I haven’t been able to manage my account of sponsored search for the past 24 hours + got one tenth of the usual traffic from overture in the last 48 hours. Yesturday I managed to access it briefly and the 1-5 bids we’ren’t showing in one of my campaigns, yet it was ON and funded. Did anyone experience such difficulties and knows what going on?

I’m accessing from Israel and got no replies for my inquiries.

Thanks, ben

The direct traffic centre login interface was down here in Australia (you couldn't log in) yesterday, and most of today too - but its working again now.

Yes overture was down for "system upgrades" this past weekend. Although I dont see any upgrades, nor improvements in system performance.

They were down intermittently yesterday, and now today It took 20 minutes to get to the login page, and when I did I only got the message

"System Slowness
We are currently experiencing intermittent delays and slowness with our system. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience."

Glad we turned all our Yahoo campaigns down to their lowest traffic levels on Friday as we have not been able to make any changes since then.

But that new DTC is coming soon, really, maybe even by the end of 07.

The performance of the DTC has been very poor today. Yahoo really need to get their act together! :confused:

We ramped down all of our Y! campaigns last Friday before their weekend "upgrade" shut down. Well, once again, Y! just didnt seem to take ahold of those changes.

Not only did we get socked for traffic we didn't want over the weekend and had no ability to stop it, BUT for some reason the traffic was 3x greater than a normal weekend for us.

Our ad spend increased by close to 20k in less than 3 days.

At what point is this negligence going to require legal action?

Did any of you make changes that never took on Friday and got stuck with paying the bill?

Discovery

Looks like the system is completely down right now. What is going on????

I'm in the same boat as you, but our ad spend only increased by about 4k.

I can't even get in to check my information!

I can't either, it times out or goes to a page not found error everything. Not fun when you need to manage accounts. :(

Pretty much the same here, only 1 had 1 error page then it said I was already logged in (?) and took me to another error page.

Geez--are they ever going to fix this?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaarg Still Down

Those spry little devils, having a bit of fun with us before they launch the new DTC with all the bells and whistles.

Surely, they locked us all out to build excitement and when they open the doors again there will be a new DTC with a wonderland of tools to play with and life will go on happily ever after...

Has anyone seen my Prozac?

Has anyone seen my Prozac?

I borrowed it and am making a big "happy" cocktail for myself...I think I am going to need it.

I wish they would announce these things if it truly is 'the upgrade' this time. They are always shutting it down on the weekend, but this is different. This is causing problems for us by being down so long in the middle of business hours.

Oh well, more of the same I suppose. Good luck everybody.

If Y! is not up by the end of the day I will be taking legal action tomorrow. For a company of their size to be down this long is totally uncalled for.

Pissed!!! :mad:

I borrowed it and am making a big "happy" cocktail for myself...I think I am going to need it.

LOL. I guess we should take a lesson and all relax. It will be up soon I am sure. I can at least get past the first page this time around.

Probably a good time to mention to some related threads! Keep this one for discussion of the immediate problem with Yahoo's system. For longer term gripes with the existing system, head over to 10 Reasons Yahoo Should Kill Direct Traffic Center (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=7013). For comments on the new system to come in next year, see Details On New Yahoo Paid Listings System (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=7013).

I also renamed this thread with a month and year, in case of future outtages that get discussed. I'm waiting for someone to suggest naming them :)

I got a statement, for what it is worth. :)

Yahoo! Search Marketing initiated a systems upgrade this past weekend to lay the groundwork for performance and availability improvements that our advertisers will see over the coming months. During this process, we encountered some unexpected issues that affected advertisers' ability to access their accounts.

Our number one priority right now is to restore service for our advertisers, so we are working around the clock to resolve this as quickly as possible.

I just received a call from my Y! rep, asking ME why my account was offline...

Ah... Let me count the ways to answer him....

It is soo bad it is laughable. I have turned off my account. We're just going to cut our losses with Y!.

I do have a bit of sympathy for these account reps. Can you imagine going in to work today knowing you have to call 50 people and ask them why their account is offline, or why they are not spending as much as in the past? Then stand back and wait for the 50 gallon drum of whoopass to get dumped on you.

No wonder Y! keeps the developers in a different location than the account reps.

Discovery

Yahoo! told me they would call you. Did they make an effort to make you happy?

Hi Rusty,

I'm not sure if you're directing your question to me, or if you're being serious.
However, I can answer your question that no, I have not received a phone call from Y!/Overture today.

I don't know if a phone call can achieve anything, unless s/he were to say, Heres a refund for all the click fraud and additional traffic you recieved while our system was down, and for the changes you made that didn't take and attempts to turn it off could not be made because we continued to be down. And we're also sorry for posting that your balance was x amount on one day, but it was understated by 12k and now you are over budget by 12k 3 days later. And all those domains that are sending you junk traffic, we shut them down.

Here, heres all your money back for these terrible mistakes and a new DTC on top of it.

Yes, I think after a conversation like that perhaps I would feel a bit happier.

Discovery

Yes, Discovery, it was pointed to you. Sorry about not being clear.

I would have figured they would have called you by now. Keep us posted please.

