The Microsoft-Yahoo Alliance - 3 Things I'll Miss
The search marketing world was buzzing last week over the Microsoft-Yahoo Alliance and what it means to PPC advertisers. Marketers lauded the Alliance, celebrating the impending demise of the aging Yahoo Panama user interface. My friends David Szetela and Joe Kershbaum discussed the Alliance during the latest episode of PPC Rockstars. (Side note: If you're a PPC advertiser or account manager, and you're not already subscribed to the PPC Rockstars podcast, do yourself a favor and go subscribe right now. You'll thank me later.)
Overall, I agree with the sentiment out there - Yahoo Panama is clunky, and outdated, and was flawed from the start. That said, there are 3 things I'll miss when the Alliance finally rolls out.
#1 - Lack of competition on MSN/Bing. It's well-known that conversion rates on Bing are far superior to conversion rates on Yahoo. In my experience, if Google's conversion rate is X, Bing converts at 3X and Yahoo converts at 0.6X. One of the reasons Bing converts better is the lack of competition.
The Alliance puts advertiser ads on the best PPC engine AND the worst one. We don't yet know whether advertisers will have the option of creating separate campaigns for Yahoo and Bing. If that's not an option, we're all going to see lower conversion rates.
Even if this is an option, I'm betting more people will opt in to Bing when they can do so through one interface (as opposed to two currently). That'll increase competition, thereby splitting the conversion pie into fewer pieces - resulting in lower conversion rates.
#2 - The quality of Bing traffic. While this is related to competition, it's not exactly the same. PPC traffic comes not only from the search engine domain (e.g. Yahoo.com or Bing.com), but from search and content partners as well. Partners almost always dilute the quality of traffic from a PPC engine - especially in Yahoo's case, where poor performance from search partners is well-documented. We don't know whether Bing will add search partners to the mix; but if they do, we're in trouble.
#3 - Yahoo's Bid Slider application. OK, so it's a minor feature in the overall scheme of things. But I use that slider a lot when managing client PPC bids. It's a great visual that helps advertisers estimate ad position and bid quickly and easily. It beats Google's Bid Simulator by a mile, even though the Bid Simulator is 2.5 years newer. It's one of the few things Yahoo got right with Panama.
Under the Alliance, PPC management will happen in the adCenter interface, and Yahoo's Panama will go away. For the most part, I'm glad, but I'll miss that slider.
What will you miss when YSM goes away?
Overall, I agree with the sentiment out there - Yahoo Panama is clunky, and outdated, and was flawed from the start. That said, there are 3 things I'll miss when the Alliance finally rolls out.
#1 - Lack of competition on MSN/Bing. It's well-known that conversion rates on Bing are far superior to conversion rates on Yahoo. In my experience, if Google's conversion rate is X, Bing converts at 3X and Yahoo converts at 0.6X. One of the reasons Bing converts better is the lack of competition.
The Alliance puts advertiser ads on the best PPC engine AND the worst one. We don't yet know whether advertisers will have the option of creating separate campaigns for Yahoo and Bing. If that's not an option, we're all going to see lower conversion rates.
Even if this is an option, I'm betting more people will opt in to Bing when they can do so through one interface (as opposed to two currently). That'll increase competition, thereby splitting the conversion pie into fewer pieces - resulting in lower conversion rates.
#2 - The quality of Bing traffic. While this is related to competition, it's not exactly the same. PPC traffic comes not only from the search engine domain (e.g. Yahoo.com or Bing.com), but from search and content partners as well. Partners almost always dilute the quality of traffic from a PPC engine - especially in Yahoo's case, where poor performance from search partners is well-documented. We don't know whether Bing will add search partners to the mix; but if they do, we're in trouble.
#3 - Yahoo's Bid Slider application. OK, so it's a minor feature in the overall scheme of things. But I use that slider a lot when managing client PPC bids. It's a great visual that helps advertisers estimate ad position and bid quickly and easily. It beats Google's Bid Simulator by a mile, even though the Bid Simulator is 2.5 years newer. It's one of the few things Yahoo got right with Panama.
Under the Alliance, PPC management will happen in the adCenter interface, and Yahoo's Panama will go away. For the most part, I'm glad, but I'll miss that slider.
What will you miss when YSM goes away?
Labels: MSN / Yahoo Alliance, MSN adcenter, panama, yahoo search marketing
posted by Melissa at
9:10 PM
2 Comments:
I liked your article
By
Anonymous, at 10:02 PM EST
I think the only thing that I will miss is the visual for budget recommendations including missed clicks. But, I'm with you, I won't miss that interface too much.
By
Unknown, at 5:05 PM EDT
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