Here’s a quick summary of what to expect from the new Yahoo Search Marketing capabilities. The US launch will occur in q3 of 06 with the first accounts being transitioned around August 15th. The international transition will occur in q1 of 07.

A full API with sandbox is available for Yahoo API users.

Account Organization

• Master Accounts
  • Individual Accounts (unlimited)
• Campaigns (max 100)
• Ad Groups (max 1000 per campaign)
• Keywords (max 1000 per AdGroup)
  • 50k-250k keywords per account
  • Dynamic Keyword Insertion into titles or descriptions

Bidding

• Will utilize a quality index
• Placement will be based on CTR and Quality Index scoring
• Quality index will be made up of many factors including, ad copy and keyword history
• Quality index will be shown in the account similar to the current 1-5 rating (green bar) one currently sees.
• Competitor bids will be shown (similar to the current system)
• Composite quality index and keyword bid will not be displayed

Tools

• Forecasting
  • Will have forecasting tools which include clicks, impressions, and position
• Keyword research tools

Additional Capabilities

• Geo Targeting – US & Uk only to start
  • Keyword Research Tools
• Keyword research estimates
• Related keyword tool

FYI – Can’t share most of my info about the new product, however, I can show mass emails that Yahoo sent out about their new YSM update.

The New Sponsored Search is Coming

Better Ways to Connect with Customers Will Make Your Advertising More Effective

You’ve told us your needs and we’ve listened. A completely redesigned search marketing platform is on its way, full of advanced, easy-to-use features that will help you better connect with Yahoo!’s vast and valuable audience.

As part of creating these enhancements, we met with advertisers of all sizes to hear first-hand the things they liked and didn’t like about Sponsored Search. We extensively reviewed all parts of our service, including the design, features and tools. The result of these efforts is the new Sponsored Search, which will make its debut this Fall.

Powerful New Features
The new features that will make advertising with Yahoo! better and more effective include:

• Easy-to-Use Control Panel
  A completely redesigned, easy-to-navigate control panel will help you see what’s working and what’s not–at the level of detail you choose–so you can take action and get even better results.
   
• Fast Ad Activation
  Most new ads will go online within minutes, allowing you to connect with customers quickly, and easily make changes to your ads whenever you need to.
   
• Ad Testing
  Easily test multiple versions of an ad to find the message that works best for your customers and provides the greatest return on your advertising investment. You can then choose to shift impressions to the ad that performs best.
   
• Geo-Targeting
  Display your ads broadly or narrow your geographic distribution to better target your customers, customize your ads and control your costs.
   
• Campaign Budgeting, Forecasting and Scheduling
  Create, budget and schedule individual advertising campaigns for greater control over your advertising strategy and spending. Review forecasts of your potential clicks based on your bids and budget and see how many clicks you’re leaving to your competitors.
   
• Visibility
  Understand how well your ads are performing relative to your competitors with the new Quality Index displayed for each ad. You’ll also see the bid range necessary for premium placement at the top of the search results page.
   
• Easy-to-Use Control Panel
  A completely redesigned, easy-to-navigate control panel will help you see what’s working and what’s not–at the level of detail you choose–so you can take action and get even better results.

Thoroughly Tested and Reviewed by Your Peers
These new features have been rigorously tested by your fellow advertisers and refined over time to ensure that we delivered a service that successfully addresses the obstacles you currently face. Judging by the overwhelmingly positive feedback we’ve received, we are confident that the new Sponsored Search not only clears away those obstacles, but offers new and better ways to manage your account.

Frequent and Detailed Communication with You
Beginning next month, we’ll begin to provide you with much more detailed information about all of the upcoming enhancements. To make your transition as smooth and easy as possible, we will provide:

• A series of emails with tips on how best to prepare your account
• In-depth articles on our new features in the advertiser newsletter
• A new Yahoo! Search Marketing blog–a community forum for tips, news and your comments, as well as the inside scoop from our own staff, to help you be more successful
• A dedicated toll-free phone number that will be available to you during your transition period, for any questions or concerns you may have

This is just the first step. After all advertisers have successfully transitioned to the new Sponsored Search, we plan to quickly introduce many more innovative products, features and tools that will give you even more ways to connect with customers.

As always, thank you for doing business with us. We look forward to delivering the new Sponsored Search to you later this year.

Yahoo announced that they are going to ban the ability to bid on certain trademarked terms for their PPC product, Yahoo Search Marketing.

