Introduction

Yahoo! Search Marketing is constantly looking to improve our products and services to meet the goals and objectives of our partners and advertisers. EWS, the Marketing API, and the new Sponsored Search include capabilities that enable you to:

• Focus on strategy and business objectives to simplify day-to-day campaign management.
• Drill down to tactical details for increased control and management by exception.
• Manage your advertising campaigns using the same language and concepts you use to run your businesses.
• Leverage greater campaign structure flexibility, end-user targeting capabilities, and objectives optimization.

Targeted Changes

The current experience and targeted changes are contrasted and summarized here:

Current Experience	Targeted Changes
Fixed Account Structure	Dynamic Account Structure
Manual Editorial	Fast Ad Activation
Minimal Testing	Ad Testing
Click Index	Quality Index (Quality Score) and Ad Optimization
Bid Landscape	Enhanced Forecasting and Budgeting
Local Match	Geo-Targeting
Fixed Grid UI	Easy-to-Use Control Panel

Going from a Fixed to a Dynamic Account Structure

Breaking the linear one-to-one relationship between ad elements will allow for better matching and ad optimization for our clients. For example, historically, a listing required the following linear relationship: keyword, title, description, URL, bid.

Going forward, you can use multiple keywords, which drive traffic to several ads, each with its own title, description, and URL. You can also assign alternate URLs to each keyword.

Going from Manual Editorial to Fast Ad Activation

Fast ad activation can put most ads online without manual editorial review. To maintain ad quality, there are still three pre- and post-serve review processes that (selectively) apply:

• Front-End Check: Applies to all submitted ads, and flags those requiring further review.
• Pre-Serve Review: Applies to only those flagged ads that are sensitive in nature (for example, trademarks).
• Post-Serve Review: Applies to ads that are online but, can benefit from additional reviews once online.

Going from Minimal Testing to Ad Testing

Easily test multiple versions of your ad to determine the message and/or landing page that works best for you, enabling you to create ads that deliver the greatest return on your advertising investment:

• Testing takes place within the ad group, and allows for optimization of multiple ads.
• You choose whether to rotate equally among all active ads; or, let us automatically optimize each ad group for the best performing ad.

Going from Click Index to Quality Index and Ad Optimization

Going forward, search result position will take into account more than just your bid. The new system will focus on additional aspects that improve a search user's experience, such as relevancy of the creative content of the ad. Instead of strict bid-to-position control under the current system, the new system will introduce a quality index (quality score).

The quality index is a numeric ranking (1 - 5) indicating how you are performing relative to your competitors. Improving the quality index allows you to rank higher at a lower cost.

The new system will also allow you to optimize your ads using campaign budgets as the primary driver. You may also define your business metric objectives using:

• Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM)
• Cost per Click (CPC)
• Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
• Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)
• Minimum Position

You may also set constraints, including maximum bids.

Advertiser Benefits: Automated bidding based on objectives frees you from the detailed task of measurement and management.

Implementation: If you want to take advantage of budget-based optimization, you will need to place tracking tags on your Web site, which collect the necessary data to enable reporting, management, and optimization needs. Alternatively, you can provide us with a fixed average conversion rate or revenue per conversion value, which we will use to optimize your campaign.

Reporting: At the campaign, ad group, and keyword levels, you will receive enhanced reporting data including:

• Assists: indirect contribution to a conversion
• Conversions: advertiser-defined user action (for example, a sale or sign-up)
• Revenue: conversion value based on dynamic or fixed revenue amount
• CPA: cost per acquisition
• ROAS: return on advertising spend

Going from Bid Landscape to Enhanced Forecasting and Budgeting

Improved forecasting services will be available to help you set your appropriate bids and budgets in the new system. Input requirements include keyword, max bid, market, geographic target, and distribution tactic. Output estimates include impressions, clicks, average cost per click, average rank (position), and share of potential.

To receive the most accurate forecast data, forecast at the ad group level. Optionally, forecast data is also available at the keyword level. Forecast data is based on the most recent market activity and cannot be applied against a historic or future time period.

The new budgeting features enable you to determine the correct balance of funding to apply to your accounts and campaigns in order to meet your objectives. Please remember that the values provided by the new budgeting features are estimates only and are not a guarantee of click volume:

• Budgeting is effective both at the account and campaign level. Account daily spend limit provides overall budget control. Campaign monthly budget lets you allocate money toward your campaign goals.
• Budgets are based on a monthly run-rate, and volume information is based on the most current activity available.
• For any given budget, we estimate both the monthly impression and the clicks you can expect to receive as well as the clicks we think you may miss out on. Please remember that these are estimates only and are not a guarantee of click volume.
• Optionally, setting a schedule (start and end dates) for your campaign helps you decide when your budget will be used.

Going from Local Match to Geographic Targeting

Geographic targeting functionality will be available with the new system. Geographic targeting enables you to assign a geographic region to a campaign, which targets users in specific regions or searching in a region.

You can use the following geographic restrictions to target your ads:

• By market (for example, North America, Europe, Asia ).
• By region within market (for example, a state or market area within the US market).

Qualified ads may be served to searchers if:

• The searcher has expressed interest through his search query in the target region (for example, the searcher is located in New York and looking for hotels in Los Angeles).
• The searcher is located in the target region (as determined by Yahoo! proprietary location data and technology).

Please note that the accuracy of geographic targeting varies based on a number of factors.