Yahoo Loses the Plot with Quality Score & Panama

So with this new Panama implemention, Yahoo has started to become even more sticky about affiliate advertisers.  Unlike Google, they’re becoming tighter and I believe this is going to have a material impact on the way Panama’s numbers play out (i.e. substantially lower earnings than predicted).  Affiliate advertisers with Google are a large chunk of Google’s PPC spend in terms of market impact (not just the money that they spend, but also the impact that the added competition has on other advertisers).

What Yahoo doesn’t understand (and probably won’t anytime soon):

By allowing merchants to create their own affiliate policies, they will get more ads into their marketplace and all they have to do, is dedupe the ads, as Google & MSN does to ensure that their users receive the MOST RELEVANT ad, not the only ad that a merchant has uploaded.  GOOGLE DOES THIS!!! This is not technically difficult at all, and let me ask the question again: “Why does Yahoo insist on creating policies instead of letting their merchants decide for themselves – this is not customer centric at all!”

Affiliate Marketers are very often more savvy than the merchants they represent and will go after a larger and more diverse universe of keywords.  What is the point of trying to police merchant advertising policies if it does not contribute to having more relevant listings for YAHOO USERS!!!

If the (baseless) argument is that affiliate ad copy is poor, then do what Google does and disable the keywords for low CTR’s.

I see no reason whatsoever, to prevent affiliates from launching campaigns on behalf of their merchants (assuming they concur), as ultimately, we believe that the best model for managing paid search is NOT the typical agency % of spend, but instead on a mutually agreed upon success based relationship (ultimately, profit share).  We even wrote a special report on it last year - run this through any mathematician, and I’ll bet that they concur!

If Yahoo is trying to catch up with Google using these terms, they have a long way to go!  We spend a lot of money with Yahoo (we WERE budgeting over 7 figures this year, and we’re not the only affiliate out there) – and technically, all that is going to go out of the window.  If these terms get enforced rigidly, then we’re going to see Yahoo’s quality of listings drop (less ads per keyword per merchants, means less chances to get good performing ads), as well as less competition and spend from affiliates (which lowers prices).  This simply will translate into less revenue and way you slice and dice it.

Can anyone explain this logic to me, because it simply does not make sense?!

Ultimately, isn’t the end user (the searcher) best served by having the largest possible number of ads competing for his click, in order to find the best ones (which would be originated via the quality score).  What’s worse is that they allow 1 “Co-Brand” (Cough *Bullsh*t) site – which surely will just be abused. I am baffled.

At least Google gets it…

Here is the email we just received:

February 22nd, 2007

Dear Mr. Lingham,

Thank you for contacting Yahoo! Search Marketing regarding your UK account X.

The decline reason Site Ownership basically means in order for Yahoo! Search Marketing to provide a breadth of results for users, affiliates must take users to their own unique site and terms that relate only to the content on that site will be approved, as in our “Content” guideline.

Affiliate sites that link directly to their grantor’s site, either directly or through a frame, will not be granted terms relating to their grantor’s content, unless substantial information has been presented for that term prior to the link. This applies to shopping carts, secure servers, third-party databases or fulfilment engines.

Co-branded sites may bid on a search term only once, as in our “Duplicate” guideline.

Affiliates must also state that they are affiliates in their title or description. This can be achieved simply by adding “Affiliate” at the end.

To ensure that you will receive all necessary information regarding your account, we need accurate contact information for every advertiser. Please take a moment now to check your account contact information at https://secure.overture.com/login.do?mkt=uk&locale=en_GB and update it as necessary. You can edit your information in the ?Edit Profile? section of the Account tab.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can be of any further assistance.

Yours sincerely,

Customer Solutions

Yahoo! Search Marketing

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