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Getting Started Guide: Concepts
Yahoo! Search Marketing is continuously improving products and services. Some of the new concepts and changes that affect Enterprise Web Services (EWS) and the Search Marketing APIs are presented here.
Introduction
Yahoo! Search Marketing is constantly looking at ways to improve our products and services to meet the goals and objectives of our partners and advertisers. EWS, the Search Marketing APIs, and the Yahoo! Sponsored Search include capabilities designed to help you:
- Focus on strategy and business objectives to simplify day-to-day campaign management.
- Drill down to tactical details for increased control and management by exception.
- Manage your advertising campaigns using the same language and concepts you use to run your businesses.
- Leverage greater campaign structure flexibility, end-user targeting capabilities, and objectives optimization.
Targeted Changes
The current experience and targeted changes are contrasted and summarized here:
| Current Experience | Targeted Changes | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual Editorial | Fast Ad Activation | ||
| Minimal Testing | Ad Testing | ||
| Click Index | Quality Index (Quality Score) and Ad Optimization | ||
| Bid Landscape | Enhanced Forecasting and Budgeting | ||
| Local Match | Geo-Targeting | ||
| Fixed Grid UI | Easy-to-Use Control Panel | ||
Using Fast Ad Activation
Fast ad activation can ads online quickly. To maintain ad quality, there are a number of pre and post serve review processes that apply, including:
- Front-End Check: Applies to all submitted ads, and flags those requiring further review.
- Pre-Serve Review: Applies to only those flagged ads that are sensitive in nature.
- Post-Serve Review: Applies to ads that are online but, can benefit from additional reviews once online.
Using Ad Testing
Easily test multiple versions of your ads to determine the messages and the landing pages that works best for you, enabling you to create ads that deliver the greatest return on your advertising investment:
- Testing takes place within the ad group, and allows for optimization of multiple ads.
- You choose whether to rotate equally among all active ads, or, let us automatically optimize each ad group for the best performing ad.
Quality Index and Ad Optimization
Search result position takes into account more than just your bid. The system focuses on additional aspects that improve a search user's experience, such as relevancy of the creative content of the ad.
The quality index is a numeric ranking, ranging from 1 - 5, indicating how you are performing relative to your competitors. Improving the quality index allows you to rank higher at a lower cost.
The system allows you to optimize your ads using campaign budgets as the primary driver. You may also define your business metric objectives using:
- Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM)
- Cost per Click (CPC)
- Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
- Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)
- Minimum Position
You may also set constraints, including maximum bids.
Advertiser Benefits: Automated bidding based on objectives frees you from the detailed task of measurement and management.
Implementation: If you want to take advantage of budget-based optimization, you will need to place tracking tags on your web site, which will collect the necessary data to enable reporting, management, and optimization needs. Alternatively, you can provide us with a fixed average conversion rate or revenue per conversion value, which we will use to optimize your campaign.
Reporting: At the campaign, ad group, and keyword levels, you will receive enhanced reporting data including:
- Assists: indirect contribution to a conversion
- Conversions: advertiser-defined user action (for example, a sale or sign-up)
- Revenue: conversion value based on dynamic or fixed revenue amount
- CPA: cost per acquisition
- ROAS: return on advertising spend
Enhanced Forecasting and Budgeting
Enhanced forecasting services help you setup appropriate bids and budgets.Input requirements include keyword, max bid, market, geographic target, and distribution tactic. Output estimates include impressions, clicks, average cost per click, average rank, and share of potential.
Most accurate forecast data is available at the ad group level. Optionally, you may forecast data at the keyword level. Forecast data is based on the recent market activity and is not a guarantee of future performance.
The budgeting feature is designed to help you to determine the correct balance of funding to apply to your accounts and campaigns in order to meet your objectives.
Note: Please remember that the values provided by the new budgeting features are estimates only and are not a guarantee of click volume:
- Budgeting is available both at the account and campaign level. Account daily spend limit provides overall budget control. Campaign monthly budget lets you allocate money toward your campaign goals.
- Budgets are based on a monthly run-rate, and volume information is based on the most current activity available.
- For any given budget, we estimate both the monthly impression and the clicks you can expect to receive as well as the clicks we think you may miss out on. Note that these are estimates only and are not a guarantee of click volume.
- Optionally, setting a schedule, start and end dates for your campaign helps you decide when your budget will be used.
Enhanced Targeting
Geographic and demographic targeting functionality are available with the new system. Geographic targeting is a type of audience targeting that’s based on a geographical location as defined by country, state, or DMA® (Designated Market Area) or other marketing areas. Demographic targeting is a type of audience targeting that’s based on population classifications like gender and age range. You can assign a geographical location to a campaign to target users in that location and/or add demographic targeting attributes to a campaign to target users in an age range or gender.
Bid Premium: By applying a bid premium, you can specify a percentage or fixed monetary amount to increase your current maximum bid for cases where traffic appears to be consistent with your specified targeting preferences. This allows you to better compete for ad placement.
Day Parting
A day parting allows you to specify when you want your ads to display to prospective customers. You can also use a day-part to specify a bid premium for specific time periods.