I successfully turned my account off on Friday the 26th at approximately 8:30 AM. I checked and none of my ads were being didplayed on Yahoo or any of their affiliates that I'm aware of, yet I continue to register phantom click and am being charged for these phantom clicks even though the account still shows as being turned off.

I've always wondered if the clicks that I'm being charged for are all valid, now my fears seem to be confirmed. This morning I called Yahoo Search Marketing and confimed that the has been turned off since Friday morning and at that time I registered 837 impressions and 26 clicks for today. Now at 11:43 PM I register 1,430 impressions and 48 clicks, all with my account turned off and no ads displaying. I'd say Yahoo Searh Marketing has some explaing to do !

All,

I know you are aware of our recent systems upgrade last weekend and that you’ve had difficulty accessing/managing your accounts as a result. On behalf of Yahoo!, I apologize for the inconvenience and obvious frustrations (noted in this thread). Ted Meisel, president of Yahoo! Search Marketing, sent an update email to all of our advertisers today but I felt it was also a good idea to post some excerpts here to make sure the information is shared as quickly as possible.

Here is the update:
• Per my last post, Yahoo! Search Marketing is undertaking a series of updates to get more performance from its current systems, as well as a comprehensive technology upgrade that will make it easier for us to roll out and scale new features globally.

• Last weekend, the core databases that process and store listings were upgraded. It was a complex, broad effort to lay the groundwork for performance and availability improvements that you will see over the coming months. We encountered some challenges that made it difficult for advertisers to access accounts and manage listings, and bids.

• The good news is, we’re now beginning to see some of the intended benefits that will ultimately enhance the performance of our systems.

• The majority of the issues have been resolved and core service has been restored. We are hopeful that any additional service interruptions will be minor as we continue to fine-tune our systems.

We absolutely understand that any system downtime creates difficulties for you and we want to hear from you. YSM has set up comments-ysm@cc.yahoo-inc.com for this reason. I encourage you to use it. Your message will be read.

Feel free to reach out to your rep with any direct questions and if you aren’t sure who to contact, you can always send me a private email for help. Thank you again for your patience and understanding.

YahooSarah

Rusty, Sarah,

Thanks for your posts. I have called in to Y! today but my rep is again not available. I can understand he is probably pretty busy most of the day.

I'm not here to tell anyone to stop using Y!, if it works for them great.
I know that my competitors will not weep over us leaving Y!. However I have concluded that the time, effort, frustration and money involved with using Y! is leading my company down the wrong path. This kind of distraction can really affect many aspects of your employees performance. And it has with mine. I am focusing my team on the ad networks and tools that have great promise, here and now. We will only be using Y! when a client specifically requires it. Since significant change is not due to take place until "sometime" next year we will wait until then to once again make Y! part of our strategic plans.

We hope significant change will come sooner.

Regards,

Discovery

All,

In order to roll out the enhancements planned for the upcoming months, we need to make a few more updates to our system. This will require a brief maintenance period during off-peak hours this week that will limit your access to your account for several hours. The maintenance is scheduled to begin Tuesday at 10:00 p.m. and last through Wednesday at 3:00 a.m. Pacific Time.

Please know that we regret any inconvenience this may cause, and are committed to completing this maintenance as quickly as possible. In the meantime, feel free to send us your feedback at comments-ysm@cc.yahoo-inc.com. Your input is really important to us, and every message will be read.

YahooSarah

Right hand meet left hand (http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2005/08/30/yahoo_ad_system_repaired_time_to_restore_good_name/index.php) -- maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't have said "it's all better now" until after this upcoming update tonight....

I did get a call from a "senior" person at Y! today who discussed the issues with me in detail. Not exactly the dream resolution I spoke of earlier in the thread, but certainly more than what I had truly expected.

1: An experienced person with both technical and marketing knowledge.
2. Honesty about the issues involved.
3. A reasonable effort to make financial amends.

In summary, I'm glad to have the refunds taken care of and I appreciate the time this person took to speak with me. However, my main concern was that in order for us to continue to use Y! we would need to have DTC be stable, accurate, and offer a way to exclude certain domains and countries from running our ads. If these changes come about we can work through any usability issues with the DTC and be very profitable. The representative gave me some realistic expectations of when and if these changes will happen. It looks like we may be waiting a while to go full throttle again on Y!. But we may also have opened a pipeline of communication to effect enough change in the interim to keep us from coming to a complete stop.

The next few weeks will be critical.

Cheers,

Discovery

This is really nice to hear. Thanks for sharing this experience with us Discovery.

Here it September 16 - and nothing is better.

In fact, for over week DTC has been dog-slow ...and in many cases unusuable.

I am sure I will be reporting the same thing September 16, ...2006.

Lame...

From what I understand Y! transitioned to a solid foundation that will decrease interruptions and give them the ability to "easily" add new high end features.

I can understand that this is a huge task considering the size and complexity of the Y! system.

Unfortunately, the future features I am hearing about do not include giving advertisers the ability to exclude sites, or to effectively block geo locations we don’t want to advertise to. This would be a major disappointment.

I hope that someday soon Y! gets in a position of being pro-active instead of always being re-active to negative events.

For now I guess the positive side is that we are learning how to generate more traffic from other sources. No matter what Y! does it is always advantageous to diversify.

Discovery