For all you Yahoo Ambassadors out there, it official: Yahoo’s Ambassador program will cease to exist September 30, 2010.
From Yahoo Search Marketing:
Based on our current plans, after September 30, 2010, we will no longer accept new advertisers for Yahoo! Sponsored Search.
Accordingly, please remove all Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador logos from your site no later than September 30, 2010.
Yahoo Ambassador Program Discontinued
Goodbye Yahoo Ambassadors, hello Microsoft adExcellence Members!
The Yahoo Search Marketing team has begun posting to Twitter.
From the Yahoo Search Marketing blog:
We tweet throughout the week on our latest activities: about new products, from conference panels, and of course, with posts from the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog.
The official Yahoo corporate blogger is tweeting as well.
We’re not the only ones at Yahoo! serving up Twittery goodness. Nicki Dugan, the corporate blogger at Yodel Anecdotal, tweets on everything that the rest of Yahoo! is doing.
Follow Yahoo Search Marketing on Twitter @YahooAdBuzz
Yahoo Search Marketing Twitter
Shoppers hit the pavement en masse the day after Thanksgiving ( Black Friday ) but they click their computers en masse the Monday (Cyber Monday: December 1, 2008) after Thanksgiving when they return back to work.
Cyber Monday is considered the day when holiday shopping season clicks into high gear.
The Yahoo Search Marketing Blog has distilled several consumer related factors every retailer should take into consideration during their preparation for this holiday season.
1). “According to the National Retail Federation’s 2008 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, 40% of shoppers say that sales or promotions are the most important factors when determining where to shop for holiday gifts.
2). As the average consumer plans to spend $832.36 this holiday season and 44.2% of those consumers plan to buy items online.
3). As of mid-November, 72% of consumers have completed less than 10% of their shopping, while only 2.2% of shoppers are already finished.
Retailers who have also positioned their best offers online by Cyber Monday increase their odds for reaching and selling to the 44.2% of shoppers who plan to buy items this holiday season.
I am working on the following presentation for brand search marketers:
“GeoTarget Your Brand Advertising for Maximum Search Market Penetration and Retail Traffic Generation”
This brand search marketing presentation will cover the following topics:
• How to GeoTarget brand search advertising to drive retail traffic and sales by utilizing the four main search advertising platforms to build maximum brand search presence in yours or your resellers trade areas.
• A side by side comparison of the four main search advertising platforms Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter and Ask Sponsored Listings along with their geotargeting options and features.
• The opportunities and limitations of each search advertising platform’s geotargeting product.
Overall, my presentation will show brand managers how to maximize the effectiveness of their brand advertising budget while increasing brand lift.
Brand marketers who establish a search brand presence through the creation of comprehensive geotargeted search advertising campaigns will expand their competitive reach and advantage over their competitors who don’t.
I will post a more detailed presentation outline here in the near future.
If targeting local and mobile search advertising is the future growth drivers for search advertising providers, then Google and its Adwords geo-targeting features are in the driver’s seat when compared to its three closest search advertising rivals Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com.
Below I outline each providers’ offerings not according to their search advertising market share but instead according to their level of geotargeted advertising product development.
Google’s advertising product and its geo-targeting capabilities have one distinct yet obvious feature the other’s lack:
An actual map for geo-targeting the location of your ads and where they will be shown!
Google Search Advertising Country Geotargeting
With Google Adwords, advertisers can target their ads one country at a time through Google’s Country Geotargeting tab, or choose to bundle their ads for display in multiple countries at once with Adwords Bundle Geotargeting feature.
Google Search Advertising Bundle Geotargeting
Google Search Advertising Bundle Geotargeting
Google Search Advertising Metro Geotargeting
Google Adwords advertisers who advertise in specific markets nationally or regionally can target their ads by metropolitan area or by city.
Although not referenced, Google’s metropolitan area targeting looks slightly similar to the Designated Market Area system developed by Nielsen Media Research which incorporates Nielsen’s broadcast media markets and distribution scheme.
