services to try and trends to watch out for. This is the ultimate event for anyone involved in social media or digital marketing.

Blueglass, L.A.
Website: http://www.blueglass.com/conferences/la/
Where: Marina Del Rey, CA
When: July 19-20
Cost: $525
Twitter: @blueglassinc
Event Description: BlueGlass LA is an online marketing conference featuring the top social media, search marketing & business experts in the industry today. It has been designed to give you the best in topics, trends, strategies, and networking possibilities.

Word of Mouth Super Genius!
Website: http://www.blueglass.com/conferences/la/
Where: Chelsea Piers, New York, NY
When: July 20
Cost: $750
Twitter: @gaspedal

Event Description: Word of mouth how-to classes, case studies, and small group discussions with word-of-mouth authors.

2010 Fortune Brainstorm
Website: http://www.fortuneconferences.com/brainstormtech/
Where: Aspen, CO
When: July 22-24
Cost: $3,500
Twitter: @brainstormtech
Event Description: Fortune Brainstorm: TECH is a marketplace of ideas that assembles the smartest people we know — the world’s top technology and media thinkers, operators, entrepreneurs, innovators, and influencers. These leaders inspire a conversation that informs Fortune’s editorial coverage throughout the year.

Supernova Forum 2010: Perestroika
Website: http://supernovahub.com/
Where: Philadelphia, PA
When: July 29-30
Cost: $150 – $200
Twitter: @supernovahub
Event Description: Supernova explores the transformation of computing, communications, business, and society in the Network Age. Held since 2002, Supernova events bring together several hundred leading executives, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, government officials, and business practitioners to make connections, discuss emerging trends, and discover innovative new ideas and companies.

Online Marketing Summit
Website: http://www.onlinemarketingconnect.com/events/
Where/When: Philadelphia July 8, New York July 9, Washington DC July 12, Atlanta July 14, Charlotte July 16, Dallas July 19, Austin July 21, Houston July 23
Cost: ~ $99 -$369
Twitter: @OMsummit
Event Description: Each event includes hands-on training workshops, one-on-one personalized labs with experts, thought-leadership presentations, and peer-to-peer collaboration. From the online novice to the eMarketing expert, there are sessions that will benefit all corporate, brand, and online marketers.

Find Local Events and Communities in Your Area

What would be more apropos than social networks online where you can find SEO and social networking events? Below we’ll list several sites where you can find local events, meetups, and even people with similar interests in your area.

SEMPO
SEMPO lists 27 local committees and working groups in cities like San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston, and several more in the US and abroad.

Upcoming
Find events by date, location, topic, or what you’re friends are doing. Sign in and keep track of your past, current, and future events. You can also create, manage, and promote your own events.

Meetup
Create meetups and share with your friends and peers. Find events by keyword, location, popular topics, fastest growing topics or largest meetup cities.

Eventbrite
Find events by location, category or date, and sort by distance, date, or best match. You can also publish events, sell tickets, and promote them in social networks.

LinkedIn Events
Search for events listed on LinkedIn by event type, keyword, time period and/or location.

Twitter Search
Use Twitter’s advanced search to see what people are saying about the industry (or anything) near you. It’s a good way to find friends with similar interests nearby.

— Laura Lippay

Visit Laura at Lip Service, and see some of her previous posts, “Examining Your Backlinks with Yahoo! Site Explorer” and “Defining Your Target Audience for SEO.”

Editor’s Note: This is another in a series of posts we’re calling “The Best of the YSM Blog.” These are posts containing timeless advice and best practices that never go out of style. Even if you read it the first time, it’s not a bad idea to review this information periodically to help get maximum performance from your advertising.

Originally posted March 3, 2009

Just as you should have your basic wrenches and screwdrivers in your toolbelt when fixing up a house, there are a few tools that are indispensible when working on your Sponsored Search account. We put the feelers out to our Customer Solutions representatives to find out which tools they most frequently recommend, and here are the top four:

1. Analytics – to put your money where your money is 
We offer two types of analytics tools, both of which help you learn more about your clicks and conversions:

Conversion-only analytics, which will show you how many conversions occur from clicks coming in from your campaign ads. You can also see the total revenue brought in by these conversions. Learn how to activate conversion-only analytics.