Here’s a snipped from some emails I’ve received:

On March 1, 2006, Yahoo! Search Marketing will modify its editorial guidelines regarding the use of keywords containing trademarks. Previously, we allowed competitive advertising by allowing advertisers to bid on third-party trademarks if those advertisers offered detailed comparative information about the trademark owner’s products or services in comparison to the competitive products and services that were offered or promoted on the advertiser’s site.

In order to more easily deliver quality user experiences when users search on terms that are trademarks, Yahoo!Search Marketing has determined that we will no longer allow bidding on keywords containing competitor trademarks.

Here’s Yahoo’s current trademark policy in regards to comparison:

1. Competitive Comparison Site: The advertiser’s site offers detailed comparative information about the trademark owner’s products or services in comparison to the competitive products and services offered or promoted on the advertiser’s site, it clearly identifies on the landing page the competitive products offered on the site, AND ALL of the following are true:

    

   1. The comparative information is detailed, spanning multiple dimensions (for example, price, features, ingredients, third-party rankings, ratings or awards, etc.) and clearly helps consumers to make an informed decision about the product or service, AND
   2. The listing title includes the word "Compare" and makes clear to the consumer that the listing comes from the advertiser, not the trademark owner, for example, by saying "Compare Us to [Trademark Term " or "Compare Our Prices To [Trademark Owner]‘s", AND
   3. The advertiser’s listing title and description identify the advertiser and disclose the nature of the qualifying comparative content the consumer will find on the advertiser’s site.

Source: Yahoo Trademark Policy.

At first, it may seem to be a safety response to a few lawsuits Google has recently faced in regards to trademarked bidding.

Google’s policy is pretty straightforward:

• If the advertiser has requested the trademarked term not to be shown in
  ads:
  • You can bid on a trademarked term.
  • You can’t use the term in your ad.

• If the advertiser has not requested it:
  • You can bid on the trademarked term.
  • You can use the term in your ad.

It is important to see Google’s policy (which has been shaped by both lawsuits and Google’s approach to creating the best user experience possible), as many brands want to let advertisers sell and promote their trademarked terms. Often electronics and clothing manufacturers don’t sell their items directly, and they need the merchant to handle the retail portion of the sales process.

However, there seem to be a few other theories about Yahoo’s decision that may not be related to Google’s lawsuits, and more to do with recruiting new advertisers.

If one wants to recruit an advertiser from display ads into search marketing, the easiest concession to make is that one will reserve their brand name for their advertising effort only.

There was a recent incident where Pontiac ran a series of offline ads that told people to search for them on Google. By partnering with the trusted brand, Google, Pontiac hoped to capitalize on the brand association and that they are tops in Google. However, they didn’t expect Mazda to be running comparison ads triggered off the same searches.

What the campaign did essentially was:

• Have Pontiac pay for offline ads.
• Drive users to Google search.
• See Pontiac in the top search result and with paid advertisements
• Have Mazda capitalize on the search result by running ads alongside the
  Pontiac ones.
• Essentially, Mazda received a lot of publicity without having to pay for
  the offline ads
• And, Mazda received search traffic based on a Pontiac initiative
• Very smart of Mazda.

In order to prevent a similar action from happening on Yahoo, all Yahoo has to do is reserve a brand name for use by one particular advertiser. This helps protect a brand, but also helps Yahoo recruit those advertisers by offering such an additional incentive.

The question will become, over time, in the above example, would a move like this hurt the small auto dealers who may no longer be able to advertise their dealerships without jumping through hoops to be able to bid on these trademarked names (which they carry in stock)?

Will it hurt Yahoo’s profits in the long run as brand keywords are often highly searched, and without a bidding environment to push the price upwards, only the brand name will be responsible for footing any bill necessary.

Every move has both positive and negative actions – and there are still unanswered questions to see how this one will act in the long run.

While many will applaud this move by Yahoo as being one of protecting brand names, there may be many other circumstances and reasons which only present themselves as more and more brand based bidding scenarios emerge.

I was poking around some of the new Google FAQs, and found a set of guides published in 2003 by Google.

One of the guides I had seen before, The Maximum Effect, which was excellent for it’s time.

The information in them is worth perusing, however, they are 2 years old.

• Managing your AdWords Account [pdf] updated Sept-03
• Keywords, Queries and Leads glossary of search terminology [pdf] updated June-03
• Conversion Tracking Guide [pdf] updated Oct-03
• The Maximum Effect [pdf] updated Dec-03

Google Library Page

It looks like Google put together several in a short time span (updates September, October, December of 03) and then just stopped.

