Those “Mad Men” are such dolls
AdAge reports, via the New York Times, that Mattel will introduce a line of “Mad Men” action figures—or perhaps “inaction figures” would be the more appropriate term. The line will include Don Draper, Roger Sterling and Joan Holloway. Some ad execs apparently don’t like the idea, or the show, all that much. Writes AdAge’s Ken Wheaton, “I guess I’d be ticked off if the work of my younger days was swiped or, worse, bashed in a TV show. And if I weren’t, in fact, a booze-soaked lout myself, I might be miffed that the show portrays the entire industry as drunken, oversexed womanizers.” C’mon, Ken. Lighten up, buddy. The three-martini lunch is on us next time.

Bing on the up and up
By now you’ve no doubt heard about the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search alliance. There have been a lot of questions about it, naturally. But it looks like we’ve chosen a good ally. Microsoft’s Bing showed a 15 percent increase in traffic last month over January’s numbers, says Neilsen. Thanks to Search Engine Land for this intelligence.

Don’t forget the call to action in your SEM ads
You’ve just written the most beautiful search marketing ad, ever. It’s poetry. It’s music. It’s Shakespeare. But did you forget the call to action? “Buy now and save?” “Don’t wait, operators are standing by?” Oops. Search Engine Watch’s Herndon Hasty explains.

Just what is behavioral targeting?
It’s one of the hottest things going right now—and it’s expected to grow from more than 26 percent this year over last year, according to ClickZ’s Amy Manus. But what it is it and, more importantly, what is it not?

Creative Spotlight: BBDO’s St. Pat’s Day responsible drinking PSA

It’s definitely St. Patrick’s Day. Just saw a man in a Kelly green “Utilikilt” saunter down the street. Fortunately for onlookers he had the gams for it. Anyway, BBDO, in what is both a celebration of the kiss-me-I’m-Irish holiday and a warning about the potential dangers of looking at the world through your beer goggles, has just come out with a PSA campaign that features cans of Guinness stout with blurry lettering. Tip o’ the Tam o’ Shanter to AdFreak’s Tim Nudd for his gift ‘o the gab on this one.

— Michael O’Mattis

This from BrandWeek:

Snack brand Lay’s is tapping a somewhat unexploited social media outlet—photo-sharing site Flickr—for a new push asking consumers to document their happiness.

This month, the Frito-Lay brand is asking consumers to submit photos of themselves—or family members and loved ones—enjoying life’s happy moments, be it surfing or mixing cookie batter, in a digital push called “The Happiness Exhibit.”

Using Flickr, consumers can upload photos around specific themes such as Mother’s Day or American summers on The Happiness Exhibit portion of its site. Lay’s will then run some of these photos in double-page spreads in upcoming issues of People magazine. The Mother’s Day submissions, for instance, appear in the May 10 edition. The campaign will also extend to include photos on the backs of Lay’s packaging this summer as well.

An excellent use of social media, photo sharing and blending online and offline media to promote the brand through user content. And potato chips… Yum!

— The Team

(Image by adison from the Frito-Lay “Happiness Exhibit” on Flickr)

Shopping comparison network Pronto Inc. realized a dynamic drop in CPCs and increased ROI with Yahoo!’s enhanced pricing structure. This enhancement, combined with optimization advice from a Yahoo! representative, helped Pronto to increase its overall ROI without increasing spend.

The Challenge
Pronto Inc., a comparison shopping network whose key sites include Pronto.com, ProntoStyle.com, ProntoHome.com and ProntoTech.com, wanted to increase the efficiency of its digital advertising, reaching more customers online without increasing its overall digital advertising spend. The company has more than ten million keywords across its four key web properties. “In one of the most competitive marketplaces, online shopping comparison, we needed to increase our advertising efficiency,” says Darren MacDonald, Pronto’s Vice President of Search Marketing Operations. “And we wanted Yahoo!, with its huge audience, to help show us the way.”

