Need opinions on Yahoo! Sponsored Search

[starcraft]

I recently designed a website for a tool and die maker company and they wanted to start paying for advertising on websites. I recommended Yahoo Sponsored Search in that Yahoo is a top search Engine. However, for the business that they deal with (industry) I recommended thomasregister.com as well. Thomas Register is a specific directory for industrial businesses.

Since I have never done a paid advertising on a website before I don't know how successful Yahoo! could be. Has anyone here used it and at least noticed an increase in website hits? How much it costs per month (money not an issue)? thx in advance for anything!

[seobook]

Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing are basically considered the gold standards in PPC search engine marketing

price and the like depends on search volume, how compelling your ads are, what your bid prices are (depend on keyword), where those bids land your ad amongst the competition, & how competitive your marketplace / keywords are

[Chris Boggs]

I echo seobook's comments (as usual ;) )

Also, you may want to look into business.com's PPC offering if your client is B2B. We have seen a trend where B2B listings actually perform better in Yahoo! SM (formerly Overture) in terms of traffic. Our guess is that it because Yahoo! still provides listings to MSN, which seems to be the default SE for many businesses. This is of course an unscientific theory, but others may agree.

I would definitely do a test campaign in as many of the portals listed so far as you can, and shut it off to evaluate the efficiency of the site after a few weeks. If you are not getting many conversions (whether they be sales or leads), then you may wish to redesign the site or at least create a specific landing page for such listings, loaded with more "calls to action." For more good info on this subject, see this thread (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=2226).

[jenagain]

I echo seobook's comments (as usual ;) )
We have seen a trend where B2B listings actually perform better in Yahoo! SM (formerly Overture) in terms of traffic.

Chris, funny, I just had a client tell me he was feeling the opposite: that Yahoo PPC is not delivering much in the way of B2B for him vs. other PPC engines. I'm wondering if you could point me to any articles or analysis that describe the trend you mention?

Thanks,

Jen

[SMSConsult]

I think what Chris was speaking to (Chris feel free to tell me I am way off, as it is normally the case) is a more intuitive thought process. As MSN has built out and marketed its search engine, much of its current market share mix is business professional (I know I have seen a study but I would be hard pressed to call it up now). And as we all know ads to YSM still serve to MSN (for how long is another tread all together).

Now this certainly will not give a definitive answer to the large B2B click question, however neither do a few clients make a great market sampling.

Anyone have a more official study on this issue?

[Chris Boggs]

Chris, funny, I just had a client tell me he was feeling the opposite: that Yahoo PPC is not delivering much in the way of B2B for him vs. other PPC engines. I'm wondering if you could point me to any articles or analysis that describe the trend you mention?

Thanks,

Jen

Jen sorry I cannot tell you any specifics...I will look for some third party research but the people above me might not like my spouting-off client info.

I can tell you that SMS consult is right on track...most of the previous post was based on the idea of MSN being more often used in a business environment. Of course Google continues to grow in popularity, and we do have one client that we recently took over PPC for that swears by Google's past conversions versus YSM. Call it a B2B hunch, but more of that than a steadfast modus operandi. I will try to put together some non-"outing" numbers for you after next month's reporting...but you may have to remind me. :)

[ipfresh10]

nice comment. keep the work!

danhny