For its City geotargeting option, Google surrounds the target city with a square.
Google Search Advertising Custom Geotargeting
Google custom geotargeting by far provides the highest level of geotargeting available from any search advertising provider.
Custom geotargeting lets advertisers create their own custom advertising distribution area within any market.
Google search advertisers can simply point and click three or more points on their advertising map and Google does the rest for them – creating a custom advertising distribution area through latitude and longitude coordinates.
How do the other search advertising providers’ geo-targeting features stack up compared with Google’s?
Yahoo and Ask both offer advertising geo-targeting options but both to a lesser degree.
Yahoo Search Advertising Geotargeting
Yahoo offers geotargeting to it advertisers by account market area and specific regions. Account market area is established by the advertising account holder when the open their account. Both account market area and specific region areas are organized by country, state, province or territory.
The Yahoo specific region feature geotargets its advertising through the Designated Market Areas system licensed from Nielsen Media Research.
Yahoo Search Advertising Geotargeting Mapview
Where is the Yahoo Search Advertising Geotargeting Map?
Yahoo offers a Map View tab of specific regions geotargeted by its advertisers yet I haven’t ever been able to view an actual Yahoo map showing where my advertising has been geo-targeted and placed.
I can’t imagine why Yahoo search marketing would place a “Map View” tab in their Campaign settings geo-targeting page yet not actually provide a map view.
Ask Search Advertising Geotargeting
Ask provides its advertisers with Location targeting which is also based on Nielsen’s Designated Market Area system.
Ask doesn’t provide a map showing advertisers locations of their geo-targeted advertising.
However, and to its credit – Ask does provide a geotargeting feature direct marketers like myself would like to see from other search advertising providers like Google Adwords – Postal Code targeting.
Postal Code Targeting or Zip Code targeting here in the US would allow direct marketers and brands alike another level of advertising targeting, delivery and thus control.
At this point you may be wondering why I chose to cover Microsoft’s adCenter search advertising geotargeting product last even though it has a larger share of the search market than Ask.
Why have I listed Microsoft’s advertising geotargeting product development last?
Because Microsoft’s search advertising product does not offer its advertisers geotargeting options let alone any other kind of geographic ad targeting.
Microsoft Search Advertising Geotargeting
Will Microsoft ever offer advertising geo-targeting features to its advertisers?
If not, why?
I went to the Yahoo Search Marketing blog for refresher tips on how to optimize Yahoo search marketing pay per click accounts.
Their most recent blog post gave some general ideas on how to improve an ads quality index.
From the Yahoo Search Marketing blog:
“Improve your ad quality by grouping related keywords
If you group your keywords the right way (by themes, such as product or service type, or special offers) and achieve high quality, you could receive a better rank in search results and/or a lower bid.”
These tips along with many others come from Yahoo’s Smart Start Guide.
The Smart Start Guide according to Yahoo, “is a guidebook geared especially toward the beginning search marketer, but it also offers tips for the more advanced Yahoo! Search Marketing advertiser.”
The Yahoo Smart Start Guide chapters include:
The Yahoo Search Marketing blog then provides a link to download a pdf version of the Smart Start Guide.
Unfortunately numerous attempts to download the Smart Start Guide to Yahoo’s pay per click advertising system, I ended up with an unreadable pdf document.
yahoo-smart-start-guide-pdf
I don’t know why the pdf failed, but I don’t think the download error occurred on my end.
Hopefully the Yahoo Search Marketing blog team will receive news of this blog post ping and fix their Smart Start Guide pdf download.
Otherwise, I will have to keep searching for answers to my Yahoo pay per click advertising questions elsewhere.
Update: Jeff the Yahoo Search Marketing blog editor contacted me and suggested I use Adobe Acrobat to open their Smart Start Guide which I did – successfully.
Apparently, my Apple Reader has some compatibility issues with viewing that particular Yahoo pdf.
Thanks Jeff…
Search Marketing Communications 
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