Posts in category Yahoo! Search Marketing

Why You SHOULD Put Your Phone Number In Your PPC Ads



I thiought I had written about this topic earlier, but I decided instead to cover another topic. But for the record, I agree with Amber at PPC Hero. Yahoo! IS giving bad advice.

Specifically, the advice has to do with putting your phone number in your PPC ads. Why wouldn’t you? If you can get a searcher to call you instead of clicking on your ad then you’ll save yourself some money in the end. Get their business and it’s even better. That’s just common sense, right?

I do disagree with Amber on one point.

I don’t believe a user wouldn’t click on your PPC ad just because you have a phone number listed.

I do believe they will. And that’s precisely why you should do it. I also believe Yahoo! believes a searcher will call you instead of clicking on your ad and that’s precisely why they don’t want you to do it. They’ll lose revenue.

Bottom line: You should do what makes sense for your business. Spend less, make more. That equates to using a phone number in your ads and taking the call instead of getting the click. Should every ad have your phone number in it? No. But that’s a different story.

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Should You Use Yahoo!s Ad Optimization Feature?



Yahoo! posted 6 frequently asked questions about its Ad Optimization feature. Since the feature is turned on automatically whenever you set your ads to live status, we figured we’d cover this issue today and answer the question: Should you use the feature?

Here’s a basic run-down on what the feature does for you: If you are running more than one pay per click ad and you are using the ad optimization feature then Yahoo! will start out displaying the ads an equal number of times then switch to using the one that achieves the highest CTR most often. There is a huge problem with this strategy.

Let’s say you have three ads that target the same keyword phrase but are written slightly different. Ad A appeals more to a certain segment of your target marketing, Ad B appeals to another segment, and Ad C appeals to both segments equally. There is no crossover between the segments of your market attracted to ads A and B. If your two market segments tend to appear online at different times – let’s say segment A is on from noon to midnight and segment B is on from midnight to noon – then Yahoo! could be skewing your ads based on the time. Let’s see how …

Suppose your ads go live at 12:01 p.m. By midnight your segment A ad enjoys a 50% lead in CTR over your segment B ad and has a 10% edge over the segment C ad. Now Yahoo! starts showing your segment A ad more and your segment C ad slightly less but your segment B ad is only being shown 25% of the time – at a time when half of your target market would respond to that ad more than the segment A ad, which is being shown most often. You are losing money.

I don’t recommend this feature for most advertisers. New pay per click advertisers may be tempted to use the ad optimization feature, but I would caution you against it. You are much better off testing your own ads at different times of the day.

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