South Florida Web Marketing Blog

I just got this message from Yahoo

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Yahoo! Search Marketing
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Dear Advertiser,

We wanted to reach out to you directly regarding Google’s decision, announced earlier today, to terminate the advertising services agreement that the companies announced in June. Yahoo! continues to believe in the benefits of the agreement, and is disappointed that Google has elected to withdraw from the agreement rather than defend it in court. Google notified Yahoo! of its refusal to move forward with implementation of the agreement following indication from the Department of Justice that it would seek to block it, despite Yahoo!’s proposed revisions to address the DOJ’s and advertisers’ concerns.

While disappointed by this turn of events, we are writing to you to reaffirm our commitment to working together to drive your advertising results, and to provide the continued leadership you expect. The fact is that this deal was incremental to Yahoo!’s product roadmap and does not change Yahoo!’s commitment to innovation and growth in search.

As you know, Yahoo! has long focused on how to improve the user, advertiser and publisher experience. We will continue to enable you to easily connect with the consumers you most want to reach, by creating a more open, efficient and effective marketplace for advertisers and publishers. We also plan to continue to provide the cutting-edge advances in products, platforms and services that the industry needs and expects, by leading the way in helping advertisers navigate the converging contextual and search ad markets. Finally, we remain committed to innovation in anticipating the needs of Yahoo!’s audiences–one of the largest and most engaged populations of consumers on the web–by creating the unique context that delivers results for brand advertisers online.

In short, even in the absence of a commercial agreement with Google, we intend to become an ever-stronger player in online advertising. Our certainty on this front comes from the progress we continue to make in many areas, not the least of which are the significant innovations we’re making in search. We continually optimize our algorithmic and sponsored search. In fact, in 2008 alone, we have developed and launched hundreds of improvements to our search engine, including index expansions and updates, ranking models and performance tuning. Each of these features is designed to improve search quality and deliver a more relevant search experience to our users.

Particularly in this economic climate, identifying and making rich and deep connections with your target audience is of the utmost importance. No company is better prepared to help you succeed in that quest than Yahoo!. In addition to being the largest aggregate publisher in the U.S., we are #1 or #2 across virtually every key category, including being #1 in the categories of News, Sports, Finance and Entertainment, and we’re putting our leadership to work for you every day.

By offering extensive reach to consumers, breakthrough advances in technology, simplifying inefficiencies in the advertising process, putting new and industry-recognized talent in place, and providing tailored solutions across our network to meet your needs, we are well prepared to provide you with the most significant return on your investment.

We are looking forward to continuing to work with you in building your business. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or anyone on our team with your questions, or to discuss your challenges. We’re open to a productive dialogue with you in the service of continuing our successful work together.

Warmest Regards,

Hilary Schneider
Executive Vice President, Yahoo! U.S

Yahoo looks like they are upping the ante in the Pay Per Click wars with Google.

Quality-Based Pricing Launches

In an ongoing effort to raise the value of our Sponsored Search and Content Match products, we're pleased to announce the phased rollout of a new feature that we believe will help increase the value of Yahoo! Search Marketing traffic to our advertisers. This feature, called quality-based pricing, is designed to measure the value of the traffic coming from our distribution partners' websites and price clicks accordingly for our advertisers.

What is Changing?
Previously all traffic was treated the same—you were charged the same for traffic from all web sites within our network. With quality-based pricing, you may be charged less for certain clicks than you normally would pay, depending on the overall quality of the websites that are providing this traffic to you. As a result, your click charges can decrease.

How will Click Charges be Discounted?
"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.

When will this Start?
This feature will roll out beginning today, and we plan to continue to expand it over time. 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.

What Do I Need to Do?
There's nothing you need to do to receive a discount—your click charges may be discounted based on the quality of traffic you receive. Keep in mind that the amount of the discounts may vary between advertisers: Some may experience a noticeable decrease in overall cost-per-click, while others may experience only a small decrease in spend.

Do I Need to Change how I Bid?
Quality-based pricing does not change how you bid on particular keywords. As we announced in February, both bid amount and ad quality now determine an ad's rank in search results. As always, you never pay more than your max bid.