For those who like to read PPC PDFs, it is worth noting that Yahoo has re-released their workbook (PDF File) with the new Yahoo Search Marketing Brand.

The original Overture workbook was one of the best ones ever created by a PPC engine. The new one is fairly similar, however, it’s been updated with some newer information, and is definitely worth the read.

In a move that has been anticipated for quite some time, Yahoo announced yesterday that they will change the look of their paid results (those from Yahoo Search Marketing) beginning mid-January.

A new look is coming to the Yahoo! search results pages that
will translate into more clicks for your listings. On January
18th, Yahoo! will debut a streamlined design that will make
the search results displayed on Yahoo! even easier for
consumers to read. Our research has shown that by improving
the search experience in this way, advertisers can generally
expect to see an increase in clicks, while maintaining their
conversion rates.

How this change impacts your listings:

* Yahoo! will display shorter descriptions for Sponsored
Search listings
* You don’t have to make any changes to your listings; they’ll
be automatically shortened for you when displayed on Yahoo!
* If you’d like to optimize your listings for Yahoo!, begin
your description with one short sentence that includes your
keyword and focuses on your most important information in
the first 70 characters
* Over time, we will fine tune the exact character count that
we believe works best for advertisers and search users
* Most of our partners, including MSN, CNN, ESPN and Infospace,
will still display longer descriptions for your Sponsored
Search listings, though the exact length may vary from
partner to partner

Yahoo! is taking this step to improve the search experience
for its users. By continuously focusing on delivering highly
relevant search results in a user-friendly format, Yahoo!
also gives you the best possible platform for reaching customers
interested in what your business provides.

At present, on a 800×600 screen resolution (still used by a decent percentage of the population) Yahoo results are all paid except for the top organic listing. If Yahoo has a few special offerings for that result, or it has a decidedly local flavor, it’s possible that no organics from Yahoo will show, but instead local.yahoo.com links will be in that single spot.

What will make this difficult for advertisers is making determining exactly how your listings look at the 70 and 190 character limit. It might be best to build a 70 character ad for Yahoo; and then layer on an additional 120 characters for their partners.

The paid results on Yahoo are still based around the original pay per click engine launched in 1997 (full Yahoo Search Marketing Timeline here).

Several marketing studies, search usability studies, user experience studies, etc, has led them down this path. Interestingly enough, these new limits are strikingly similar to Google. One of the major differences between the search experience on Yahoo and Google is additional integrated offerings.

While both Yahoo and Google have properties that include classifieds, images, news, local, etc. Yahoo has many offerings for small businesses such as hosting, offerings for romantics such as personals, offerings for travelers such as Yahoo travel, etc. How Yahoo maintains exposure of it’s own properties while giving searchers a wide selection of options for finding information will be interesting to see.

Hopefully, they’ll finally give in and include Mindset results.

It has yet to be seen how this will affect CTRs (click through rates) of advertisements on Yahoo and how much this will help their profitability versus the user experience.

I’ve been expecting this, and several other major changes from Yahoo, in Q of 06. Stay tuned for more, this won’t be the only significant change Yahoo makes in the next few months. They’re starting to work on their magic formula for success, and not likely to slow down anytime soon.

John Slade (a really nice guy for those of you who haven’t met him – understands the value of information) just made a post on the Yahoo Blog that Overture (YSM – Yahoo Search Marketing – which ever name you wish to call them) have lowered their minimum deposit to $5.

This comes on the wake of another recent announcement of YSM dropping the minimum monthly spend.

This means, with an affiliate code, a new advertiser can get $30 deposited into their account from YSM, deposit $5 of their own money, and have $35 to try out this type of marketing.

While this might not seem like a lot of money, considering the average monthly marketing budget for a small business is around $233 (after yellow page funds have been removed), every change in dollar amounts is critical to brining on new advertisers.

This is yet another good move by Yahoo, who has just been on a roll lately with YSM and their Local projects. Can’t wait to see their next announcement.

Log into your account.

1. Click on Manage Sponsored Search (you should be at the category page)
2. Use the radio button to select the category you wish to download (leave it on all for all keywords)
3. Click the download button
4. Save the file.

This includes your keywords, descriptions, and destination URLs.

In step 2, you can also click on a particular category and download just that category.

The outputted sheets are the same format as the bulk upload. Therefore, if you use the bulk upload function, you can change titles, descriptions, or destination URLs in this sheet and then send it to your Overture rep to upload.

This is by far the easiest way to change a lot of tracking URLs, many description (like if you use time sensitive pricing), etc.

