Yahoo Before & After Panama?

[PPC]

I was wondering, how has everyone's results been since Yahoo switched to the Panama and the new ad ranking model? Are you happy, unhappy? Performance better, worse?

For me, I think the interface is much better and the account maitenance is somewhat easier. As far as performance, we are down quite a bit from where we were pre-Panama. ROI is similar, but volume is way down.

[Shmuel]

Our volume is way down too. We are actually at the point of deciding if it's even worth my time to manage Yahoo's campaigns any longer.

[RigoSearch]

I've also noticed an extreme decrease in volume. I'm not sure if slurp (Y!s spider) is crawling sites differently and generating quality rank on a different basis, but we have also noticed significant drops in positon (along with several branded keywords being removed by editorial). So far, I'm not impressed.

[Chris Boggs]

we are still tracking very similar results as originally published last month...

http://www.searchmarketingtrends.com...mtrends/1.aspx

[wyates]

I have been dissappointed with the performance, but pleased with the interface.

I also have been concerned about Yahoo! filling ad space with associated keywords. I made a post about it here:

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...ad.php?t=17326

[danielanaidu]

Is anybody using geotargeting? how well does it work at the DMA/city level? I have been looking for information on this, but haven't found anyone who has shared their opinion/experience. thanks.

[slurpyseo]

I originally had great results, everything was favorable, less spend, better roi, revenue doubled. I surmise it was mainly due to the geo targeting, the client I'm referring to can only sell in US. The last month it's down down down. Developers playing with settings and algo's I suppose.

Just like Vegas.

[PPC]

Originally Posted by slurpyseo

Developers playing with settings and algo's I suppose.

You might be right... even since I originally posted this message, our account performance in Yahoo! has becom exponentially worse. In fact, last week was by far the worst week in the 3+ years I have been managing our accounts. Looks like its time to start dropping bids, bigtime.

[smomashup]

We're experiencing the same thing across the majority of our clients.. to be put simply, the volume is not there and so numbers as a rule seem to be lower than pre-panama while cost to maintain even similar traffic and conversions seems to be going up.

I don't mind the interface that much, the ajax stuff gets kinda old but maybe that's just personal taste. The much touted, and apparently rare, Import and 3rd party conversion tools are so beta it hurts.

Our reps are very nice and helpful there though, but that was the same b4 so I guess that's not algorithmically dependent

Oh yeah, and the editorial process there sucks. still. big time.

[Discovery]

Ironic for me to be the contrarian here.

From the bottomless pit of click fraud, foreign clicks, and poor customer service in the DTC days, to now with Panama's tighter targeting and better UI I am very pleased with their progress.

Specific results:
We had so many clicks from China and Asia before that are now all but gone. This alone has resulted in a huge increase in conversions and more importantly trust.

With their content network not having any ability to identify and exclude publishers it is the same as it always was. Terrible. We keep content off.

Advanced keyword matching can be troublesome, but with tight campaigns with small keyword lists this can be held to a minimum.

Well we nearly had our accounts off the end of last year and the start of 2007. But for the past 3 months we have returned and have been growing, cautiously, but steadily.

When they ad exclusion, which will come, and an adwords style editor, they truly may have a chance of making G take a peak behind them.

To answer the question about local targeting.
That is a tricky area. You CANT target say Florida and then use only Florida specific keyword terms in the campaign; as this will result in no traffic at all. You need to create two campaigns. One with general terms that Geo Targets FL and then another campaign that has no Geo Target but uses ONLY Florida specific keyword modifiers. According to YSM this will result in the best cross section of traffic for the targeted state.

Discovery

Discovery

[danielanaidu]

Thank you, discovery. The type of set up you describe is similar to what needs to be done on Google, a locally geo targeted campaign plus a national campaign with locally-modified keywords. Have you tried this at all on panama? Do you have personal experience on how well it works? I have an existing campaign on Google that targets a city in south florida which is not generating enough traffic. I have (out of desperation, really) created a similar campaign on yahoo to see what it can deliver. So far, yahoo has delivered very little traffic, but I can't really gauge how well targeted it really is.

I was wondering if anyone had personal experience on how good or bad the geotargeting is at a city level on panama. Please share your experience if you can. Thanks.

[Discovery]

Geo and Demo targeting is very very loose. It does not offer pin point accuracy. Hell, YSM had a hard time keeping the rest of the world from running your ads, now you want to pinpoint your ads to a sleep little surf shop in the Keys?

Dont kill yourself on trying to get to specific.

Do the 2 campaign method
Focus on State and Major city level as Geo target and keyword lists.
Try out Local name + Zip code as a Keyword modifier.

tampa cigar shop 89451

The whole goal of geo targets is not necessarily to increase traffic, but to get a tighter conversion ratio. Its the cream at the top, not much of it, but its damn good.

We found that our CPL was much higher in these set ups, but the resulting sales conversions where much higher resulting in a positive ROI.

Discovery

[slurpyseo]

All in all Panama upgrade has been for the better. We're making more ROI on less spend. Some growing pains yes, but by far, much better than pre-panama.