The Solution
In this highly competitive niche, keeping down cost-perclick (CPC)—the price advertisers pay for each qualified click—is vital. To help make it easier for advertisers to find more targeted customers, improve their search advertising performance, and keep CPCs down, Yahoo! unveiled a new pricing structure in 2009 that allowed advertisers to better align what they pay to the value of clicks they receive. The enhancement, combined with the optimization tips provided by a Yahoo! representative, allowed Pronto to advertise more efficiently withoutincreasing overall digital ad spend.

The Results
Taking advantage of the dynamic pricing enhancement, Pronto experienced a significant decrease in CPC across its four Web properties. This in turn allowed the company to re-invest in its bidded keywords, raising overall return on investment (ROI), without increasing its overall advertising budget.

“Our CPCs dropped ten to fifteen percent toward the end of Q4, which allowed us to increase our bids,” says Pronto’s MacDonald. “This combined with the roll-out of our new microsites, increased our ROI between five and eight percent.”

With more than ten million bidded keywords, a few percentage points improvement in ROI made all the difference. In addition to enhanced pricing, Yahoo! gave Pronto access to a vast network of engaged users and billions of monthly searches.

”We’re very happy with the performance gains that the enhanced pricing structure helped us get,” says MacDonald. “And our Yahoo! representative worked diligently to help us optimize our results.”

About Yahoo! Enhanced Pricing: Yahoo’s enhanced pricing structure allows advertisers to better align what they pay to the value of clicks they receive. Adjustments are made to click charges based on traffic performance from across the Yahoo! network. These include discounts on click charges for lower performing traffic, and potential premiums on click charges for higher performing traffic. Pricing adjustments are based on the performance of the traffic source, and are not affected by the quality of the ads.

About Pronto Inc: Pronto Inc. is a leading shopping comparison network offering more than 70 million products on its collection of sites. Across Pronto.com, ProntoStyle.com, ProntoTech.com and ProntoHome.com consumers can find premium brands at competitive prices. Developed by IAC/InterActiveCorp (IAC) and launched in 2006, Pronto.com and its network of sites is one of the top 100 most trafficked US properties.

— The Team

It’s tough being in your twenties. You may still be young enough to party like a rock star, but no one yet respects you. (Try pulling up your pants and getting a hair cut. Maybe that will help.) Today domain names turned 25 years old. The first .com domain name, “Symbolics.com,” was registered by a Massachusetts computer company on March 15, 1985.

The first ten domains:

• Symbolics.com – March 15, 1985
• BBN.com – April 24, 1985
• Think.com – May 24, 1985
• MCC.com – July 11, 1985
• DEC.com – Sept. 30, 1985
• Northrop.com – Nov. 7, 1985
• Serox.com – Jan. 9, 1986
• SRI.com – Jan. 17, 1986
• HP.com – March 3, 1986
• Bellcore.com – March 5, 1986

“Yahoo.com”—you’ve heard of them—was registered Jan. 18, 1995. For more, read Benny Evangelista’s piece on SFGate.com.

— The Team

(Image by jessica.diamond via Flickr, CC 2.0)

You’re trying to get your website noticed and search engines are an excellent channel for visibility. In this article, we’ll look at some basic things you can do to make sure your content is being indexed by search engines. The more of the items you can implement below, the more noticeable your site will be to the search engines. 

1. Check your “Robots.TXT” file
One little line of code in a simple txt file can be very costly if it’s blocking your site from search engines. A robots.txt file allows you to tell search engines to crawl or not crawl certain directories or files in your site.

For example, this simple line of code disallows all crawlers (a.k.a. robots):

User-agent: *
Disallow: /
To find your robots.txt file simply type in your domain followed by /robots.txt. For example, here is the robots.txt file for the W3C: www.w3.org/robots.txt. For more details on what can be in this file and how search engines treat it visit robotstxt.org.

2. Make sure your content is indexable
Although search engines have come a long way over the years in terms of indexing all kinds of content on the web, there are still some types of content that may not be fully indexed or not indexed at all. If you are seeing missing content when you look at the search engine’s cache of your page, you may want to check if the content is presented in one of the tough-to-index ways below.

This is also true for people using screen readers due to a disability. A screen reader “sees” the page much in the same way a search engine crawler does – by crawling content and deciphering the elements.

