Display That Performs Like Search

Yahoo! expands Smart Ads program with new partnerships

What if you had a display ad that could be customized for a target audience with a variety of images, colors or messages? What if that ad could evolve as Yahoo! discovers more about the users looking at it? And what if that ad helped your display campaign perform more like your search campaigns?

That’s what an ad can do when it’s part of our Smart Ads program, which we’re expanding this week. Smart Ads takes different elements of ads and combines them in more ways than you can probably imagine to give customized messages to prospective clients. The program now helps deliver Smart Ads at greater scale by combining Yahoo!’s reach and user knowledge with innovative ad-serving technology from third-party providers. Smart Ads is an open platform, but Yahoo! is initially working with two partners, Teracent and Tumri, to make Smart Ads available to PC and mobile advertisers.

“Other publishers will offer so-called smart ad campaigns, but if it’s not running on the Yahoo! Network, it’s not as smart as it could be,” says David Zinman, vice-president and general manager of display advertising at Yahoo!. “We’re giving marketers the opportunity to reach consumers with customized ads on the PC and mobile Internet, and given the high performance of these campaigns in initial testing, it’s as if we’ve put performance marketing on steroids.”

Get specific
You may have a particular group of advertisers you’re trying to reach. But there are lots of different kinds of people within a demographic group, with different interests and backgrounds —and not every consumer will respond to a message the same way.

For example, you could set up a telecommunications ad campaign targeting 18-to-45-year-old cell phone users in Los Angeles. That demographic could contain everyone from a 28-year-old female hipster to a 43-year-old blue-collar male. And they would all see the same ad, which might look something like this:

Yahoo! has 150 million users who spent 43 billion minutes on our site last month—which means we have a lot of data that we can use to break those groups into much smaller behavioral segments. The woman might visit Yahoo! Music to check out The Decemberists, while the man might visit Yahoo! Finance. So we can start figuring out what kinds of messages they might be interested in. (Keeping in mind our privacy policies, of course.)

That’s where Smart Ads’ machine-learning technology comes in. You could prepare a few taglines, offers, images, logos and colors, and Smart Ads technology combines them to create thousands of ads that can be displayed to your potential customers. Our mobile Smart Ads can even take into account things like the local weather.

As people like our hipster and our blue-collar guy click on ads, our systems learn what combinations people like them want to see. Is the hipster more interested in convenience and multimedia? Is the blue-collar guy more interested in cost?

In not too long, the 43-year-old man might see more ads like this:

Meanwhile, the 32-year-old female might see an ad like this:

Display that performs like search
Because these combinations can be finely tuned to match customized messages with users, Smart Ads can help the right ads be displayed to the right users. So far, advertisers testing Smart Ads have seen significantly improved campaign performance based on a variety of metrics, including click performance, conversion and overall return on investment.

For example, after executing several Smart Ad campaigns with Yahoo! and its partners, Hewlett-Packard saw a return on ad spend that was more than 20 times higher than their traditional display campaigns, and on par with their search marketing campaigns.

“The ability to run a display advertising campaign that can match the ROI of my search marketing spend is a potentially game-changing proposition,” says Catherine Paschkewitz, director of demand generation with HP Direct. “The Smart Ad solution has enabled us to increase our ROI by reaching the right set of users with the right message.”

Plus, after you’ve run a Smart Ad campaign, we can give you reporting data all the way down to the conversion that tells you which groups responded to which messages. That can help you even when you’re setting up traditional offline campaigns, and make all of your advertising that much smarter.

—Jeff Sweat, Blog Editor

The Grown-Up Gamer

Your video game ads should include the middle-aged folks still blasting away

Remember the days when chomping power pellets and throwing flaming barrels at gorillas was strictly kid’s stuff?

Those days are over, according to The Nielson Company’s recent report, “The State of the Video Gamer.” The report says that the average age of video game players has been steadily increasing, and that higher-end gaming consoles like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 attract more engaged gamers (i.e., adults), drawing them away from other distractions such as television. As game consoles have evolved into multimedia hubs, the average age of the user of the game console has steadily increased.

According to Neilson, the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, higher-end systems that tend to attract older folks, have the highest “active user percent measure,” so they see the most use among gamers. The two products also have the highest average usage days and daily number of sessions. That means a lot of adults are gaming on a regular basis.

PC games are also feeling the love from adults. According to Neilson’s December 2008 data, the single largest group of personal computer video game players is females age 25 to 54. That number accounts for approximately 29% of total PC game players. Males age 25 to 54 account for the next largest block, roughly 20% of all PC game players.

