To use it, on the “Create your ads” step, it will show your keywords for the current adgroup.  Under which it says, “Click above to view ads that currently appear in response to a search on your selected keywords.”

When you click a keyword, Yahoo will pop up a new box showing the top competitors ads for that keyword.  You can see exactly which ads you will be up against.

Check it out next time you are working in your YSM account.

“The agreement will enable Yahoo! to run ads supplied by Google’s AdSense™ for Search and AdSense™ for Content services next to Yahoo!’s internally generated paid search and algorithmic search results. Yahoo may also run Google-supplied ads on non-search Yahoo web properties, as well as on current members of its partner network.”

My take:

To me this is just another example of Google getting stronger and Yahoo getting weaker. It’s pretty disappointing really because it there going to be fewer and fewer alternatives to Google.  I have always pulled for Yahoo to hold their own and provide a real alternative to Google.

All this deal really does is makes Google’s content network bigger, as paid search ads will now spill over to Yahoo results and sites. So to you and me that means, we better be good at running Google content campaigns. My only question is, will Google let you specifically site target Yahoo properties? We’ll have to see.

As much as I would love to get 2.4 billion clicks in a month to this campaign at .11 a click, sadly I think they are just a little bit off in their estimates. Obviously this was an error with Yahoo’s content network stats, but the reason I bring it up is that ALL of the big 3 are usually way off in their click estimates. MSN is another service that is usually pretty far off with their estimates. It’s easy to get excited when you are shown that estimate of 5,000 clicks, but at the end of the month its usually a fraction of that. As far as who’s interface provides the most accurate estimates, I would say:

1. Google

2. MSN

3. Yahoo

So this is a call out to all the PPC networks (you know you are reading this). We need more accurate click forecasts. It helps us set monthly budgets and allocate resources better and ultimately spend more money on PPC.

Google:

Once you build your campaign the first step is to export it as a CSV file. Once you have the CSV file, you are ready to import it.

Yahoo:

To get a Google Adwords CSV file into Yahoo you first have to convert it. I believe you need a Gold account to use this tool, but it’s not hard to get one. Simply point it to your file and click “convert”

Once you have the converted file, there may be some formatting issues. First check to make sure the program joined the 2 line Google ad text into the 1 line Yahoo format correctly. Then search/replace the content matching column from on to off. Once everything looks good you can upload the converted file.

Once imported, set your GEO targeting and other options and you are ready to go.

MSN:

For MSN, no conversion is required. Just point to your Google CSV file and choose import.

MSN magically converts your file and uploads the new campaign. But now you have a big problem. MSN imports the new campaign with all the adgroups inactive. You then have to manually go and active each adgroup. If you have a large number of adgroups (like you should) this is a huge task. I have talked with the MSN people and they say they are working on a solution, but for now it’s a manual process. This makes the MSN import process the hardest by far. But it is still much faster to build the campaign with the Adwords editor and import, than it would be to build the campaign in MSN itself.

Webinar #1: The Quality Index

• Definition of the quality index and how it is determined
• How you should use the quality index as you manage your campaigns
• Review best practices for improving ad quality
Registration link here

It works kind of like a keyword permutation tool. You enter a few titles, and short sentences, as well as your display URL, and destination URL. Then the tool generates many variations of your ad automatically and puts them in a pending area for you to view. It will optimize performance of the ads by comparing the ads in this area from your running ads to find the best CTRs in the group.

I like this new tool and the general direction Yahoo seems to be heading with YSM. Give it a shot today, maybe you can raise your CTR and find some new top performing ads.

• We’ll evaluate the quality of traffic from our distribution partners’ sites.
• Your click charges can be discounted based on the value of that traffic.
• Discounts will automatically be applied to your account.

To me this is pretty much a non announcement. For one, it’s a totally black box system.  Advertisers have no insight to the conversion rates of the various sites and partners that are used to calculate the quality rating.  We are just supposed to wait and hope for discounts occasionally based on Yahoo’s calculations. We can’t make any changes to where our ads are displayed to react to quality issues.  This seems to be an effort by Yahoo to say “Hey, we care about quality, especially on our content network, so please use it”.