JavaScript
Some JavaScript is crawled by search engines today and more will likely be in the future, but JavaScript (including its related scriping technique AJAX) can still present an issue.  Because most content in JavaScript is usually not indexed, things like navigation, on-page apps, and any other content presented by using JavaScript may not be seen and therefore cannot contribute to the context of the page (or sometimes cannot be followed, in the case of links) for search engines.

Flash
With better indexing capabilities coming about recently, Flash sites are becoming more prevalent in SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages), although a site built entirely in Flash is still probably not the best idea if you care about search engine traffic.

Today search engines primarily attempt to index links and text from Flash files. While this is better than it used to be, 100 percent of content still may not be indexed depending on how your Flash site is created. Navigation through “pages” in a Flash file is all contained within a single swf file that lives on one URL, eliminating separate topical content for separate pages.  This can be problematic when you’re up against competitors with much more targeted topical and sub-topical content living on distinct URLs (with links to each of those specific URLs providing even more context).

To minimize indexing difficulties, try to use Flash in smaller pieces. Make sure each topical page of your site has its own unique URL first, then put Flash elements on each page if you like.  Beware though—the more of your content you put in Flash, the less content and context you may be providing to the search engines. 

Image Text
It’s rare to see the entire content of a page posted as a .jpg or other image these days, but it still happens. And when it does, a crawler goes through the code and just sees an image instead of seeing all of the pictures, content, and link text on the page. Search engines simply cannot read any textual content you present in an image, whether it is the entire content of the page or just titles or headers.  You will see the images displayed when you check the cached version of a page.  This is because it is displaying the actual image that is cached, not reading the text content within it.

3. Strenghten your link structure
Links to and from your pages are very important for the “findability” of your pages.  If a page has no links connecting it with any other indexed pages on the web, it may not be found by search engines, since they follow links to discover new content. 

Internal links
Make sure you have a sensible linking structure in place on your site that is crawlable, links to top level as well as deeper level pages, and links to content relevant to the page the links are on.

Crawlable links are links that can be seen by search engines, meaning they’re not in JavaScript or in unindexable links within a Flash file. Also link to different pages within your site, not just from the home page, but all pages. Deeper pages in a site tend to be tougher to find and index, since they are linked to less often, or from more obscure pages in a site. Try to include links to pages most relevant to the content of each page, to give the search engines better context, and to provide a good mix of deeper links. 

You can also include a sitemap page on the site (similarly named xml sitemap files are discussed later).  Provide the sitemap link from your home page and/or from a header or footer on all pages.

External links
If you provide worthwhile content, your site and the pages within it will attract links naturally.  These links from external sites help search engines find and classify your site, especially if your site is newly published. To kick-start your visibility,you can add your site to  trusted directories like The Open Directory Project and Yahoo! Directory.  If it is relevant, you can also add your site to online local listings pages like Yelp, Yahoo! Local or CitySearch. 

Promote your website in your advertising campaigns, add it to your business card, and provide any other means for visibility that you can. If people find your site interesting and useful they will link to it.

To see what your inlinks looks like, go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and type in your URL. Click on the Inlinks button.  Use the dropdowns to look at links to one page or the entire site, or to look at links from all pages, all pages except that subdomain, or all pages except that domain.

4. Create a  sitemap XML file
The major search engines we’re addressing here all support xml sitemap files. These sitemap files are different from the onsite sitemap pages previously described. They are xml files that contain a list of the URLs on your site along with a small amount of information about the URLs that is placed on your server and crawled by search engines. This allows you to tell search engines about your URLs, even if they haven’t crawled them naturally by following links on the Web.

Visit sitemaps.org for more information, or see Yahoo!, Google, and Bing’s support of sitemaps.

5. Verify your “nofollow” and “noindex” tags
Noindex and nofollow tags can be used to block search engines from crawling specific links or content. 

Noindex
The noindex meta tag tells search engines not to index a page.  It looks like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />

To check for noindex tags on any of your pages, right click on the page in the browser and choose “View Source”.  Search for noindex on the page.

