Why Use Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM)?

Search marketing began with Overture, later acquired by Yahoo!. But then Google AdWords came along with some strong improvements and became the dominant search marketing platform. Recently, Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) has rolled out a new platform, known as Panama, which provides improvement over Yahoo!'s old features. This is a good time for marketers to take a new look at using Yahoo! in their Pay Per Click (PPC) ad campaigns.

Yahoo! Increases Your Reach

Yahoo! is generally seen to be second largest player in search marketing with approximately 22% of "share of Internet searches." However, I have seen Yahoo! contribute in a major way to PPC campaign revenues. Advertisers can significantly increase reach if they include Yahoo! in their marketing mix.

Here's why. Searchers tend to use more than one search engine when seeking products, services, and information. Studies have shown that very few searchers use just one of the top three search engines exclusively.

Same Flexibility as Google

YSM's new Panama system has integrated many features that are similar to Google AdWords and now provides similar flexibility. Although there are still differences between the two platforms, they are now more minor. In the YSM Panama platform:

1. Advertisers no longer need to designate individual titles, descriptions and URLs to each keyword in a campaign. YSM now has a category and ad group structure similar to Google's.
2. Advertisers can split test ads (A/B testing) in YSM itself.
3. As of early February (in the US market), Yahoo! will move from a long standing bid-to-position model (those who pay the most rank first) to a system that takes bids, ad quality and other factors into consideration in determining how ads are ranked on search results pages -- a system similar to that used by Google. It's worth noting that Google's and YSM's ranking algorithms are completely different, but they now both take some aspect of ad quality into consideration in determining ad positioning.

Panama Interface Advantages

The new YSM Panama platform has several strengths. Here are two:

1. Enhanced Geotargeting Features. Under the old system, advertisers had only one targeting option (0.5 to 100 miles) and needed to have businesses within the aread\s they were targeting. Under the new system, advertisers can target by market (e.g. US or Canada), by regions within a market (province or state), or by City and Surrounding Areas (roughly equivalent to DMAs). While the old system was geared toward directing traffic to brick and mortar stores, the new system will allow all sorts of geotargeted advertising to achieve a variety of objectives.
2. Advanced Analytics and the "Assist" Feature. The advanced analytics feature allows advertisers to track what Yahoo! is calling the "assist." The "assist" concept will help advertisers see up to 30 keywords that contribute to a conversion. Until now, a sale was attributed to the last query typed in before the purchase was made. So, if someone searched for "plasma TV," "Sony plasma TV," and "Sony plasma xxx model TV" and made a purchase, the sale would be attributed to the final query and the other two queries would not be given any credit. The "assist" will help advertisers understand user behaviors and better allocate advertising dollars based on all keywords that lead to conversions.

What's Next for Panama?

In the first quarter of 2007, Yahoo! will continue to transition accounts from the old system to the new Yahoo! Panama platform. International accounts will start migrating to the new system in the second quarter of 2007, starting with Japan. The migration process will be similar to US migration. The first stage will consist of advertiser migration to the new advertising platform. The second stage will consist of implementation of the new pricing mechanism and ranking algorithm (which is called "Marketplace Design" in the US).

Mona Elesseily is the author of the Yahoo! Search Marketing Handbook and has been a Internet Marketing Strategist since 2003 with Page Zero Media as its YSM advertising specialist. She lives in Vancouver, BC.