SES Chicago – Day 2 – Yahoo! Search Marketing Lunchtime Panel

John Slade speaks to an overflow crowd…

Says “Thank You!” to existing customers

Thanks people who have been early adopters

Web Publishers – everyone is a publisher in some way, even if they don’t think they are.

Consumer Context – Keep it in perspective

The Four Questions:
– How do I reach my desired audience?
– How can I effectively engage them?
– What mix of tactics should I use?
– How do I know its working?

Today’s offer model is a linear model, moves to multiple ad targets & calls to actions

Tip: Always get your keywords in your titles and descriptions.

Build calls to action: It’s a framework to continue

New Tools:
– Dynamic Account Structure
– Ad Testing
– Fast Ad Activation – building more automation and integrity checks into the process.
– Enhanced Geo-targeting
– Alerts – proactive keyword alerts to start shortly
– Share of Clicks and Forecasting
– Quality Index

Rank is determined by its bid and expected performance. Relevance is critical to preventing “ad blindness”

Five Reasons Marketers Should Be Exited:
– Improved user experience: intuitive, speed
– Faster impact and rewards for advertisers that optimize
– Focus efforts on what matters most to the marketer’s business
– Gives marketers the power create, test, and analyze campaigns like never before
– Leverage creative (missed the rest of the slide)

John stressed that one needs to be cognizant of thinking in new ways to get full advantage of the features of the new system.

Graham Harris…gives demonstration. Shows the automated keyword generator. This shows a huge change in magnitude that allows effective campaigns to be created by almost anyone.
Patrizio Spagnoletto speaks…

Upgrading Approach and Schedule:
– U.S. advertiser upgrades have begun
– Advertisers may chooser to upgrade post holidays
– Invitations will continue in stages to U.S. advertisers over the next several months

What to Expect
– Frequent Update
– Cheat sheet

Please look at the tutorials, customer solutions 1-866-YAHOO-98
It’s important to Yahoo! to make this house your home. We are successful when you are successful.

Question/Answer: Minimum bid for the US market is still $.10.

Question/Answer: Bulk submit is available.

International markets will occur sometime in 2007. John Slade said customer feedback was being sought on the best way to roll out.

How do you calculate relevance in a new ad? Dozens of factors drive us to a relevance to an ad, many of these come from Yahoo! search technologists. As data is available, this is factored in as well.

All in all, Yahoo! is demonstrating some positive attributes during this large conversion of platforms. These include a customer focus and taking the time to make a professional and transparent system migration that I believe will serve as a model in how to make a professional and non-disruptive migration. Stock analysts should look at the long term of what is occurring here.