For more information on the search engines’ support of noindex, see these Yahoo!, Google and Bing pages mentioning it.

Nofollow
Nofollow tags can be found in a robots meta tag at the page level, or within the <a> tag at the link level.

Nofollow at the page level tells search engine robots not to follow any of the links in the body of the page that the nofollow meta tag is on.  It looks like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow” />

Nofollow at the link level tells search engine robots not to follow that particular link that the nofollow attribute is applied to.  It looks like this:

<a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>link text</a>

To check for nofollows on any page, you can look at the source code of the page by right clicking on the page and choosing “View Source.” Then do a search for the word nofollow in the source code.

For more information on nofollows, see this Wikipedia article, or see Yahoo!,  Google and Bing’s  support of nofollow.

6. Specify your site’s language
You can also help search engines by specifying what language your site is written in. This is a simple meta tag that looks like this:

<meta http-equiv=”content-language” content=”en”>

See all ISO codes at the Library of Congress site for more information.

To check for language meta tags on any page, you can look at the source code of the page by right clicking on the page and choosing “View Source.” Then do a search for the word language (or content-language) in the source code.

Still having problems?
If you’ve tried everything above and believe you still have indexing issues, browse the webmaster guidelines below for more information, troubleshooting, and contact information for the search engines. 

Search Engine Guidelines for webmasters

• Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines
• Google Webmaster Guidelines
• Bing guidelines for successful indexing

For more on getting your site noticed, refer to Laura Lippay’s previous post “Is Your Site Invisible?”

— Laura Lippay, Director of Technical Marketing

(Image by Kapungo via Flicker, CC 2.0)

Recently, we introduced some new features and functionalities that make it easier and more efficient for you to manage your account and better target your campaigns. These were pretty much a hit with the search marketing cogniscenti.

So how are these updates performing? Pretty well, according to Efficeint Frontier’s Shay O’Reilly. He offers several tips on how to make them perform even better.

— The Team

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

Calling all bracketologists
March brings with it green beer, spring flowers and, of course, three weeks of hoops hysteria in the form of the NCAA college basketball tournament. This year’s Yahoo! Sports March Madness line-up is stronger than ever, beginning with our seasoned veteran, Tourney Pick ‘Em. The contest pits Yahoo! users against each other and the “experts,” with cash prizes of up to a million dollars on the line. Something new and cool for this year’s tournament is “Predictalot,” an experimental app from the brainiacs at Yahoo! Labs: Predictalot enables fans to make all types of prestidigitations, then assigns odds and lets users buy and sell them like stocks. Yahoo! has also created a dedicated mobile site just for your tournament picks, as well as a new web show, “Bracket Madness Live.” Picking begins this Sunday after the match-ups are announced, and the usual bracket-busting begins Thursday, March 18.

JWT’s top ten lessons recession brand lessons
Those JWT guys sure are into their “top tens.” The global agency spent a year surveying brand and consumer response to the recession, and came up with ten key brand lessons for surviving a downturn. And then they put them all in a book, which you can download for bupkis—well, in exchange for the usual name/rank/serial number data, anyway.

It’s not all about the data?
Yep, that’s what Dax Hamman says in AdExchanger.com’s Displaying Search column. Hamman, the VP of Display Media at iCrossing, says that “Search and analytics data has helped define media programs for some time…Data is essential to this evolution in media.” But, he also says, “As an industry we must remember that we are talking to real people, not just pixels, and real people will always respond better to something that is visually exciting, has sizzling copy or simply makes them say ‘wow’.” In short, creativity’s still king, kids.

High Standards
It may still seem like the Wild West when it comes to digital advertising but, rest assured, the frontier days are over. Today we have high standards, as ClickZ’s Hollis Thomases explains.

2010 looking up for marketing execs
According to a recent survey of more than 400 North American marketing execs performed by the research firm Frost & Sullivan, marketing execs are viewing the glass as at least half full. Budgets remain flat, staffing and processes remain an issue, and the biggest challenge remains the global recession. But, nevertheless, marketers are finding that life can be so sweet on the sunny side of the street.