So what does all this mean?
As games have come of age, so have the people who play them. If you’re an advertiser who sells video games, you may be missing out on a huge audience if you only target children and teens in your ads. As the Neilson study indicates, game use is on the rise among adults, so if you do sell games, consider creating ads that speak to grown-ups as well.

Whereas things like deals and low price points may not matter as much to the under-18 set, for adult gamers those things can make a huge difference. Call out the things that may appeal to adults about gaming, such as price, variety, versatility, etc. Consider creating unique campaigns for special occasions such as Father’s Day, so that you can run distinct “dad” ads that may appeal to Father’s Day shoppers. Simply put, your audience is bigger than you thought—so you want to make sure that your message reaches all of them.

As gaming continues to evolve, it’s less of a fringe area just for kids, and more of a total family entertainment source, right up there with the TV and the DVD player. Really, who knows how wide the gaming the audience will grow, or who the next group of gamers may be: Grandparents? Babies? The family dog?

Whoever picks up the controller next, one thing’s for sure: Advertisers should be ready to market to those people. Because like most good video games, when it comes to game sales, there’s always another level.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst

Photo courtesy of Flickr user gwire.

Understanding Targeting

5 common questions about our new targeting features

If you’re like some of our advertisers, you have questions about how to use our new targeting features. Fortunately for you, some of your questions have already been asked and answered at our webinars. Below are five of the most frequently asked questions about targeting.

I manage a Web site for teens. Do you allow for targeting of underage users?   
At this time, we don’t offer targeting for teens.  You’re able to block underage users, but not specifically target them.

Can I block an age group—such as users over 65— as you do for 17 or less?        
In age targeting, only users 17 years and younger can be filtered out completely. However, you can reduce the amount of traffic you receive from less desirable age ranges by adjusting your bids upwards for the demographic groups you want the most.

By the way, if you so chose, you can simply block less desirable traffic in geographic and ad scheduling targeting.

How do you determine the age or gender of a user?  
We use anonymous and aggregated information, such as registration data, from Yahoo!’s large user population, to help determine the age and gender of individual users who are viewing your ads. 

Do I need to turn on the reporting for geo-targeting, ad scheduling and demographic targeting?
You are automatically opted in to the ad scheduling and geo-targeting reports for the targets you choose – and into all age and gender reporting as soon as you choose a target.  If you would like age and gender reporting before choosing a target, simply opt in through the user interface.

Can the bid adjustment lower the bid, as well as raise it?            
Not currently.  Bid adjustments allow you to increase your bid for the target prospects that you believe will be most valuable to your business.  They allow you to make it more likely that your spend will be focus on your high value targets.

—The Team

Primping for Prom (and Graduation)

5 tips to help get your ads in the spotlight for spring events

When it comes to teenage rites of passage, can anything beat the prom? That magical evening is a benchmark event in most teens’ lives—even if some of them can’t remember it the next day. Almost as important (though far less embarrassing) is graduation; a day when the sky is filled with the mortarboards of high school and college students preparing to embark on the next chapter of their lives.

Though prom and graduation are important to the under-25 set, they’re equally important to any advertiser that sells items for which prom-goers and graduation gift-givers may be looking. According to a 2008 survey conducted by BIGresearch on behalf of the National Retail Foundation, 32.4% of respondents planned to purchase at least one graduation gift last year, with a total projected spend of $4.4 billion.

Individually, the average consumer buying graduation gifts in 2008 planned to give gifts to two graduates, and expected to spend an average of $52.12 on each present. While we’re still in an economic slump, the fact remains that graduates still need gifts and prom-goers still need supplies. Buyers may be a tad more conservative this year, but they’re still out there looking to spend.

Which means that if you’re an advertiser who may appeal to graduation gift-hunters or prom-shoppers, it’s time to put on your dancing shoes and get your prom and grad listings ready for a night on the town. Here are five things to consider:

1. Users searching on keywords like “graduation cards” are generally looking for greeting cards, rather than formal graduation announcements. So if you happen to sell both, consider putting the emphasis on actual cards in ads for card keywords.

2. Card sites that offer customizable card options should be sure to stress those options in their ad copy. Users seem to like the personal touch, so if you offer the chance to add photos, logos or anything else your customers can customize, shout it out.

