8 Great Ways Yahoo and Bing Paid Ad Merger Benefits You
Bing and Yahoo have slowly been shifting exposure on their search engine and publishing network towards merging their ads, and finally the switch is now complete. You ask what happened to being able to advertise with Yahoo via pay per click ads. Well you now have to sign up using Bing to keep the PPC advertising going.
Diversification improves your Return on Investment (ROI)
One traffic source for your advertising is a sure-fire way to pigeon hole yourself into a corner that you might not like trying to get out of. Plus it could be dangerous to the health of your business. It is super easy for a business to go downhill quickly because their flow of business was tied up in a #1 ranking on Google or Google AdWords. But what happens if your ranking drops a couple of places? Don’t let pride get in your way of success. It’s very easy and happens
quiet often that Google ad’s changes the way their platform operates. Don’t be the one who suffers when this happens.
They know they are the avalanche on the mountain, and nothing can stop them when they get a new idea, or algorithm in their system. For them it’s about profitability, but what company isn’t interested in profitability, correct? Let’s be vigilant and understand it’s not about fairness here.
Also, they will probably end up winning in the long haul of market share in gigantic markets like India, and China. It’s hard to believe, but keep this statistic in mind. Google makes 97% of its money from the top 3% of advertisers. Google makes it very difficult to prove that you are in the top 3%. To do so, they make sure you pay top dollar to enter the small group.
Imagine the infinite number of rules, both public, and “top secret” that you will never know or see. You will only see clearly this roadmap about the hidden rules if you manage to climb your way to the tip top of that magic number. It could take you easily around 7 figures ad spending at a minimum, just to get in the “mix”.
Simple reporting and tracking
The two search engines Yahoo and Bing compared pretty evenly in their tracking. Setup time for both required added time and effort, not including time having to noodle through reports. Now since the two have merged, you only have to look at one place in order to direct request like “What if you had a report to show conversion rates by hour of the day?”
AdCenter Desktop Editor
Now you have something much better than the beta desktop editor Yahoo employed. Even then most account holders didn’t even get to try it before the new editor launch. It’s very simple and more useful than going through most website interfaces. It tries to set itself apart from Google AdWords, however it can be quirky at times, and isn’t nearly as useful.
Cheaper traffic
Though you can’t be guaranteed a better price, it’s in the infancy stage, and until everyone else catches up with the Yahoo/Bing merger, usually you will be able to leverage cheaper clicks. You may ask, how is it cheaper in comparison? Let’s break it down. Google is the most expensive and competitive of the three. Yahoo comes in second place with less competition and average price. Then there is Bing, which has much less traffic, and most times left a huge void for companies with limited manpower or those utilizing agencies to manage their ad spending. Also, not every Yahoo advertiser has jumped on the band wagon with the merger yet. With all this being said, you can expect Bing to cost about 10-25% cheaper for moderately competitive terms, without all the secret rules that Google implements.
Innovative ads and tools
Now you can combine the resources of Yahoo and Microsoft, enabling you with innovative features for administration, reporting, the types of ads, and even the updated desktop editor. With innovation from Yahoo, it’s easy for Google to be forced to produce more value for their advertisers.
Better control over your keywords
Google has broad match, which is more advanced than Yahoo’s exact match, and advanced match. Another downside to Yahoo in the past was their tight limitations on the amount of negative keywords you could list in order to keep out unwanted search words. The Bing/Yahoo merger overcomes this by copying what Google uses: Broad, Phrase, and Exact match. In B2B markets, phrase match can be amazing in comparison with exact match, but there isn’t enough clarity in search engines understanding of the market to let broad match be of much use.
More traffic
With the Bing/Yahoo merger, the two giants combine for almost 4.5 billion searches per month and 29% market share of searches made in the US. That’s still a massive amount of searches you can make conversions from.
Save time
In the past you could import campaigns between Yahoo and Bing, however it came at a cost: it was difficult. If you tried to change ads or keywords in an account, the administrative time began to add up quickly. For most businesses, Bing and Yahoo were not worth advertising with due to the administrative cost involved (whether in house, or with management team). With the merger, clients now can scale campaigns much larger, with more optimization, to create a quality traffic source.
I would be glad to help you utilize the Yahoo/Bing merger in creating high conversion advertising campaigns with maximum ROI for your business.
Call or email Sonny at sonny@sonnyahuja.com for pricing.