Yahoo Interface Change

From Yahoo

New and Improved Sponsored Search
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.
It's an exciting time here at Yahoo! Search Marketing. On May 8, we announced to the world that our completely redesigned Sponsored Search platform is just a few short months away from its official launch in the Fall of this year. We also revealed all of the great new features and tools that will be at your disposal. We truly mobilized our entire business to plan, test and deliver these enhancements to you, and we think that you're going to love the results!
Our new, completely redesigned search ad platform will provide you with an easier, more powerful way to connect to Yahoo!'s vast and valuable audience. The new platform represents a major breakthrough for advertisers, because it's:
Easier and more effective: Yahoo! consulted hundreds of your fellow advertisers to develop a campaign management work flow that is more intuitive and will provide more effective controls and features than any other competitive product.
Action- and insight-oriented: Our new campaign management application will provide you with more visibility and insight into your performance, and more control over how to improve it. This also ultimately provides users with a better online experience.
Built for the future: With the launch of this new platform, in the future Yahoo! will be able to build in features that leverage our unique assets to provide you with many more targeting, format and distribution options.
Powerful New FeaturesIn case you missed the May 8 email or the massive press coverage that followed, the new features that will make advertising with Yahoo! better and more effective include:
Easy-to-Use Control PanelOur 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 ActivationMost 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 TestingYou'll be able to 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-TargetingThe new platform enables you to 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 SchedulingYou'll be able to create, budget and schedule individual advertising campaigns for greater control over your advertising strategy and spending. The account interface provides an easy way to review forecasts of your potential clicks based on your bids and budget, and see how many clicks you're leaving to your competitors.
VisibilityWouldn't you like to understand how well your ads are performing relative to your competitors? After launch, a new Quality Index will be displayed for each ad. You'll also see the bid range that is necessary for premium placement at the top of the search results page.
Get Your Map OutThe geo-targeting feature in particular has attracted a lot of interest from your fellow advertisers this month. Geo-targeting will allow you to target your ads to potential customers located or interested in particular geographic areas within the market selected for your account. It looks at factors such as the user's search query or Internet Protocol (IP) address to determine when to display your ads.
For example, if your business sells real estate within the state of California you would want to select California as a geo-targeted region. Then, your ads will be shown to potential customers located in California, as well as to search users who may be located outside of California but who have entered search terms such as "California Real Estate."*
The Transition PlanTo help ensure a smooth transition for you and other advertisers, we're going to take a phased, measured approach to upgrading our large, global customer base into the new system. While each advertiser's formal transition into the new system will take only a short amount of time, the full transition of all Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers will take place over the course of a couple of months, beginning in the Fall of this year.
During each phase of the upgrade, we will provide you with numerous tools, communications, internal and external training options, an online support center and other resources to help you prepare in advance, get familiar with the new system, and use the new tools and features to their fullest. We will be communicating with you many times over the coming weeks and months to introduce you to the new platform functionality, and offer recommendations on how to prepare your account in advance of the transition.

This is a fantastic article by Chris Sherman on search behavior and branding.

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3608456

Google Click Fraud Settlement

You may get some extra funds in your account to be used for Google advertising?

Lane's Gifts v. Google settlement
As you may have heard, Google has reached a settlement of a lawsuit regarding click fraud. Here's Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel, to discuss the latest developments:
Now that the preliminary settlement has been approved by the Court, all members of the class are being notified about the settlement.

On May 19 and 20, 2006 (PST), a settlement administration firm sent an email notification (from clicksettlement@xmr3.com and with the subject 'Important Legal Notice Regarding Your Google AdWords Account') to all advertisers who purchased online advertising from Google between January 1, 2002 and the present.I recommend that you carefully review the information in the email and visit the site provided by the administration firm: www.clicksettlement.com. On the site, you will find links to the official settlement notice and settlement FAQs, both of which are in .PDF format. To view these documents, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader.

As we have said in the past, we work hard to manage the issue of invalid clicks, and continue to be very effective in detecting and filtering them in order to deliver outstanding ROI to our advertisers. The vast majority of invalid clicks are detected and filtered out before they reach our advertisers' bills; if advertisers detect additional invalid clicks, our click quality team investigates and provides refunds as appropriate.

You can read more information about invalid clicks and how we manage them here and in the AdWords Help Center here."

Give Your Paid Search Tracking Some Cookies & Milk

There are several different companies offering paid search tracking. Also, most of the paid search engines offer free tracking for your website, but how reliable are these stats?

In short, depending on your business cycle, these stats may be very unreliable. Why is it based on your business cycle? Cookies!

When someone clicks on your paid search ad a cookie is placed with that customer. If the customer clicks on the ad, goes to your site, buys your green widget for $29.99, it will show as a conversion and sale for $29.99. Now the next customer clicks on your ad, goes to your site, and does not buy today. He buys tomorrow, next Saturday, next month, 60 days from now. This sale will not show coming through paid search unless the tracking systems cookies are set that far out. Your stats will show a click, but no sale.

Google’s conversion tracking sets a 30 day cookie. If a majority of your customers buy in 45 days, your tracking will show your paid search campaign is not working for you because the sales will not show 31+ days past the time the click took place. You need to make sure your tracking system meets your business cycles demands. If not, you may be wasting your time.

Google tracking 30 day cookie
Yahoo tracking 30 day cookie
MSN tracking 30 day cookie

Many of the other more sophisticated and higher cost systems, like Yahoo Marketing Console, Atlas Search, and Coremetrics go up to a 60 or 90 day cookie.

Article written by Al Scillitani

Yahoo Getting Closer To Change

On April 8, I worte about Yahoo PPC changing to more of a Google platform. Well the changes are coming. Press release was just sent out and here it is...
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=11476