Yahoo Click Charges to be Based on Quality of Traffic

[YahooPete]

Hi there,

I wanted to give a heads up to our YSM advertisers – we’re starting to roll out quality-based pricing beginning June 4, 2007. Please note that this is a phased roll out over time.

What this means is that you (the advertiser) may be automatically charged less for certain clicks than you normally would pay, depending on the overall quality of the websites providing this traffic to you.

• Benefits to you: discounting, higher quality traffic and potentially better return on investment.

• Action you need to take: Quality-based pricing is automatic so there’s no action on your part.

• When discounts will be applied: Discounts may be applied to your click charges where warranted, at the time of the click only. [Keep in mind that amount of discounts may vary between advertisers. Some advertisers may experience a noticeable decrease in overall cost-per-click, while others may experience only a small decrease in spend.]

A partner’s quality is generally based upon our assessment of their ability to delivery quality traffic to you. Yahoo! takes multiple factors into account, such as conversion rate and other appropriate measures when assessing a partner’s quality.

As always if you have any questions feel free to post here or private message me.
YahooPete

[AussieWebmaster]

Thanks we have it here too.

[Marcia]

Pete, thank you for bringing the official word to us here, straight from Hoo Headquarters. It's always appreciated, and hopefully this represents what will be a big step forward for everyone - advertisers and users alike.

[notbadguy]

How it works ?
What is a criteria for determing is the trafic of the website good or bad ?

[AussieWebmaster]

Let the games begin... if they roll out the inactive setting I think they could lose the small part of the pie they have now.

I am not going through another 3-5 months of reworking bids etc.

[PPC]

And even more important...

This is just one of the things we're doing, along with future projects like domain-level blocking, to help increase the quality and value of traffic that we deliver to you.

Sweet!

[rustybrick]

Originally Posted by notbadguy

How it works ?
What is a criteria for determing is the trafic of the website good or bad ?

Several factors, including "publisher conversion rates, traffic source and implementation type." As I reported at http://searchengineland.com/070604-210143.php

I also have some more details on this at SER:

So it is not based simply on click through rate. So I asked what happens when an advertiser doesn't set a conversion metric? Well, since it is based on the "aggregate performance across the Yahoo network," even if one advertiser doesn't set a conversion metric, others probably will and they can use those data points in determining the pricing of the bids.

[Discovery]

That is Why O Why?

Why would Yahoo want to stick its head into a beehive when they were just starting to break away from 2 years worth of negative publicity?

From what I understand of "Quality based bidding" this is a loser from any angle you look at it.

The publisher - Yahoo is going to control the value of my clicks based on what? How well the advertiser's site performs? What advertisers consider to be a conversion?

The Advertiser - Yahoo is going to base my bids on what? How the rest of the advertisers are converting at that particular publisher? According to what standard? What is a conversion, according to which industry, whats going to stop companies from gaming the system?

The one day notice is a nice touch.

If Yahoo is struggling to understand what we want I'll lay it out real simple like:

We want to control our own publisher network.

Show us every referring click and let us include and exclude the publishers we want to. Same goes for the publishers, let them see all advertisers and include exclude as they see fit.

Then Advertisers (not YSM) will adjust what we want to pay for each publisher, according to OUR internal performance stats and marketing goals. Profit, Margin, or Branding.

By giving this level of control to advertisers, YSM would be in a good position to ask advertisers to state their industry and objectives for each campaign. With these 3 pieces of info YSM could then quantify that data into a somewhat accurate assessment of publisher performance according to bid prices, industries and marketing goals. I would think it would be a huge advantage for a flower shop owner new to YSM to be able to look and see what are the top 100 publishers in the YSM network for the floral industry?

A peer reviewed network.

Discovery

[AussieWebmaster]

Originally Posted by Discovery

That is Why O Why?

Why would Yahoo want to stick its head into a beehive when they were just starting to break away from 2 years worth of negative publicity?

From what I understand of "Quality based bidding" this is a loser from any angle you look at it.

The publisher - Yahoo is going to control the value of my clicks based on what? How well the advertiser's site performs? What advertisers consider to be a conversion?

