WHAT'S NEWS

New Features Empower Your Ad Performance

It's easy to create ads that your prospective customers will click on, with the ad testing and quality index features of the new Yahoo! Sponsored Search platform

The upcoming launch of our new Sponsored Search system is going to make your life much easier—at least, the part of it that you spend managing your Yahoo! account. That's because we are introducing two features that will enable to you to set up multiple iterations of your ads, have them automatically tested by our systems, and easily identify which are performing best. Let's give a warm welcome to ad testing and the quality index...

Ad Testing
Under the new Sponsored Search, your ad will continue to be made up of a title, description and a URL. But once your account has been upgraded, you'll have the option to create multiple ads that will be displayed for all of the keywords within your ad group. This ad testing feature allows you to test different versions of your ad to see which one receives the highest click-through rate.

For example, if you'd like to test which of three title variations works best with your ad, simply create three ads that have exactly the same description and URL, but have unique titles. By keeping the other two ad elements the same, you'll be able to tell which variation of the title generated the highest click-through rate. Or, you can vary two elements, or all three ad elements, to see which ad performs best. You can test up to 20 ads, with any combination of elements (titles, descriptions, etc.), within an ad group.

In addition, you can choose to let our systems optimize the display of your ads by automatically shifting impressions to the ad that receives the highest click-through rate. If you decide to utilize this ad optimization, the ads that you wish to test must first receive a statistically significant amount of impressions. Then, the ad that is performing best will begin to be shown more often, to optimize your results.

Keep in mind that allowing our systems to display your best ad is entirely up to you. You can turn on this option for any ad group you choose. If you do not select this option, each ad in your ad group will be displayed equally.

Quality Index
Displayed as one to five bars, the quality index is a relative measure of your ad's performance. It tells you how well your ad is performing, on average, for all of the keywords for which it is displayed, relative to other ads displayed at the same time. It reflects your ad's ability to meet the needs of users by looking at your click-through rate, as well as other relevance factors.

We will display the quality index score for each of your ads, as well as a keyword bid range that will help you determine how much you need to bid to obtain a top position. In addition, we will help you understand how your bidding strategy positions you competitively by displaying your Estimated Share of Available Clicks, an estimate of the clicks you could receive for all of the keywords in your ad group, based on your bids and historical data.