The $20 minimum spend for a Yahoo Search Marketing account has been one reason some small businesses stayed away from YSM.

YSM Local did not have the $20 minimum, so it did gain some popularity because of that simple reason.

With this simple change, I’m expecting many small business to move some dollars (although small) from YSM Local and AdWords.

This has been a much asked for change, as before, many companies were working with ‘bundled accounts’ (where 2-5 clients occupied the same account) or with ‘micro accounts’, which most people don’t even know exist, and unless you dealt with thousands of small businesses, really had no use for.

This much welcome change will definitely change some PPC execution strategies.

Yahoo announced the acquisition of Whereonearth.

It looks like a move to help Yahoo’s local based targeting.

While local.yahoo.com has more (but not QCed) info than local.google.com, their IP targeting efforts with Overture and other advertising have lagged behind.

Overture has constantly relied on user data or explicit search queries for local targeting.

With the acquisition of whereonearth, which is billed as a ” Geographic Information Systems (GIS) experts” hopefully,this will begin a chain of events where Yahoo Search Marketing will release some new geo based targeting options.

YSM was the first company to take full advantage of the pay per click advertising model with large syndication deals to third party search engines. The distribution network they started several years ago has never slowed down, and YSM continues to look for new and interesting ways to introduce their model in not only search engines, but in other forms of media as well. They’ve had quite an interesting history as they went from a small startup company to one of the largest search marketing reaches. Here’s a brief history of a small company known as GoTo.com.

1997: GoTo.com launches.

GoTo.com was founded by ideaslabs. It did not yet have a public offering.

February 21, 1998

GoTo.com presents a proof of concept testing at TED8.

With little fanfare, the new paid search engine launched. For the first year of GoTo.com’s existence, most advertisers received little traffic, and the engine seemed to brand itself as more of a search engine than an advertising platform.

June 15, 1998: GoTo.com announces backfill deal with Inktomi.

This was a big breakthrough for GoTo.com. It began to backfill its paid listings with search results from Inktomi. This allowed the search engine to further brand itself as a search engine because it could now show results for any search query through Inktomi’s technology.

The first major milestone for GoTo.com on the advertiser front. Passing 1000 paid advertisers was a big deal, but the search engine was still unfriendly to many of those advertisers as there wasn’t a self serve platform.

June 1 1999: GoTo.com launches toolset to let advertisers take control.

The largest change from a rep based system to a self serve system. GoTo.com launched a toolset to allow advertisers access to keywords and real time bidding. Today, this toolset is known as the DTC or direct traffic center.

June 1999: GoTo.com goes public.

In a short two years, the company went form being launched to going public. This shows the vision and foresight of many of its founding members.

Oct.8, 2001: GoTo.com changes its name to Overture Services.

The first of two re-brandings for the paid listing search engine. It changed its name to Overture Services.

November 20, 2001: Overture teams up with Yahoo.com.

The first major destination deal for Overture occurred when Yahoo began to feature the paid Overture listings on Yahoo search results. This quickly became the mantra for Overture. As it realized it wouldn’t compete with other portals as a destination zone, it began to partner with these portals to give its ads visibility and for the search engines to further monetize search results.

March 2003: Overture buys AllTheWeb.

Overture’s first move towards owning it’s own search technology was acquiring Alltheweb.

April 28, 2003: Overture completes purchase of Alta Vista for $106 million in stock and cash.

Alta Vista was once one of the major search engines with its own user base and technology. Overture acquired them and began to implement some of its search technology into their result sets.

Oct. 7, 2003: Yahoo completes purchase of Overture for $2.2 billion in stock and cash

Yahoo acquires Overture. Overture had become a major income stream for Yahoo, and was very dependent on them for search based revenue. The purchase of Overture gave Yahoo control not only over Alta Vista, and Overture. But soon became the first portal to own 4 engines as Yahoo now owns Inktomi, FAST, AllTheWeb, and Overture.

April 18, 2005: Overture Services changes name to Yahoo Search Marketing.

The second major re-branding effort for the paid listings provider. In an effort to brand Overture as an integral part of Yahoo, the thinkers at Yahoo changed the name in order to show the synonomity of these two systems and further attract advertisers with a self serve Yahoo branded model. At this time, Yahoo Local was also bundled under YSM control, although the local advertising remained unsupported by YSM staff and is still quite early in its development and monetization stages.

From small roots with an idea, GoTo.com went from a small company to becoming an integral part of one of the top internet platforms known as Yahoo.