The channel mix in digital advertising has always been in flux. Paid search channels are no different. Granted, Google AdWords has been a constant, but the Overtures, Yahoos, adCenter/Bings and others have been in some state of change for as long as I’ve been in this industry. Most of us got comfortable with the Search Alliance and having all of the Bing and Yahoo PPC traffic flow through Bing Ads.
But, no, Yahoo wants to play the game again. The dawn of Yahoo Gemini has been slow going since 2014, and search was mobile-only for much of that time. That changed this year and overall activity at Yahoo has ramped up here in the 2nd half of 2015. My assumption (based on heresay, assumptions and other bad journalism tactics) is that many advertisers are still avoiding Yahoo Gemini for search. Not enough traffic, too hard to manage, no easy way to import campaigns from other search channels. Blah, blah, blah.
Low Barrier of Entry
If you use a 3rd party tool to manage PPC, changes are you have the tools to import Google (or Bing) campaigns to Yahoo Gemini in just a few easy steps. I know at various times in 2015 Acquisio, Marin and Kenshoo have all been working on some sort of import feature. I can say with absolute certainty that the process works within Kenshoo.
Import campaigns – and manage them. Check that excuse off the list.
Don’t use a 3rd party PPC tool? Don’t fret. Yahoo made it easy, too.
Just like Bing did before them, Yahoo lets you plug in your AdWords login and choose which campaigns to import. And boom goes the dynamite.
Low Search Volume, Performance Concerns
Sure, Yahoo is 3rd man on the totem pole in terms of search volume. Furthermore, much of the search activity is still served by Bing Ads. That being said, Yahoo is serving enough of their own ads that Gemini should not be ignored. If you do, you are missing incremental impression/click/conversion opportunities.
Here’s one small example. Yahoo traffic and ad spend is tiny in comparison to Google and Bing. But CTR is pretty solid.
Those 1800 clicks brought in an incremental 76 transactions and $2500 in revenue. That’s an ROAS of 200%. The effort required here? Copying the search campaigns from Google into Yahoo. Little effort for a bump in traffic and revenue (and in this example, customers with decent lifetime value).
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What are you seeing with Yahoo Gemini? Still putting it off and making excuses? Let me know in the comments!
