More Questions and Answers about the Search Alliance

Transparency, timing and adult ads key issues

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.

(more…)

Ad News and Views from Around the Web

iPhone and mobile gold rush; tweeting the founding fathers; people powering search; retargeting customers and more

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.

(more…)

Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop Launches Excluded Keywords Feature

Excluded keywords, switching accounts and downloading specific campaigns

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

Know the (Quality) Score

4 ways to improve your quality index for lower cost and better placement

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 April 10, 2009

Everyone wants to score an A+ when put to the test. In ad quality terms, that would be a 5 out of 5. A quality index score of 5 generally means that your ads are well-written and your keywords are working with them, they’re getting clicked on regularly, and you’re giving users what they want.

And as with that good report card you brought home to Mom, your campaign management efforts are also rewarded with lower costs for your clicks and conversions. It could substantially improve the return on your advertising spend!

Many new advertisers think that ad quality has to do with keywords, when it’s actually about the ads themselves. If you want your ad quality scores to head north, focus on how your ads are written. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to ace the test.

(more…)

Ad News and Views from Around the Web

World record traffic for World Cup; Cannes-do’s and don’ts; Mac lovers make the best Mac lovers, and more

World Cup traffic Goooooal!!!
World Cup is still only in its second week but it has already broken all records in terms of online traffic and tweets, according to GigaOm, averaging more than 3,000 tweets per second and making up 27% of Web traffic during working hours. Now get back to work.

Tweeting the heck out of Cannes
If you’re not following our intrepid reporter, Jeff Sweat, at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival on Twitter, you should be. He’s doing the lion’s share of work there. To follow the full monty from Cannes on Twitter, use the hashtag, #canneslions.

Cannes-tempt
Speaking of Cannes, even at a love-fest as loving at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, bad hullabaloo cannot be avoided. So says AdAge, which notes a note of controversy in the winner of Nokia’s “Critic’s Choice Award” contest. Some are saying the winning entry, a Forrest Gump-inspired video was lifted from a previous campaign of a similar nature. Ain’t none of our business. We just report the news, which is kind of like a box of chocolates.

And, sorry, as long as we’re on the subject of Cannes, we just can’t help reposting this lame joke.

(more…)

Search Alliance Update #2

More of the what, when and how on the transition from Yahoo! Search Marketing to Microsoft Advertising adCenter

Yahoo! and Microsoft are continuing to work diligently toward preparing the U.S. market for our announced search alliance, and so we thought it was time to provide you with another update on our progress, what to expect, and to answer a few frequently asked questions.

Our goal continues to be the completion of the transition in the U.S. and Canada before the start of the 2010 holiday season. In late summer, we intend to offer a window of several weeks during which you can choose the time to initiate and complete your transition. Of course, we will continue to keep you informed and aware of any changes that you may need to make to prepare your Sponsored Search account for the transition.

(more…)

You’re Doing it Wrong

5 common mistakes that can hurt your ads’ performance

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 April 24, 2009

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.

(more…)

Scoping Out Your Keywords

Your keyword list should range from general to specific

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 April 28, 2009

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.

(more…)

Come On In!

All your favorite stuff, under one roof

Ever wonder what your home page would like if it were, well, a home? Yahoo! took over our own Yahoo! Front Page with a dynamic ad that visualizes the way we bring together all the reasons you love the Internet—within four walls, no less. Click on through to see how making Yahoo! your online home puts the best of everything —great entertainment, instant news, useful information, captivating content, relevant ads, e-mail, Instant Messaging and more—all within easy reach. Make the web your own with Yahoo!, the one place that brings Your World together with The World.

The takeover is just one part of the new Yahoo! branding campaign that will also show the power Yahoo! has to drive business and build brands.  Watch for all of the other iterations rolling out now across all types of media.

— Chris Marlowe

Ad News and Views from Around the Web

Social media usage up 24%; $54 billion to be spent on SM by 2014; PPC classes; what’s on at Cannes, and more

Social media usage up 24% in one year
Nielsen reports that the number of visits to social media networks rose 24% between April 2009 and April 2010. The average user spent 66% more time on those sites during the same period, spending some 110 billion minutes combined. This according to SFGate.com’s Tech Chronicles blog.

$54 billion and climbing
According to Forrester, that’s how much B2B marketers will be spending on social media by the year 2014. That’s a whole lotta clams. Nervous about social media but want to get in on the action? TopRank’s Lee Odden offers three important tips.

New to PPC? Take an online course
If you’re worried that the competition is getting ahead of you in pay-per-click advertising, consider taking one (or more) of the 13 online courses that Search Engine Journal’s Larry Kim recommends in this informative post.

(more…)

« Next Posts Previous Posts »