Is a Y! seminar worth it?

[Discovery]

Y! is holding a seminar next week in San Diego.

I'm a little irritated that I would have to pay $300 to learn how to overcome their inferior interface, however if I can learn at least a couple things to reduce my CPL by a dollar then it will have been worth it.

From another angle, as Shor has told us today DTC will be completely changing. Not only the interface but perhaps some of the fundamental logic used by Y! CTR being one of them. If this is true and if this occurs soon, then will I be going to a seminar to learn about a system that will be gone in the near future?

I would go to this seminar just to meet some of my peers in this forum who are San Diego based. We could get together and simply use the seminar to grill them on whats coming down the pike.

Your comments are appreciated.

Discovery

[Mel66]

I've never been to one, but I'm signed up for the Detroit seminar next month. I'd love to hear some reviews so I know what I'm in for. :)

Melissa

[sebastian]

FWIW, my Yahoo contact who is actually one of the rep managers told me not to waste my time.

Apparantly, the seminars are very basic and geared toward new internet advertisers and agency folks.

But hey - if you have the time, I suppose at the very least it's some time out of the office. ...or home ...or whatevers.

and you can network your little heart away.... if that's something you like to do.

[Discovery]

I guess it will be a good way to improve my golf... I mean my marketing game.

[Mel66]

Well, yesterday was the Yahoo seminar in Detroit. I attended the afternoon session for "advanced" advertisers.

Sebastian, you were right:
Apparantly, the seminars are very basic and geared toward new internet advertisers and agency folks.

I didn't really learn anything new and in fact, most of the time felt like I could have been teaching the course myself. I knew the answer to just about every question that was asked.

That said, I'd recommend the seminar if you're a beginner or intermediate PPC advertiser. The instructor was not a Yahoo Search employee like I expected, but a consultant who happens to be a former employer of Yahoo when it was GoTo and Overture. He was very knowledgeable and gave pointers not only for Yahoo PPC, but for Adwords, Yahoo Search Submit, and organic SEO as well (although the SEO stuff was really basic and always couched with "well, no one really knows the SEs' algorithms..."). So, for those who are fairly new to this medium, it was a good value for the money. The instructor led an open forum and questions were welcome at any time.

If I were Yahoo, I'd have called the morning session the "beginner" session and the afternoon session an "intermediate", instead of "advanced," session. I made this notation on my feedback form.

And, it was a nice break from the regular daily routine. Not much opportunity for networking - we only had one break all afternoon, and by that point I really needed a "break," :D so I didn't get to meet many new people.

That's my $0.02 or probably more like $0.20. Hope it helps someone else who may be thinking about attending.

Oh and BTW, the instructor didn't say boo about the new DTC interface. He kind of side-stepped those kinds of questions. Interesting.

Melissa