the PPC Book|Pay Per Click Blog | Long Tail Thoughts in a Short Tail World

Yesterday I had the good fortune to be in on a call in which the Yahoo Search Marketing team walked us through the upcoming and badly needed Yahoo Search upgrades that are coming down the pipe. eWhisper covered this in the paid WMW forum, probably more thoroughly than I, but I’ll give you a few bulletpoints nonetheless. I’m basically giving you my notes from the meeting, but I think you’ll get the basic idea.

Fast Editorial: This, to me, is the most promising feature. I am so tired of the snail-mail speeds at which my ads get approved or rejected. Yahoo promises automatic approval and eventual editorial reviews, a la Adwords (you’ll see more of this phrase)

Categories will become campaigns, and adgroups will be an option on new campaigns.

Multiple Ads! WooHoo! I believe they will allow up to 20 ad copies per ad group.

Geo Targeting - Yes it will be part of the new system. Don’t quote me but I swear she said they will offer this at the ad group level.

Separate URLs AND ad copy for content match

Quality Score/Index - Yup, kinda like someone else but definitely needed. You will still be bidding on a position, but that doesn’t mean you’ll end up there. They will take into account CTR, relevance, historical perfomance, etc.

No dayparting in the initial release, maybe next year

Integrated Forecasting tools

Those are my highlights. All in all it looks like someone finally lit a fire under the search group and they decided they are going to play ball with Adwords afterall.

Good news for everyone I believe, especially in the PPC analyst world.