3. Floral sites should consider putting the emphasis on non-floral items (gift baskets, candy, etc.) in their ads for male keywords such as “graduation gift for boy.” We hate to gender stereotype, but typically guys would rather have a big ol’ basket of candy than a lovely bouquet of flowers, so if you have options that go beyond floral, now’s the time to call them out.

4. Dress sites that sell maternity as well as prom dresses (and we’re declining to speculate on that connection) should put the focus on their prom offerings in their ads for prom keywords. This can be done by front-loading “prom” info in the title or description, or creating a specific ad group just for prom keywords. This will serve up a prom-specific ads to people searching on those terms.

5. Advertisers that sell designer prom dresses may want to avoid ad copy that only specifies one particular designer. While this is great for users who know exactly what they’re looking for it, it may deter users who are new to the world of prom dresses. Offering a wide variety of choices could make “prom dress” appealing to both types of users.

As always, the usual rules of thumb apply: Be sure to use keyword insertion to ensure that the ad copy contains the keyword, as well as alt text, to make sure that keywords appear as desired. Call out any competitive advantages you may offer, such as free shipping, special sales or coupon codes. If you’re an advertiser that only serves one specific location, consider creating a geo-targeted campaign, which will display your ads specifically to users in your area, bringing you much more targeted traffic.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Andrew Kitzmiller.

The Favicon Marks Your Spot

Yahoo! tests favicons with popular search ad results

It’s good for everybody when a user searching for your website can quickly identify that your ad belongs to you. That’s why we’re rolling out a new icon that helps searchers spot your site at a glance.

We’re testing a program that uses favicons, the little icons that show up on your browser next to the address window when you’re on a page—say, on Expedia.com. These favicons are already widely in use on the Web. Now, when a user searches for “Expedia,” or another search that matches your domain name, that same favicon will show up next to the URL in your ad. It’ll look something like this:

What good does that do anyone? Well, it’s just one more way for users to know they’re really looking at your site, which will improve the search experience. And if they know you’re really what they searched for, they may click on you more frequently, helping your click-through rate and improving your quality score.

Keep in mind that this is a test, and we’re only trying it out on select advertisers. As such, you can’t sign up for it just yet if you’re not one of the early advertisers who are piloting the project. However, if you’re bidding on your own domain name and you have a favicon.ico file on your site, you may be eligible to participate. 

Not interested in participating? Just contact us to let us know that you’d like out. (Or, for that matter, if you’d like in when it opens up further.)  We’ll be sure to keep you posted as the program evolves.

  —Jeff Sweat, Blog Editor

Advertising to Dads and Grads

Yahoo! experts give you Father’s Day, graduation advice in our webinar

Mother’s Day is almost here, which in the marketing world means that you should stop thinking about Mom and start thinking about Dad. If you don’t have your campaigns ready for Father’s Day and graduation season, you should attend our free Dads and Grads Webinar tomorrow to help make the most of this heavy shopping season.

During the webinar, Yahoo! experts will provide you with valuable Father’s Day and graduation-related information that can help you prepare and improve your holiday campaigns. The one-hour webinar will cover the following:

• Trends in Father’s Day and graduation consumer spending habits
• How to write strong, targeted ads, including adding “father’s day” and “graduation” keywords to your holiday campaigns
• Best practices for this season.

Date/Time
The webinar will be presented one time only, on Wednesday, May 6 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time/2:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Yahoo! Search Marketing staff will be available during the webinar to answer your questions with our online chat feature.

Space is limited, so please register for the webinar today. If you want to know about our other webinars, check out our webinar archive.

—The Team

Serious Analytics

Yahoo! Web Analytics now available for search and display advertisers

If you’re an advertiser in need of some serious analytics, you’ve probably been watching for our Yahoo! Web Analytics enterprise tool—and you’ll be glad to know that it’s now available for free to search and display advertisers supported by a Yahoo! account team. 

If you haven’t been watching for it, you may wonder why you should care. “Yahoo!’s emerging Web Analytics service surpasses Google in several key categories relevant to enterprises,” says a recent report from independent analyst firm CMS Watch. Search advertisers can use Yahoo! Web Analytics to track performance of their campaigns—not just Yahoo! Search Marketing, but campaigns on other search engines, display campaigns, even email campaigns—from click to conversion.

Yahoo! Web Analytics offers user insight that you’re not likely to find in other free analytics tools, including demographic and behavioral insight on your website visitors, near-real-time reporting, and visibility into as many as 50 different types of actions that take place on your site.

