As any Search Marketer would agree, a major cause of frustration when using the Yahoo search network is the fact that you are unable to see where your traffic is coming from. Is my traffic coming from Yahoo.com or other websites? Is my CPC higher on Bing or Ninemsn? Previously, these questions would be nothing but a mystery.
Finally, Yahoo have rolled out some reporting & targeting options that I believe could drastically improve performance for any Yahoo PPC campaign:
1) Premium/Standard Network distribution: Yahoo have now added a function which gives search marketers some choice as to which Yahoo search partners your ads will appear on. You can either choose to appear on their Premium network only, the standard network only, or run on both networks.
What does this mean for your account? Below is a screenshot of some results I’ve recorded so far:
You’ll notice that the CTR (‘Click through rate’) obtained by the Premium Network is more than double what was obtained by the Standard Network. This suggests that the quality of traffic coming from the Premium Network is much higher. However, you’ll also notice that the CPC (‘Cost per click’) is much higher for the Premium Network, which means advertising on the Standard Network could potentially be as cost effective as advertising on the Premium Network.
So which network should you advertise on? My recommendation would be: test test test! Create two campaigns, one targeting the Premium network and one targeting the Standard network. Ensure conversion tracking has been set up for each campaign and see which campaign best meets your desired goals/outcomes.
2) Ad delivery report: This new feature allows the you to see which Yahoo search partner is sending you traffic, the average CPC for each search partner, as well as other basic metrics such as CTR (‘Click through rate’) and Impressions. Is your account obtaining a low CTR? Run the ad delivery report and see if a particular search partner is causing the problem. If you find that yahoo.com is obtaining a poor CTR but all other search partners are obtaining a high CTR, you can add yahoo.com to your list of blocked domains (found in the administration tab) to prevent your ad from being shown on the poor performing search partner.
Here’s a screenshot of the Ad delivery report in action:
Personally I think these updates are a huge milestone for the Yahoo search network, and if used right could drastically improve performance for any Yahoo PPC account.
Good work Yahoo!