Full analytics, which tracks conversions and website activity, follows your visitors after they click on your ad, go to your landing page, what they browse from there, if they put something in the shopping cart with the intent to purchase, and when they checkout. Full analytics is like a secret agent on a mission to let you know how visitors are viewing and using your site, so you know which pages and products catch the most attention and lead to revenue. Learn how to activate full analytics.

2. Reports – to see if your account gets an “A”
Using reports, you can compare ad performance, landing page performance and keyword performance, then identify trends that you would like to repeat (or not). You can save report views and even have them emailed to you automatically. How’s that for service? Learn more about the various reports we offer.

3. Forecasting tool for keywords – to see into the future
This handy graph with a scroll bar provides a little clairvoyance on your keyword performance by predicting the outcome of your bids. So you can use it as a guide to determine how much you should raise or lower your bid to achieve your desired position in search results. Plus, it’s just plain fun to scroll back and forth and visualize a profitable future.

The data in our forecasting tool is based on historical traffic for the keyword, which is calculated using a combination of your bid on this keyword and the keyword’s track record, including previous bids of other advertisers and monthly click volume. Many factors, including the bidding behavior of other advertisers, your campaign settings and the quality of your ad and its relevance to searches, could significantly influence your actual results. Learn more about forecasting tools.

4. Campaign tune-up – because a good mechanic is hard to find
You may be able to craft a strong account on your own, but sometimes it helps to get an expert evaluation to find the spots in need of repair.

The campaign tune-up analyzes your campaigns to generate a proposal of suggested keyword bids, match types and spending limits that may help you improve campaign performance. To use this tool, your  account must be at least 90 days old (in order to have enough information in its history to provide data for analysis).

Once requested, the campaign tune-up goes to work reviewing performance history, estimated future performance, monthly budget and other factors. After finishing the analysis, you’ll receive notification in the alerts panel of your account Dashboard that your tune-up proposal is ready. Learn more about campaign tune-up.

Keep in mind that your account is always a little bit of fixer-upper. By being willing to constantly track and fine-tune, your investment is more likely to pay off.

—Kastle Waserman, Communications Manager

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

With the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance transition getting closer every day, Yahoo! Senior Vice President Mark Morrissey is a busy man. So when anyone gets a chance to interview him, we jump on it. BoomTown’s Kara Swisher recently landed an interview with Mark and his counterpart leading the search alliance effort at Microsoft, Greg Nelson.

It’s a great, insightful interview, and we wanted to share some of Mark’s quotes—the full post is linked below.

“[Search is] a critical part of our business today, and a critical part of our consumer experience, and it always will be. What the market deserves is…a true alternative to Google. And the best way for us to achieve that is to acknowledge things that we do well, and the things that Microsoft does well, and to leverage those things together, as opposed to us trying to do everything ourselves, particularly in the areas that we’re maybe not so good at.

So, between Microsoft’s experience and focus on delivering great global platforms with true scale, Yahoo!’s strength in terms of working with advertisers and understanding of the market, I really believe that in the mechanics we set up from the very beginning of this that by leveraging both of our strengths, that we can really deliver a true competitor to Google…”

“The principle is to transition with quality. That’s the overriding factor. And that’s based on the consumer experience and the yield and performance of advertisers and publishers in our owned-and-operated properties, right, because the intent here is make sure that, as we make the transition to going forward, we want the business results to get nothing but better and better…”

“The first [aspect of 'transitioning with quality'] is the experience. For consumers we want to deliver the same quality experience—basically the look and feel before and after the transition.

And the results will get nothing but more and more relevant over time. But the overall experience, the speed, the performance need to be as good or better going forward. For advertisers, there are capabilities that they’ve really enjoyed in Panama that are not in adCenter today. We’re not promising them one-for-one capabilities, but there are investments that we’re making together with Microsoft to bring adCenter up for advertisers and publishers.

In terms of the first one is experience—experience for consumers, advertisers, publishers, and we want the capabilities to be what they expect or better.

