Cool New Yahoo! Search Marketing System Enhancements

Lately, I’ve had Yahoo! Search Marketing (Y!SM) on the brain. So, in this article, I’ve decided to outline some of the most recent enhancements to Y!SM’s new advertising platform. With the “Panama” interface, Y!SM has made it a priority to iterate and continually improve the Y!SM system (Yahoo! calls the process “rapid innovative release”). This is a welcome change and obviously a very different philosophy from the legacy Y!SM platform (the direct traffic center). I say Halleluiah and the latest round of enhancements, which roll out August 28 2007 (today), should prove to be very useful for Y!SM advertisers.

Ad copy updates

Ad copy is definitely not the sexiest topic but these changes will have a huge impact in terms of user experience. Changes to the ad testing in the interface will allow advertisers to see all ad copy in one place. Advertisers can also view the performance of their ads against one another with a single click. Before this, getting ad information was time consuming as advertisers needed to click on individual ads to get specific information.

Also, in terms of ad copy, advertisers will now be able to “copy” ads to modify or create additional ads. Before, this feature was unavailable and made the ad creation process extremely time consuming in Y!SM. Building on this, the system will now prompt advertisers to enter additional ads (for testing purposes) during the ad creation process. This is obviously a more a more seamless step with the “copy” feature.

Interface updates

It’s now easier to delete campaigns (there is now an obvious delete button) as well as turn campaigns on and off. Before, advertisers needed to click on a button called “edit status” to turn on and off campaigns. This is much easier with the more appropriately named “campaign on/off” button.

In the interface, there is still a fair bit of clicking (drilling down) required to get to pertinent campaign information. For example, advertisers cannot set unique bids for multiple ad groups on one screen. Advertisers need to go to each ad group to make bid changes. In my recent conversations with Yahoo!, I’ve been informed that Yahoo! is currently working to make the interface faster and easier to navigate. From what I’m hearing, this shouldn’t be too difficult (they’re looking at implementing a more horizontal navigational structure). We should see this implemented by Y!SM shortly. Currently, this is one of my biggest gripes with Y!SM so I’m anxiously looking forward to this change.

Low quality index alerts

Advertisers will be notified by email when ad quality is low. The system will check every 30 days for ads with one bar (the highest quality index is five bars). If you’d like more information on the graphical display of the quality index (the bar system), please refer to my article covering the launch of Panama.

New PayPal payment option

Advertisers will be able to offer a PayPal payment option to customers. Advertisers will be able to easily opt-in to the new payment option from the administration tab of an account.

The team at Y!SM seems to be listening to the needs and concerns of advertisers. Let’s keep them informed of the features and functionalities what we want in the new Y!SM system. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts in the comments below.

Mona Elesseily is director of marketing strategy at Page Zero Media, focusing on paid search campaigns and conversion improvement. She’s also the author of Page Zero’s Mastering Panama: A special report on Yahoo!’s new search marketing platform (August 2007). The Paid Search column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.