Category: panama

7 tips for migrating your search campaign to Yahoo Panama

We got a look at our first few Yahoo accounts that can be migrated to Panama this week. Here’s a few things to watch out for if you’re ready to migrate your Yahoo campaign to the new system.

  1. Don’t just push the upgrade button. Make sure you preview the new account structure thoroughly before you do.
  2. Yahoo will try to create a new account structure based on your current campaign. From what I’ve seen so far, the results are pretty average so be prepared to do some work on it.
  3. Don’t bother trying to alter your existing campaign before migration. It’s not worth it, you’re better off being ready with a new bulksheet to upload as soon as the migration has finished.
  4. Get familiar with the new bulksheet format too. There are more columns than in the old one.
  5. When Yahoo creates new ad text, it cuts (rather than copies) a URL from one of the keywords in the adgroup. Be sure to replace it as soon as the migration is complete.
  6. It’s tempting to upload your Google campaign instead, as this function does exist within the new dashboard. Consider this carefully though; in our experience the results of doing this have been pretty mediocre.
  7. You can’t avoid the upgrade. You have a week during which to review the account before the automatic upgrade happens, so use the time to be prepared for the new system.

Each advertiser will have different experiences during the migration and you’ll have to watch carefully what happens. However, if you do you should find the transition a fairly smooth process. Thanks to the Efficient Frontier team in the US who migrated around 350 campaigns earlier this year and documented everything they learned. They’ve made my life a lot easier!

Analysing the analysis of the search market

I’ve always thought that there isn’t enough market analysis in search, so I was very interested to read the latest white paper from Latitude. “Is the UK paid search market more sophisticated than the US?” is the question that they have asked, and they’ve answered with a resounding yes. Before I hoist the Union Jack in the office and put a picture of The Queen behind my desk, I just want to make a couple of comments on the problems that all such studies face.

Latitude have made a simple assumption. If US advertisers spent as big a proportion of their marketing budgets on search as we do in the UK (6.6%), then they would have spent another $10.9bn last year. Wow – that’s enough to buy IAC or Ghana, whichever you prefer. So why the difference?

They have made a number of arguments to support their conclusion, not least by looking at a basket of ‘highly competitive’ keywords on Yahoo’s transparent pre-Panama auction. There’s some interesting stuff (I particularly like the Maturity Index), but what would have been interesting is a look at Google’s data. But of course we can’t, because Google is a closed, opaque market, so we don’t know what the keywords cost at different positions.

This is the problem that all such studies face. Latitude hint at some discontent towards this, suggesting that an ‘invisible bid landscape’ (such as Google or MSN’s) could harbour anti-competitive behaviour by the search engines, and might even require external regulation. I’m no fan of regulation, particularly when the challenge of closed markets is soluble for those with the right mathematical approach and technology.

I expect Panama to be functioning the UK by June, and at that point we’ll have a search market that is 100% opaque (apologies to MIVA, Mirago et al). Unless search marketers can model keyword behaviour and prices within these markets, they are a significant disadvantage, whether they’re a media agency, SEM or in-house team. So the more interesting question is, who, on either side of the pond, is equipped to meet this challenge? I know at Efficient Frontier we are. If you’re using technology that was designed for the open market of Yahoo (née Overture, née GoTo), you’re probably not.

Search marketing code of conduct

“Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.” – Thomas Edison

For a few months now there’s been talk in the UK about a search marketing code of conduct. This was revisited in an article in last week’s New Media Age. It first popped up last year in an NMA piece about click arbitrage, in this case with arbitrageurs buying cheap clicks on MSN. There then followed a call from MSN for a search marketing code of conduct, quickly echoed by the DMA. I said at the time I didn’t see the point of it, and I still don’t.

Why do industries have codes of conduct? Usually for two reasons: to protect consumers (just take a look at the DMA’s), or to protect themselves from future government regulation (notice the URL of Drink Aware on every ad for booze). A search code of conduct is nothing to do with either of these things – it’s about companies not being able to react to the most dynamic advertising platform there is.

The reasons cited for a code of conduct have been incredibly vague: arbitrage, and maybe affiliates. Oh, don’t forget trademarks. Or is it about how the search engines should communicate to their customers? Or is it really about an industry that’s falling short of ideas?

Being the economic liberal that I am, I believe that market forces will do a much better job of reacting to the demands of consumers and advertisers. Let me show you three examples of how this has already happened.

Arbitrage

Google’s introduction and continued improvement of a quality score has done more than anything else to reduce arbitrage inside its search listings. Advertisers with irrelevant landing pages quickly found that their minimum bids shot through the roof. Although this wasn’t to everyone’s liking, there’s no doubt it made a major impact. In the nickel and dime arbitrage game, £5 or £10 minimum bids made it unprofitable to continue.

Yahoo’s Panama system will remove arbitrageurs immediate visibility on their revenues. Many destinations for arbitrage ads are a page of Yahoo’s paid search listings. When the price of the clicks become opaque, making a profit becomes considerably more difficult.

Affiliates

Back in January 2005, Google made a significant change to its AdWords policy by only allowing a URL to be shown once per search result. Remember the days when you’d get 11 Ebay affiliate ads on one page and how awful that was? Google changed the rules, because it was reacting to its users desire for a better experience.

Campaign standards

MSN and Yahoo have nearly fallen in line with Google’s way of doing things. The structure and terminology is becoming uniform, with keywords divided between campaigns and adgroups. Ad text sizes are becoming equal too. All this makes it easier for advertisers to create a campaign once and send out easily to the three main search engines.

No doubt the debate about a code of conduct is going to drag on – too many people have hoisted the flag up their masts for it not to. But it’s a pointless, vaporific gesture. Industries should fight against unnecessary regulation. Let the market, not committees, decide the best practice for search.