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Following the Alpha Dog
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About the Author
Kevin Gold (78 Posts)
Kevin Gold is Director of Internet Marketing at iNET Interactive, a social media company operating prominent online communities for technology professionals and technology enthusiasts. Kevin is a frequent contributing author to multiple publications including Search Marketing Standard, Practical eCommerce, DIRECT, Entrepreneur.com, ConversionChronicles.com, About.com, and On Target (Yahoo! Search Marketing newsletter).
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Great post, Kevin. I also think that the straight bidding differentiated Overture from AdWords. With that gone plus the other changes, YSM Panama is a Google clone but with limited functionality. Perhaps all they needed was a performance upgrade to the Overture back end system? I’m not convinced that YSM Panama is better than Overture.
Plus, they forgot a crucial feature: ad distribution choices. With AdWords, you can uncheck both the search and content networks to run ads purely on Google properties. For advertisers concerned about click fraud, this is very useful. With YSM, you can opt out of content match, but you’re stuck with their search distribution partners. Many of those are not worthwhile. YSM is like a tier I and tier II PPC search engine rolled into one. It needs to be tier I if it’s going to compete with AdWords.
One other thought – the Overture straight bidding system wasn’t really straight bidding. Because standard match listings were displayed before advanced match listings and all listings went through editorial review, quality was imposed before ads ran. That was perhaps a better system than landing page quality score algorithms.
Excellent post, Kevin. Yahoo’s street cred problem goes beyond the description length allowed for their PPC ads. Yahoo Search keeps slipping in popularity and advertisers have long taken notice. The reason? Yahoo bans more sites than Google and MSN combined. Even worse, the majority of these sites are legit (I’ve been tracking this since Yahoo Search dumped Google). My gut tells me that the fault lies with over-policing at Yahoo Search by editors who worked the old Yahoo Directory. Regardless, the adage applies: If they can’t find it there, they will look somewhere else. And where the viewers go, the advertisers will follow.