Here are some of the questions that Yahoo! Web Analytics can help advertisers and agencies answer:

How am I performing?  
Yahoo! Web Analytics gives you customizable reports, dashboards, alerts and segmentation tools that let you slice up data to figure out what’s working, and what isn’t. You can identify opportunities to improve ads, campaigns, keyword bids and website design. 

Who are my audiences?
This new version helps you take advantage of our recent demographic targeting options by helping you identify the age, gender, city, and online interests—and finding out who your most valuable audience is so that you can reach more of it.

How can I improve engagement and conversions? 
It’s one thing to get people to your site—but what you really want is to keep them there and buying your products or services. This new version of Yahoo! Web Analytics can track up to 15 steps of your conversion process to see where you’re most liable to lose someone.

The new version is available for any of our advertisers who work with an account manager, but it’s most suited for large advertisers with complex analytical needs and the resources to set up and manage analytics.

If you think it is the right tool for you, contact your account manager to get started.  Visit our website for more information. If you’re not quite ready or aren’t eligible for Yahoo! Web Analytics, look into our Full Analytics or Conversion Only Analytics in our Sponsored Search user interface.

—Jeff Sweat, Blog Editor

Scoping Out Your Keywords

Your keyword list should range from general to specific

When you were a kid, did your mom ever send you to the store with a list of things to buy? You may not have known it at the time, but that could have been your first introduction to the concept of scope (no, not the mouthwash—even if it was on your list).

Mom’s list may have confused you if she wasn’t specific enough about what she wrote down. Simply writing “tea” was fine, if the store sold only one kind of tea. On the other hand, if they offered caffeinated, decaffeinated, green and a hundred different flavored teas, that would leave a young errand runner mighty confused.

How “scope” applies to search advertising
This same concept can apply to the keywords in your account. Some of your keywords may be narrow in scope (like “green tea”) while others may be broad (like just plain “tea”). Both types of keywords are potentially valuable, as some customers know exactly what they’re looking for, while others may only have a general idea of what they want.

Skip the narrow keywords, and you risk turning off users who already know what they need. Leave out the broad keywords, and you’ll lose the shoppers who haven’t quite decided what they want just yet.

The solution? Have a healthy number of both broad and narrow keywords in your account, to make your ads appeal to whichever kind of consumer happens to be searching for them.

Finding the perfect mix
Finding broad keywords is usually pretty simple, since they just describe what you sell. For example, a Toyota dealer’s broad keywords would be “toyota,” “new toyota,” “toyota car,” etc.

Narrow keywords get a little more specific. They don’t describe what, so much as which, meaning which types of things you sell. That same Toyota dealer’s narrow keywords might be things like “toyota camry,” “toyota prius,” “toyota corolla,” etc. These are the keywords used by people who already know what they’re looking for—so use them to make sure they’ll find you.

On the whole, you’re probably going to use a lot more narrow keywords than broad keywords, because there are just so many more possibilities for narrow keywords. From specific brand names and model numbers to slang or industry terms used to refer to your products, the list of potential narrow keywords is usually long and plentiful. By including as many as you feel are viable, you’re increasing your chances of attracting users who are searching on those keywords.

At the same time your broad keywords will display your ads to those who are still at the start of their buying journey, and with a little luck, that journey will end at your site.

So when you’re selecting your keywords, be sure to keep scope in mind. A good mixture of broad and narrow helps you cast the widest possible net, to appeal to biggest possible audience. And even if all they have is a list from mom, if you’ve mastered scope—you’ll be more than ready.

— Colin Kingston, Listing Editor

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Jungle Jim’s International Markets

You’re Doing it Wrong

5 common mistakes that can hurt your ads’ performance

No one likes to be told they’re doing something wrong. And most of the time we try to focus this blog on the positive changes you can enact to help your account run better. But our Advertiser Solutions team sees advertisers make the same mistakes over and over when they set up their accounts, and so in this post we’d like to review the top five—just to make sure you’re not making them, too.

1. Using geo-modified keywords in geo-targeted campaigns 
This can result in a lot less traffic, since there is a strong chance the ads will not display due to a “geo-targeting mismatch.” One solution for this: use geo-modified keywords only in campaigns not using geo-targeting. To know when to use geo-targeting and when to use geo-modified keywords, read our post, “Geo vs. Geo.”

