This week, Yahoo! advertisers can begin transitioning their paid search campaigns to Microsoft adCenter. During the transition, which is on-track for completion by the end of October, advertisers will continue to manage separate accounts on adCenter (serving ads on Bing) and Yahoo! Search Marketing (serving ads on Yahoo! Search). Once the transition is completed, advertisers will operate one single account on Microsoft adCenter that will power search advertising campaigns across Bing and Yahoo!’s combined audience representing 31.6 percent of U.S. search market share.
By combining paid search for Bing and Yahoo!, advertisers will be able to reach the audiences of both search engines, saving time and simplifying their campaigns. A combined Bing and Yahoo! will provide advertisers with a competitive alternative in search advertising, enabling advertisers to reach more than 159 million searchers in the U.S. and 15 million in Canada1 on Yahoo! Search, Bing and our partners with one ad buy.
Microsoft and Yahoo! will continue to seek input from advertisers as we work to complete the transition. While we expect the paid search transition to be complete by the end of October, and we are on track to reach that goal, we still may consider holding off on the full integration of paid search until 2011 if we feel that the transition will in any way impact the holiday season.
To help you prepare, here are the steps to help make the transition a seamless experience. If you’re an advertiser on …
- Yahoo! Search Marketing: Sign-in to your account and click on the adCenter tab to begin transitioning your campaigns into adCenter. From there, you can choose to create a new adCenter account, or indicate that you’d like to use your existing adCenter account. If you have a Yahoo! Account Manager, they will continue to help you through the transition plan you’ve established based on your business needs. Keep in mind that some features in Yahoo! Search Marketing are different than those found in adCenter and other search advertising platforms. Brush up on your knowledge by learning how adCenter features are different.
- adCenter: If you have no Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns to transition, you can prepare your adCenter campaigns by optimizing them to run on both Yahoo! Search and Bing in the near future. To get started, use Microsoft Advertising Intelligence to update your keyword list based on the actual queries that searchers are using on Bing, and tailor your bidding strategies by pricing data for keyword-specific metrics such as clicks, impressions, position, click-through rate, and cost per click. If you’re still learning about this time-saving tool, I’d recommend taking a look at these six introductory tutorials or perusing the documentation from the download page.
Regardless of which search platform(s) you’re currently using, as a web site owner, you may find some helpful organic search engine optimization (SEO) resources in the Bing Toolbox; a simplified experience focused on the three key areas of crawl, index, and traffic. If you have additional questions, please continue to work with your existing support contacts and visit the Microsoft Transition Center and Yahoo’s Advertising blog to stay updated with the latest information.
Thank you,
David Pann, General Manager, Microsoft Advertising Search Network
Source:
- comScore qSearch (custom) June 2010