Sunnyvale, California — To help things run smoothly for new advertisers, next week Yahoo is ready to release two Sponsored Search product with two new features, which the company says will provide advertisers with more transparency into and control over their accounts. This time the company is releasing Network Distribution, and Import Campaigns.
The new features will be accessible to its business customers in less than two weeks, according to David Pann, VP of Yahoo’s search advertising division. He further added that Yahoo’s investment in targeting tools provides another option for advertisers to reach consumers — an alternative to Google AdWords. So the hope is that these tools will end up in Microsoft’s search platform and adCenter.
Yahoo’s Network Distribution attribute aims to provide advertisers with more control over where advertisers place ads on Yahoo search pages, partners’ sites, or both. Those who run ads on Yahoo’s entire network, can also set different bids for Yahoo or its partners.
The feature offers three settings: Entire Network, Yahoo Search, and Yahoo Partners. It empowers advertisers to adjust bids to meet performance goals and apply custom pricing or premiums and discounts to specific parts of the network. Applying network distribution settings on the campaign or ad group level offers greater control. The feature also allows advertisers to maximize campaign performance by using traffic source insights.
Yahoo is also introducing a new tool, which it says simplifies to get started with Yahoo Search Marketing. “We know there are many advertisers who use other search marketing providers such as Google Adwords, so we have built a feature allowing easy and efficient conversion of your AdWords campaign data into Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns,” says Pann.
The Import Campaigns feature provides an easy way to convert campaigns from Google AdWords into Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns. Advertisers that are prepared to convert Google AdWords campaigns into Yahoo Search Marketing simply select the browse button to upload files. Select the “Import File” button to start the process. The feature provides a summary of the information being converted.
One of the major complaints from advertisers has been the tiresome procedure of importing online campaigns into more than one search platform. Each engine relies on different types of files and formats.
Campaign data that will be movable includes mainly keywords and phrases, Pann said, while attributes like geo-targeting, demographic targeting, and day-parting can be selected after the fact. He characterized the import feature as a potential accounts builder that will make it easier for Google marketers to get started on Yahoo.
Pann said advertisers have consistently exhibited their interest in a more streamlined way of applying their Google-based strategies on the Yahoo platform. But Yahoo may also be gearing up for the final phase to its agreement to integrate with Microsoft’s adCenter platform.
Yahoo has also highlighted a few consumer tools it launched during the past few weeks, such as updates to its search results, which the company says are more relevant. These include shortcuts for Twitter tweets, news links, and Yahoo’s video search.
In the meantime, stretching out to Google advertisers seems to make perfect business sense for Yahoo. Because it is hard to understand SEM players migrating away from Yahoo to Google — where nearly all of them are already advertising — due to the import feature, it looks like a move that will help encourage ad money to flow to Yahoo.