Yahoo MSN PPC - Is it worth It?

[johnbear]

Currently run PPC campaigns on Adwords for my business (B2B). We spend several thousands a week to put it in prespective.

I've tried Yahoo now and then but never more than a few quid.

Has anyone here in business (excluding affiliate schemes etc) had good success with Yahoo and MSN?

How do they compare with Adwords in terms of clicks, CTR and conversions?

Thanks for any advice in advance.

[jacobyte]

In financial services, Yahoo generally gets better CPC and CTR for some key phrases (e.g. insurance and mortgages) and Google seems better for others (e.g. investment related).

You should really experiment and compare like-for-like with your ads.

[grumbas]

jacobyte said:

In financial services, Yahoo generally gets better CPC and CTR for some key phrases (e.g. insurance and mortgages) and Google seems better for others (e.g. investment related).

You should really experiment and compare like-for-like with your ads.

I'd agree that Yahoo seems to yield better results for Insurance traffic, but it can't touch the volumes generated by Google. Having said that it's a handy method for lowering your average CPC accross the networks.

[Wozza]

If you are spending several thousand on Google each week, then you should be able to find enough traffic on Yahoo to make it worthwhile. Of all the campaigns we manage, Yahoo as a general rule can create approximately 10% - 15% of the traffic volume of Google, with a CPC which can be up to as much as 50% lower.

You can now import whole Google campaigns into Yahoo. Its a slightly long winded process, as with anything on Yahoo, but is usually the best way of getting a decent sized campaign on to Yahoo as quickly as possible.

MSN traffic volumes are very low but can generate good conversion rates, thereby really helping average cost / sale across all of your campaigns.

Have you contemplated expanding your campaign on to the Google Content network as yet? Google have given much better visibility of the Content Network in the last 12 months and we are starting to use it successfully more and more now.

Good luck!


Cheers, Marc

[grumbas]

Wozza said:

You can now import whole Google campaigns into Yahoo. Its a slightly long winded process, as with anything on Yahoo, but is usually the best way of getting a decent sized campaign on to Yahoo as quickly as possible.

I can't recall seeing this option anywhere - I've got a massive account on Google that I'm looking to duplicate onto Yahoo in the near future and was dreading doing it manually!

Can you point me in the right direction?

[Wozza]

grumbas said:

I've got a massive account on Google that I'm looking to duplicate onto Yahoo in the near future

Quick check list:

Import Google campaign into Adwords Editor
Export to csv format
Remove all negative keywords, old groups and keyword level bids (you'll want lower bids on yahoo and it takes ages to changes keyword bids once on Yahoo)

Then on Yahoo choose Campaign tab and then Import

Choose Convert 3rd Party campaign first of all. This will produce another CSV file. Save that and then go to the Import Campaign tab and load it there.

Chances are you'll get lots of errors that need to be deleted in the converted file before Yahoo finally accepts it but you will get there eventually - promise!

[grumbas]

Wozza said:

grumbas said:

I've got a massive account on Google that I'm looking to duplicate onto Yahoo in the near future

Quick check list:

Import Google campaign into Adwords Editor
Export to csv format
Remove all negative keywords, old groups and keyword level bids (you'll want lower bids on yahoo and it takes ages to changes keyword bids once on Yahoo)

Then on Yahoo choose Campaign tab and then Import

Choose Convert 3rd Party campaign first of all. This will produce another CSV file. Save that and then go to the Import Campaign tab and load it there.

Chances are you'll get lots of errors that need to be deleted in the converted file before Yahoo finally accepts it but you will get there eventually - promise!

Cheers, still sounds a bit involved but with hundreds of ad groups its got to be quicker than the manual route!