Right on Target

Case Study: Affiliate marketer profits by fully leveraging the targeting tools of Sponsored Search

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!.”

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4A’s Conference Round-Up

Trends and tips from the smartest minds in advertising

This week, your indefatigable Yahoo! Advertising correspondents went on a field trip to the 4A’s “Transformation 2010” conference in San Francisco. (Those 4A’s stand for the American Association of Advertising Agencies.) While there, we did old the meet and greet, tweeted, and posted to Facebook our take-aways from some the smartest minds in the advertising world. We even did a little live blogging and took some video, too. (Lookin’ good, Carol!)

For a round-up of some the most interesting sessions, switch over to the Yahoo! Advertising blog.

Five Ways Advertisers Can Save Time

Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop simplifies multiple campaign management

If you’re an advertiser running more than one campaign, you will probably welcome the new Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop, a free offline tool that lets you spend less time on the tactical details of campaign management, and more on increasing your return-on-investment.

With Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop, it now takes just a few clicks to modify multiple campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads at the same time. And if you get carried away, you can even undo selected changes with no harm done.

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Ad News and Views from Around the Web

Segmenting segmentation; bad tech predictions; activity streams are the new black; consumers using online search for offline research, and more

What segmentation is right for you?
“There are three main types of segmentation,” says ClickZ’s Neil Mason. “Demographic segmentation, behavioral segmentation, and attitudinal segmentation. But which one is best? It really depends on what problem you’re trying to solve.”

The Internet’s doomed—and other bad tech predictions
Writing in Slate, Farhad Manjoo takes on the 1995 prediction that the Internet was doomed to fail, and discusses how you can avoid making bad predictions about technology in the future.

“Activity streams?”
It’s an idea for a new, free, more open Internet model, and it may just be the next big thing. And Yahoo! is right there, innovating. ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick explains what activitystreams are and what they may mean for the future.

Even if you’re brick and mortar, you still gotta be online
This comes by way of Greg Sterling over at Screenwerk. According to a recent poll, 94 percent of consumers did some research online prior to making a purchase. While e-commerce only makes up four percent of U.S. retail sales, people overwhelmingly (61 percent) use Internet search to research a purchase.

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Video: Carol Bartz on Science, Art and Scale

“No one can do this as well as we can.”

In an informal conversation at the 4A’s conference, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz says that only Yahoo! can offer everything advertisers need for successful digital advertising: science, art and scale.

Science, Art and Scale

Carol Bartz: What Yahoo! offers advertisers

Yahoo! can bring advertisers a combination of strengths that no one else can, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz said in a keynote speech at the 4A’s Transformation 2010 conference today, because only Yahoo! offers them three things: science, art and scale.

Carol, speaking to the advertising industry group in San Francisco, said, “We want Yahoo! to be the partner you turn to for answers and solutions, and most importantly—when you want results.” By providing science, art and scale, Yahoo can help advertisers and agencies master online advertising.

Science
“Science is incredibly important,” Carol said. “Without it, we’re all flying blind.” She said it’s even more important because the Internet is moving so fast that it’s creating chaos for advertisers. In order to help advertisers sort through that information, Yahoo! can advertisers better insights, better data, and better targeting. “This means less wasted impressions and a better ability to reach your audience,” Carol said.

To read on, visit the Yahoo! Advertising blog.

Talk About A-Plus

Yahoo! at San Francisco’s 4A conference

Did you ever see the 1950 classic “All About Eve?” In it, Bette Davis plies the classic line, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!”

Well Sunday, Feb. 28 begins the 4A Conference at the Union Square Hilton in San Francisco. At this fab confab, advertising’s best will appear and show off their newest and most fabulous wares. It promises to be a bumpy but fantastic conference, one full of surprises.

As the 4A the website says, it’s a chance for advertisers and agencies to “Collaborate with and ask questions of one another. Listen to leaders who have first-hand experience in transforming their own businesses to meet the emerging needs of a new era. Be a part of the bigger picture, the solutions to the time-consuming age-old questions of monetization and evolution.” That sounds pretty good. We can’t wait.

Here’s the up-shot on the Yahoo! down-low:

Sunday, Feb. 28

• 6:00 to 7 P.M: Opening Night Reception Sponsored by Yahoo! — Cityscape Room, Hilton

Monday, March 1

• 10 A.M: Carol Bartz, Transforming Yahoo! — Continental Ballroom, 2nd Floor
  Noon to 7 P.M: Yahoo! Transformation Lounge — Free custom lattes and live storyboard artist, lobby level
• 5:30 to 7 P.M: Cocktails in 4A’s Transformation Lounge (which includes a special Yahoo! space)
  7 P.M to 10 P.M: Dinner in Continental Ballroom sponsored by Microsoft

Tuesday, March 2

• 8 A.M. to 6 P.M Yahoo! Transformation Lounge Open — Free Custom lattes and live storyboard artist

Can’t be there? No problem. We will be, live blogging the events, tweeting and posting to the Yahoo! Advertising Facebook page.

—The Team

Yahoos at SMX West

Attending the SMX confab in Santa Clara next week? Check out our line-up of speakers and panelists

It’s no secret that we Yahoos are big fans of Danny Sullivan—the smooth jazz of SEO—and his Search Marketing Expo conference series. Next week, March 2 to 4, SMX West convenes at the Santa Clara Convention Center in (where else?) Santa Clara, Calif. Come check out what Danny has to say, and all the tips and trick that can help you be a better search marketer.

Of course, Yahoo! will be present at booth 216. We’ll also be giving away coffee in Yahoo!-branded mugs, as well as other fun tchotchkes, at our own coffee cart. We’ve also got a fabulous line-up of Yahoo! speakers to answer your questions about such hot-button topics as the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance.

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Optimize Your Way to a Cleaner Account

Keeping your list of blocked domains up-to-date

Some things are just plain messy. And unlike the savvy behind keeping previous W-2s neatly filed and probably the sanity behind saving—even electronically—old credit card statements for at least some time, there’s less to be said for clutter.

Desks strewn with random bits of paper and neon-colored post-it notes taped to every empty surface evidently work wonders for some. For others, it’s an impediment to productivity. Which might be why Spring cleaning has become an actual event for many.

Here at Yahoo!, we’re offering our own version of staying organized. Specifically as it relates to the list of blocked domains you’ve accrued within your account. As you know, we recommend using conversion data paired with the information within the recently launched Ad Delivery Report (ADR) to make sound decisions around which domains to block. And to help make sure that your list is as fresh, crisp and clean as possible, we’re happy to optimize those domains for you on a bi-monthly basis.

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Yahoolympics scores 17.5 million fans

Yahoo! attracts largest online Olympic audience, Feb. 8 to 14

Whether it’s figure skating, freestyle skiing , snowboarding, hockey, or this year’s big game, curling, Winter Olympics fans are turning online in record numbers. And Yahoo!—the single most visited site for the Winter Olympics—is winning the gold in terms of unique visitors.

Yahoo’s Olympics site attracted 9.3 million unique visitors from February 8 to 14, according to comScore. That’s the largest online Olympics audience for the period, which included the Opening Ceremony and the first three days of competition, while Yahoo! Sports attracted more than 17.5 million unique visitors. Yahoo’s Olympics site surpassed both NBC’s Olympics site (6.5 million unique visitors) and ESPN (8.4 million unique visitors) during the same period.

For more, visit the Yahoo! Advertising blog.

(Curling image by bensonkua via Flickr, CC 2.0)

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