The Advertiser - Yahoo is going to base my bids on what? How the rest of the advertisers are converting at that particular publisher? According to what standard? What is a conversion, according to which industry, whats going to stop companies from gaming the system?

The one day notice is a nice touch.

If Yahoo is struggling to understand what we want I'll lay it out real simple like:

We want to control our own publisher network.

Show us every referring click and let us include and exclude the publishers we want to. Same goes for the publishers, let them see all advertisers and include exclude as they see fit.

Then Advertisers (not YSM) will adjust what we want to pay for each publisher, according to OUR internal performance stats and marketing goals. Profit, Margin, or Branding.

By giving this level of control to advertisers, YSM would be in a good position to ask advertisers to state their industry and objectives for each campaign. With these 3 pieces of info YSM could then quantify that data into a somewhat accurate assessment of publisher performance according to bid prices, industries and marketing goals. I would think it would be a huge advantage for a flower shop owner new to YSM to be able to look and see what are the top 100 publishers in the YSM network for the floral industry?

A peer reviewed network.

Discovery

I think the first one to open this up wins......

[Discovery]

They are all headed there but under different names.

Google has Doubleclick
Yahoo purchased Right Media
Somebody will acquire turn.com shortly

All have a similar model to a peer reviewed network.

Discovery

[AussieWebmaster]

Originally Posted by Discovery

They are all headed there but under different names.

Google has Doubleclick
Yahoo purchased Right Media
Somebody will acquire turn.com shortly

All have a similar model to a peer reviewed network.

Discovery

I think the Google partnership with SalesForce goes even deeper....

[YahooPete]

Hi “notbadguy”,

Thanks for your question “what is the criteria for determining traffic quality.”

"Quality" is calculated based on conversion rates and other measurements of the ability to deliver more interested and valuable customers to you from particular distribution partner sites. Discounts will be automatically applied to your account.

Hope this helps.
YahooPete

[AussieWebmaster]

Originally Posted by YahooPete

Hi “notbadguy”,

Thanks for your question “what is the criteria for determining traffic quality.”

"Quality" is calculated based on conversion rates and other measurements of the ability to deliver more interested and valuable customers to you from particular distribution partner sites. Discounts will be automatically applied to your account.

Hope this helps.
YahooPete

Conversion meaning Click? or do you take info from the people using Yahoo Analytics

[rustybrick]

Originally Posted by AussieWebmaster

Conversion meaning Click? or do you take info from the people using Yahoo Analytics

Frank, I clarified this with yahoo. It is not CTR. It is a conversion, as in a sale or goal. Yea, I know!

[AussieWebmaster]

Originally Posted by rustybrick

Frank, I clarified this with yahoo. It is not CTR. It is a conversion, as in a sale or goal. Yea, I know!

I wonder if this is what Google has been using for there inactive decisions

[rustybrick]

Originally Posted by AussieWebmaster

I wonder if this is what Google has been using for there inactive decisions

intelligent pricing

[rustybrick]

I have an update to this at http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/013754.html

In short, Yahoo said they would not increase a bid price based on conversion data...

[Discovery]

Looks like this train has a reverse gear

[MSI]

How long till the publishers start inflicting fraudulent conversions on us as advertisers to increase their standing with Yahoo? For my clients who don't have a monetary sale as a conversion this is a BIG possibility.

I believe it may have even started on Monday! I have one client that had a 60% increase in conversions on Monday for no explainable reason. And it continued on Tuesday. I had to drop his bids drastically because the spend in those days doubled as well. I also found that there was a big drop in the percentage of conversions that translated to final sales for him. The conversions went up 60%, the costs went up 50%, and the final sales percentage dropped by 40%, all starting Monday, is this a coincidence like Yahoo would have me believe? Is any one else seeing drastic changes since Monday? Does any one else have concerns about publishers beefing their numbers up on advertisers?

Maybe I'm overreacting, but I haven't heard Yahoo give a good answer about what they would do or what they have in place right now to protect advertisers from this possibility.

MSI

[YahooPete]

Hi,

Thanks all the feedback.

We’ve addressed some further concerns about quality-based pricing on this Yahoo! Search Marketing blog post: http://www.ysmblog.com/blog/2007/06/...ty-based-what/

Hope this helps.

All the best,
YahooPete