1. Only 10% of my search traffic comes from Yahoo. I know Yahoo has a larger market share in search than 10%, but most of my advertising is done for very technical terms and Yahoo represents a very un-technical audience.
2. You can't easily (or at all) opt out of sites in their search network. Yahoo's "search" network includes arbitrage sites which really should be included in their content network. I've complained about this at the very highest ranks of their advertising group and the best response I've received is "this is something we're looking at".
3. You can't open up campaigns, ad groups, or keyword settings in new tabs. I love being able to go into Google and open up multiple adgroups in new tabs in Firefox. This is a great way to quickly make tweaks on problem adgroups. Thanks to Yahoo's Flash based interface this isn't an option.
4. As I write this my Yahoo login page isn't loading.
5. Load times in general are very slow. Again, this is largely in part to the Flash based interface.
6. Editorial hypocrisy. When I change one word in an ad or a bid on a specific keyword the editorial team rejects the ad or keyword even though it has been running for months or even years. If an ad or keyword was good before why reject it now?
7. Editing your campaigns through spreadsheets is a pain. Google has given us a nice tool in the Google Adwords Editor where we can easily paste in cells from a spreadsheet to update things like ads, adgroups, campaigns, and keywords. Generally there are no more than 6 or 7 rows needed to update any element. In Yahoo, I have to enter 30 rows of information for every element. I also have to make sure I upload the spreadsheet in a specific format. No easy cut and paste here.
8. Cost per conversions are too high. The traffic I get from Yahoo is mostly trash. I'm not sure if it's their user demographics, click fraud, or what, but it's much harder to get good ROI from Yahoo for me.
9. Yahoo only supports Advanced and Standard key phrase matching. I like having three options for keyword bidding with Google (phrase, broad, and exact matching). I don't like the all or nothing approach with Yahoo. I'm sure this approach is good for their bottom line, but it seems like it takes a lot of bid control out of the hand of the advertiser.
10. Lack of response to common problems. I'm involved with roughly 6 betas at Google right now. Every time I have an issue with Google I complain, my account rep takes note, and eventually I get included in a beta to address the problem. Yahoo's biggest achievement recently has been supporting multiple ads per adgroup and algorithmic based PPC ranking. This is something that's been available through their competitors for a long time now and really should be a standard part of a search marketing network. I have yet to participate in a beta or see a release from Yahoo which I felt raised the bar.
What's your biggest Yahoo advertising gripe?
Showing posts with label cpc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cpc. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Google Supports CPC for Site Targeted Campaigns
Google is now running a beta for CPC bidding in site targeted campaigns.
Google Site Targeted CPC Announcement
Site targeted campaigns allow you to advertise in Google's content network (websites running Adsense) on a site by site basis. The idea of site targeted campaigns is that you can more easily manage your bids. If a particular site is performing very well you can increase your bid without increasing your bid on all the other trash sites included in Google's content network. You can also walk down bids on under performing sites without removing the site all together from your campaigns.
Up until now the only bidding option for site targeted campaigns was CPM (cost per 1000 impressions). The biggest problem with this is that you're paying for people to see your ad rather than clicking on your ad. CPC (cost per click) bidding allows you to only pay for people who click on your ad. This gives you a much better chance to track your advertising spend in relation to actual visitors to your site.
In my industry a lot of the sites with Adsense ads on them have unusually high "impressions to unique user" ratios. This means that only a hand full of users create a large number of impressions. For me, paying for impressions is an incredibly inefficient way of bidding as impressions do not accurately represent the potential for sales. Furthermore, as time goes on many web users will start to develop banner blindness to Google's Adsense ads. This means that impressions will start to represent fewer and fewer clicks.
CPC bidding allows me to manage my bids in relation to actual traffic. In the case of sites with high impressions to unique user ratios, CPC bidding allows me to keep from paying for my ad to be shown to the same person over and over again.
I welcome this development over and Google and I have already signed up to become part of this beta. If I get in I'll post my experiences here along with another beta I'm part of (site performance reports).
Google Site Targeted CPC Announcement
Site targeted campaigns allow you to advertise in Google's content network (websites running Adsense) on a site by site basis. The idea of site targeted campaigns is that you can more easily manage your bids. If a particular site is performing very well you can increase your bid without increasing your bid on all the other trash sites included in Google's content network. You can also walk down bids on under performing sites without removing the site all together from your campaigns.
Up until now the only bidding option for site targeted campaigns was CPM (cost per 1000 impressions). The biggest problem with this is that you're paying for people to see your ad rather than clicking on your ad. CPC (cost per click) bidding allows you to only pay for people who click on your ad. This gives you a much better chance to track your advertising spend in relation to actual visitors to your site.
In my industry a lot of the sites with Adsense ads on them have unusually high "impressions to unique user" ratios. This means that only a hand full of users create a large number of impressions. For me, paying for impressions is an incredibly inefficient way of bidding as impressions do not accurately represent the potential for sales. Furthermore, as time goes on many web users will start to develop banner blindness to Google's Adsense ads. This means that impressions will start to represent fewer and fewer clicks.
CPC bidding allows me to manage my bids in relation to actual traffic. In the case of sites with high impressions to unique user ratios, CPC bidding allows me to keep from paying for my ad to be shown to the same person over and over again.
I welcome this development over and Google and I have already signed up to become part of this beta. If I get in I'll post my experiences here along with another beta I'm part of (site performance reports).
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