Diorex

Yahoo is in the midst of launching its new Panama system. Without meaning to burst their bubble, I would like to point out a few things they have always done wrong that are not fixed going forward.

1. When is Search Marketing not really search marketing? At Yahoo you can bid on a search term that shows up as content. You have probably clicked on an ad that takes you to another page of just sponsored search results displaying Yahoo ads. The ad is usually on a tail keyword, yet the results being displayed are without fail on the highest paying keyterm. These ads are delivered as sponsored search, not as content. At least with Google, I can bid less through the Content network on the MFA sites. Here I am stuck paying top dollar for a not very well targetted “Search” ad. Example; User types: “Product Keyword” warranty - the ad being displayed says something like - “Get Warranty Information…”, user clicks, then comes to a page that says “The best results for Product keyword Warranty are:…. So user clicks the first item, thinking that is the best result. Only problem is that the ads shown are the sponsored results for the much higher paying “Product Keyword” It is a bad user experience, and a bad advertiser experience, because the original query and intent of the user was not commercial in nature and therefore unlikely to convert….

2. So I find this crap arbitrage site where I never want my ads to show, at least in Google, I can opt out of showing my ads on that site, since I understand that they are probably driving lots of deceptive traffic. At yahoo, I am stuck paying top dollar for the crap traffic. Let me opt-out. Yes I know Google has domain parking that I cannot easily opt-out of, but that is a much smaller issue and something I wish they would fix as well.

3. Content - I was invited to Yahoo’s “Meet the New Sponsored Search” conference in Sunnyvale back in June along with 75-100 of Yahoo’s biggest advertisers and agencies. They pulled out the big guns, Jerry Yang, Terry Semel and lots of other Yahoo big wigs talked to us. At one point, one of the Yahoo’ies asked how many were using the Content Network. One hand went up, and he qualified that by saying the advertiser made him do it. Yahoo has damn near the most powerful portfolio of internet sites, from jobs, to mortgages, to finance, to entertainment, to mail… and any number of other well trafficked pages. Yet, yahoo refuses to allow advertisers to target this absolutely fabulous traffic without adding in the 99% of other absolutely horrible crap. I would love to have my adds show on some of these Yahoo branded pages, but it is an all or nothing with them. At least Google allows me the chance to say I just want Google search traffic, and I do not want all the 2nd tier aggregators to display my ads.

4. Fraud - I can think of numerous times when a keyword went from having 3 clicks in 5 months to getting 700 clicks in a single day. Yahoo’s standard response is that “traffic fluctuations, can and will occur, and I should protect myself with a daily budget.” NO NO NO - Fraud does occur and you need to pull your head out and admit it when it does. I have never failed to get a courtesy credit after much hair pulling. How much other small scale fraud occurs without me catching it? I have never once gotten a courtesy credit without having brought it to their attention. My CPC is significantly higher for similar positions in both MSN and Google, mostly because it converts at 2-3 times the rate. Get rid of the fraud and i will bid more for the traffic. You get to keep 100% of that money on the traffic I want anyway. I love MSN because the fraud is almost ZERO!

5 Editorial - a competitor and I can both have the exact same product, with essentially the exact same text on a landing page, yet they can bid for terms that I cannot. Not because it is a protected term, but because the editor that saw one ad thinks differently than an editor who saw the second. In one of my first very big campaigns, I sent 40,000 terms and got 10,000 rejected. Over the next 3 months I got all by 800 listed. I did not do it by rewriting landing pages or ad copy, I just re-submitted the ads every 2-3 weeks and got a few hundred in each time. Same ads, same landing pages, different results. Panama is not making this any better, I just get some traffic for 2 days while they wait to disapprove my ad. I hate this system, but at least the other way made far more sense. If I can point to a virtually identical ad, I should be able to get mine approved (or the other removed). Just make it a fair playing field.

6. The Promise - Yahoo is like the little kid who keeps promising he will behave better. After awhile you just stop believing him. I know that Panama is going to good for my business and just about anyone else who reads this because we understand Google. That does not mean Panama could not have gotten Yahoo back in the game. They are a second tier player and the last place I roll out any new campaign. Panama is just sticking a finger in the damn. The advertiser money is still going to flow elsewhere.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 3:58 pm and is filed under Yahoo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.