Then secondly, it’s around the business metrics…We want to make sure that again for not every single advertiser, not every single publisher, but if you look at in aggregate the groups of major marketplaces, we want the overall performance and business metrics, particularly going into the holiday season, it needs to be as good or better going forward.

So, quality is about the experience itself, measured probably in terms of capabilities, and then there’s the business metrics, and we need to make sure that their yield is as good.”

You’ll find the entire Part 1 of Swisher’s interview here.

— The Team

Last week, we posted an update on the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. This naturally elicited a number of questions and comments. We answer them here.

Some raised questions about the timing of the transition: “Could you really give me the exact date instead of ‘late summer’? I guess if you can’t make it end before end of September, I would ask you politely to postpone the process to the next year.”

Answer:  We have a lot of work ahead of us, which is why we’re not being more specific at this time. Please be assured that our goal is to provide a quality transition experience for advertisers in the U.S. and Canada in 2010, while protecting the all-important holiday season. If we feel that it would improve the overall experience, we may defer the transition to 2011. As we’ve said from the beginning, we may adjust transition timing and dates as needed to ensure a quality transition.

Another important question was “Is there going to be transparency between the search engines so that advertisers can see where their ads are being delivered?”

Answer:  Once the transition is complete, adCenter will provide an aggregate view of Yahoo! and Microsoft traffic in your reports.

Also note, however, that after 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!

Several people asked the question, “What will happen to adult ads” once the transition is complete.

Answer: Microsoft and Yahoo! have been conducting detailed analysis and review of their respective editorial policies, and in the coming weeks we’ll provide an update on our editorial policy for the transition. While there won’t be any sweeping changes, we believe that the new policy will effectively balance advertiser, publisher and consumer concerns in the unified search marketplace.

Also, 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

iPhone 4 sales top 1.7 million units in the first three days
Got an app for that? If not, you might want to get one. Apple sold 1.7 million iPhone 4 units in the first few days of sales alone. And, according to one Morgan Stanley analyst, total iPhone users could top 100 million by 2011. We think we can expect a similar rush for advertisers and agencies.

One billion wireless email users by 2014
Speaking of advertising opportunities for mobile, wireless email users are expected to top one billion by 2014, according to an article in UK’s Computing magazine, which cites Gartner as the source.

What would Ben Franklin tweet?

Tweeting the Declaration of Independence
In celebration of the nation’s 234th birthday this weekend, Slate, the online magazine, offers a contest that lets people re-write the Declaration of Independence as a tweet, boiling the founding document down to its bare essentials. Examples include: “All men should be equal, happy and free. Suck it, King George,” and, “We quit. Love, the U.S. of A.” What would Benjamin Franklin tweet? Show your patriotism and give it a try.

Power to the people of search
With Independence Day in mind, SFGate.com’s James Temple writes that search companies are turning to “We the People” power to help determine search results. Of course, Yahoo! has relied on human editors since we started. We’re just saying…

Retargeting redux
A company can spend a lot of cash on SEO, writes JB Rudelle, CEO of Citreo, in Adotas. But what if your SEO dollars are wasted on a potential customer who doesn’t buy? Retargeting, he says, is the answer. That’s another thing at which Yahoo! is pretty adept.

— Michael Mattis

The latest version of Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop launches today. You provided us with feedback during our Beta and in webinar surveys. Our product folks listened, and they thought that these new features might assist you in your attempt to be both efficient, as well as productive:

• Select Excluded Keywords. Let’s say you’re selling plasma televisions at your electronics store. You may not want your ads to show when searchers enter “astrophysical plasma” or “blood plasma”. Selecting these terms as excluded keywords from the new Excluded Keywords tab in Search Marketing Desktop’s data grid can prevent your ads from displaying for these terms.
• Switch between Accounts. Do you manage more than one account? Now, you can switch between those accounts by clicking on Get Account, and then selecting the Switch button.
• Download Specific Campaigns. It is no longer necessary to download all of your account’s campaigns when you only want to make changes to one or two campaigns. Campaigns that you have not downloaded are displayed in the Get Account/Campaigns popup window with a blue icon.

— The Team