So it appears that the news has been broken today that Yahoo is upgrading their search advertising system to be a little bit more like…Google. In many senses this is likely a good move, given the difficulty and problems many search advertisers (like myself and the people I work with) have had dealing with the current Direct Traffic Center from its Overture and formerly GoTo days. That being said, I have to admit I will be a little sad to see the death of the last pure market approach to search advertising. With Google, so much of what your final cost will be is just a guess, given that they factor in click through rate, “quality index,” and how many times you have bowed down to the Google idol during the day (I call that the Google Idol Worship factor, or your GIW score).

The main issue in terms of improvements I’d like to see is whether or not they will improve their issues with click fraud. We have always found Yahoo much more likely to suffer from click fraud that an advertiser can’t opt out of. Google, for the most part, has quality search partners that are relatively limited, such as AOL. With Yahoo there is a lot of junk and third-tier search engines thrown in the mix that is nothing near the quality of the searchers directly on Yahoo. Its not competitor click fraud we worry about — its systemic, junky traffic that is thrown in and never does anything for us. Death by a thousand fake clicks.

For more on the details of this upgrade, here are two links, one from the New York Times and another from MSNBC.

At work we also received emails on the upgrade. Lets run through the new points they highlighted shall we?

Easy-to-Use Control Panel
A completely redesigned, easy-to-navigate control panel will help you see what’s working and what’s not–at the level of detail you choose–so you can take action and get even better results.

If this means a control panel that is actually quick to get around in and take action, then right on. Direct Traffic Center has always been a bit obscure to move around in.

Fast Ad Activation
Most new ads will go online within minutes, allowing you to connect with customers quickly, and easily make changes to your ads whenever you need to.

Big, big improvement. One of the greatest criticisms I’ve had of Yahoo has been how slow it is to launch ads and their review process. Its been seemingly random at times and a big hassle. Even for our account which is in the Platinum group we have had to sometimes wait a day or two to go live and have the ads reviewed. Always seemed silly when we could just jump into Google, put a thousand keywords into an ad group, make a good creative and get out there. If search engine marketing is a real time stock market for attention, it needs to be real time, so this is a good move on their part.

Ad Testing
Easily test multiple versions of an ad to find the message that works best for your customers and provides the greatest return on your advertising investment. You can then choose to shift impressions to the ad that performs best.

Just like Google but glad they are adding this. Search engine marketing is all about numbers and testing different landing pages, creative, and every mix in between so the more features advanced advertisers have to hone their craft the better the end result for the user.

Geo-Targeting
Display your ads broadly or narrow your geographic distribution to better target your customers, customize your ads and control your costs.

This is a big win and I don’t know why they hadn’t implemented it before. It seems a year ago we met with Yahoo to talk about this and the only geo-targeting they had available was for local advertisers with an exact address. Strange requirement given so many businesses may operate in a market but not have a physical address there. I’ve found great success with targeting at Google to only go after certain states and metros where we have strong demand from our network and I hope Yahoo can do it as well or better. It also opens up their potential revenue since many local advertisers would be willing to run ads that may not have seen the use in the past.

One nice touch would be if they had a breakdown of markets and where your ad is showing. As a national advertiser I would like to know if some local ads are trumping my ad in a certain market, or at least have the option to see that. Right now with Google its ultimately a short in the dark to how high my placement is in different markets.

Campaign Budgeting, Forecasting and Scheduling
Create, budget and schedule individual advertising campaigns for greater control over your advertising strategy and spending. Review forecasts of your potential clicks based on your bids and budget and see how many clicks you’re leaving to your competitors.

Visibility
Understand how well your ads are performing relative to your competitors with the new Quality Index displayed for each ad. You’ll also see the bid range necessary for premium placement at the top of the search results page.

Good idea, if it actually works. The New York Times article mentions Yahoo plans to differ from the Google “black box” approach and be more transparent about what you need to bid to get X number of clicks. Forecasting budgets with search marketing can be tricky at best given how many variables there are during the day in a rapidly changing market. Anything that helps to improve that will make it easier for advertisers to respond to their customer needs in an efficient manner.

It will be interesting to see what Yahoo has to offer and if they can lure back more advertisers to being a part of their network. Its a shame they aren’t offering some of the new features that are in the Microsoft AdCenter such as demographic segmentation, but I imagine it will be introduced in time. They will need to, especially given that the Yahoo ad network is being phased out of MSN.