2. Duplicating keywords across ad groups or campaigns 
When you have a good keyword, it may seem like a smart move to spread the goodness around to all of your ad groups and campaigns. However, duplicate keywords won’t help your performance—in  fact, they can hurt you quite a bit, because our systems de-dupe on multiple levels. (That’s a fancy way of saying it looks for duplicates and removes them.)

For example, if you want to test Advanced and Standard match types by running both concurrently in identical ad groups, your keywords will compete against each other and drive up your cost-per-click. We’ve also seen advertisers duplicate keywords with multiple landing pages. The duplicated keywords can result in a lower quality index score and a higher cost-per-click.

3. Jumping the gun 
“All we are saying, is give bids a chance.” Many times, we’ve seen advertisers make bid adjustments, or pause or delete keywords well before enough data has been collected to make an educated decision. For example, your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) target might be $40, and because you think your keyword isn’t giving you enough impressions or clicks, you pause it. Our experience has shown that many advertisers do this too quickly. A good rule of thumb is that if you haven’t reached your $40—or whatever the amount was you set for your target—it’s too early to judge your metrics.

4. Putting your phone number in your ad 
This one may sound odd—why wouldn’t you want to give your prospects another way to contact you? However, a phone number in your ad can decrease your click-through rate and quality index score, which in turn drives up your cost-per-click and pushes the ad further down in results. With search advertising, you want people to click your ad. That’s the way to get them to your website, and ultimately convert. It’s also the way to improve your quality score and get all the benefits that come with that.

5. Bidding on competitor’s keywords
Nope, it’s not OK to see what your competitor is using and then simply copy them. Doing this will result in your irrelevant keywords being removed by our guidelines review team, and could have legal consequences, as well.

So, do any of these mistakes seem familiar? Fortunately, they’re not too tough to fix. If you run into trouble, just contact us—the Advertiser Solutions team is here to help you with your questions, troubleshooting, and optimizing your account.

— Kastle Waserman, Communications Manager, Advertiser Solutions

Mom’s the Word

Clean your room, eat your peas and make sure your ads are ready for Mother’s Day

There are three things in life you’d better not forget: your wedding anniversary, where you parked your car and most importantly, Mother’s Day. The data suggest that not too many consumers do forget mom: According to the National Retail Federation’s annual Mother’s Day survey, Americans will spend an average of $123.89 per person on Mother’s Day in 2009, compared to last year’s $138.63. Total Mother’s Day spending is expected to reach $14.1 billion, just slightly more than Easter.

To catch the eye of Mother’s Day shoppers, make sure your ads are “clean behind the ears” before we get too close to May 10. To that end, the tips below can serve as your virtual washcloth:

• If you sell jewelry but also buy or repair it, be sure to be put the emphasis on sales in your ads. Consumers searching on keywords like “mom jewelry” are almost certainly looking to buy, rather than sell.
• Personalization and customization have strong appeal to consumers—be sure to mention it in your ads if you offer it.
• Promoting same-day or next-day delivery tends to put flower delivery ads over the top. Even shoppers who haven’t waited until the last minute seem to find quick delivery appealing, so if you offer that, be sure to let your customers know.
• Ads for broad keywords don’t usually perform well when the results are too narrow. For example, if the keyword “buy magazines” leads to a site that only sells beauty magazines, users will almost certainly be deterred. A good rule of thumb is that if the keyword is general, the result should be, as well.
• Avoid writing ads that clash with your keywords, like one that touts great deals on Father’s Day items but shows up when a user searches on “mother’s day.” Conflicts like that are confusing for users and may cause them to pass over your ad rather than try to decipher it.
• As always, if you offer any promotions (free shipping, discount codes, etc.) be sure to call them out in your ads. Now more than ever, consumers are looking for ways to save money, so letting them know what deals you offer is a really good idea.
• Sites that don’t serve a national audience (such as local florists or gift basket delivery services) should create geo-targeted campaigns for their non-location-specific keywords; i.e., “flower delivery.” Geo-targeted campaigns serve up results to users who are specifically within the area of the business, which gives you much more targeted traffic than if you were to display those ads nationally.
• Remember to write direct, concise titles and descriptions that clearly explain what you offer and make the best possible use of the space allotted. Use “alt text” to ensure that the inserted keyword appears in the ad the way you’d like it to, to replace keywords that are too long, or for purposely misspelled queries.

By putting these ideas into action, you’ll have a better chance of hooking consumers who want to cater to their mater this May. Happy Mother’s Day (in advance) to all the moms who read the YSM blog!

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst

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