— Michael Mattis

(Hoops image by Ryan Fung via Flickr, CC 2.0)

How will the search agreement with Microsoft affect Yahoo! advertisers and products? David Pann, VP and general manager of search advertising, told WebProNews Video that the deal is “a win for advertisers with a single buy getting access to more inventory, it’s a win for consumers for a greater relevance, and it’s a win for consumers and publishers since they have greater access to a new set of participation and inventory.” For more from David, watch the video below.

More WebProNews Videos

—The Team

Self-proclaimed “retired computer geek” Don Tuttle is a man who’s always tried to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to making money online. His current line of work, commonly known as affiliate marketing, involves using search advertising to send traffic to third-party companies, and when a sale is made, Tuttle gets a commission.

To do this, Tuttle uses all of the popular paid search providers, but he identifies Yahoo! Search Marketing as his favorite, primarily due to its powerful and more extensive targeting capabilities, and to the high quality of customer support. In a business where having access to key information about users—and then using it to reach the right prospects with the right message—is essential to making a profit, Tuttle shows that being bigger is not always better.

Using pay-per-click
In 2005, after a less-than-successful foray into selling items on eBay, Tuttle recognized a growing opportunity in the field of affiliate marketing, and decided to dive in. “I don’t own the products or the companies I promote; I’m more like a commissioned salesman,” he says. Tuttle keeps a close eye on his advertising expenses, to ensure that they don’t exceed the commissions he receives from the traffic that the ads generate. “I’m very bottom-line oriented,” he explains. “Cost-per-conversion is the metric I primarily use. And like a lot of people, I didn’t succeed at first, but once I got the hang of it, I’ve been very happy with pay-per-click advertising, and with Yahoo!.”

Tuttle uses all of the targeting options available to him in the Sponsored Search interface, but identifies geotargeting as the most valuable one to his account. “Yahoo!’s geo-targeting has enabled me to find areas that are hotbeds for what my ads offer, as well as those areas that don’t convert well,” he says. “Being able to stop my advertising in these low-performing areas has probably been the biggest factor in improving my ROI.” Tuttle explains that by picking each state and metro area independently, an advertiser can automatically get statistics on conversions by state and DMA, using the Yahoo! analytics tools.

The campaign scheduling (dayparting) feature has also proved useful to Tuttle’s business: “I’ve found that there are certain things that work better on certain days of the week and at certain times of the day, and once you figure that out it’s pretty consistent across all of the ad networks.”

Adding demographic targeting
Having covered the “where” and the “when” of the traffic he’s targeting, Tuttle also closely monitors the “who,” and makes adjustments to his bidding and ad copy accordingly. “One of the best features that Yahoo! has over Google is the fact that you can get demographic information from the account interface,” he says. “You can get age groups and the male/female ratios of the people searching on your keywords, and you just can’t get that on Google.” Simply by turning on the Demographic Reporting feature, Tuttle had additional options available to him in the Reporting section of the account to provide this transparency. When combined with the free analytics tools in his account, this data became much more valuable. “I was able to learn that although one of my sites was much more heavily trafficked by women, the male visitors actually converted better,” Tuttle continues. “Using this data, I’ve targeted the male audience more strongly by bidding higher for this traffic, and I improved my conversion ratio as a result.”

The Results
Tuttle praises Yahoo!’s excellent customer support: “My Yahoo! rep Justin Hill has been wonderful. I can spend over six figures a year with Google, and I still don’t have a rep. Justin creates campaigns, comes up with new ideas, and runs reports. The campaign results and incredible support have led me to triple Yahoo!’s share of my overall advertising budget.” With Hill’s help, Tuttle recently used the extensive targeting and demographic information to refine his campaigns, with outstanding results. “My expenses were getting out of hand before I did this,” he remembers. “But when I started making better use of geo-targeting, dayparting and demographic targeting, I was able to reduce my overall cost-peracquisition by 40 percent. Anything that improves the transparency of where my clicks are coming from, and what’s working and what isn’t, is pure gold.”

— The Team