I just received an email from Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM) regarding the significant changes made on its bidding system. It has already removed the minimum bid for sponsored search keywords (content match not affected), an endeavor taken to help advertisers to better align their minimum bid and to improve the overall search user experience. Now the minimum bid will dynamically be determined by 2 primary factors; keyword value and keyword quality.
How Your Bids Work
The new minimum bids are a little bit like auction house reserve prices, and can be based on multiple factors, such as your keyword quality and the keyword’s value—or how much we think that keyword is worth. Here’s a look at the two main factors:
Quality - High quality generally means that your ads are being clicked more often, relative to your competitors. We try to reward quality with higher rankings and lower costs, and now, potentially, with lower minimum bids.
Value - We look at a number of things to determine what a keyword is worth: for example, how many advertisers are bidding on your keyword, and what they’re willing to pay for it.
A keyword term becomes “active”— or eligible for display—when your bid is equal to or greater than your minimum bid. Keywords become inactive when your bid falls below your minimum. You will be notified in an alert on your Account Dashboard if the minimum bid for a keyword increases above your current bid, and you’ll have a grace period of up to several days to raise your bid to keep your keyword active.
As this change bring several uncertainties to advertisers’ current campaigns, it is advisable to stick to few rules of thumb to keep the campaigns effective.
- Get to know your keyword and its value
- Improve your ad quality.
- Keep updated with account interface
- bids and continually monitor any changes
- Try Advanced Match for broader exposure and see how it’s affected by the new system
- Perform ads testing and optimize
Learn more about the changes at YSM.
Technorati Tags: YSM, yahoo search marketing, minimum bid, new algorithm
Apr 21, 2008 at 01:11:34
I still think adwords is the best PPC, this further proves Yahoo’s favouring the searchers instead of the people paying them. Does this make good business sense?
Apr 21, 2008 at 21:28:23
I am long reader of your blog but I was unable to comment on your blog may be you have opened it up now. The search system of Yahoo! has to change because Google will be handover the search and advertise job for Yahoo!
Apr 23, 2008 at 16:36:58
man,ym hang apa? bak mai..kalau ada apa2 boleh aku tanya online..
Apr 23, 2008 at 21:30:37
Nitrostics SEO @ I don’t have any luck with Adwords, it sucks big time lol. I didn’t really explore Adwords thoroughly though; that might explain the catastrophe ;) YSM on the other hand, performs well.
Siddharth @ I also had the same problem too in few other blogs; can’t leave a message. I have no idea why is that so.
Yuzi @ emel yang aku anta kt ko tuh id YM aku..Gmail bleh masuk dalam YM ke?