Making the Most of the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance

If you’re an online advertiser and are wondering how you can best respond to the search pact between Yahoo and Microsoft, Clickable has some suggestions for you in its report titled, “Navigating The Yahoo! And Microsoft Search Alliance.”

The company notes that Yahoo and Microsoft’s search alliance will go into effect for paid advertising as soon as Nov. 1, and that “it represents an enormous opportunity for online marketers.”

Citing comScore data from June, Clickable shows that before the search alliance, Google Sites owned 63.7 percent of the market, Yahoo Sites owned 18.3 percent, Microsoft owned 12.1 percent and Other Sites owned 5.9 percent. After the search alliance, Yahoo and Microsoft’s combined market share will be 30.4 percent.

Traffic, however, doesn’t tell the whole story, according to Clickable. “The average age of a Google user is not the same as that of users on other search networks. The percentage of male and female users is different on Yahoo! And Bing. Each network has a unique breakdown of urban and suburban users. And so on. These differences have a direct impact on paid search performance. As a result, conversion rates can vary considerably across networks, depending on the advertiser’s specific industry and business. Marketers who choose not to advertise on Yahoo! and Bing may be sacrificing extremely valuable traffic.”

The report goes on to note that while marketers didn’t like the hassle of setting up multiple tools to advertise online, the Yahoo and Microsoft search partnership will represent a segment of more than 5 billion queries a month, which would be difficult for any marketer to turn their backs on.

While the alliance isn’t a merger, and though the search engines will remain separate, Microsoft’s algorithms will power organic and paid search results for both engines. “Most importantly for advertisers, search and content ads on Yahoo! and Bing will all be managed using adCenter.”

The report recommends that advertisers take action immediately by creating new accounts on Microsoft Advertising adCenter and place them on pause until adCenter starts serving ads on Yahoo and Bing.

Advertisers are also encouraged to transfer existing Google AdWords campaigns to adCenter via AdWords Editor, which takes eight steps.

Concerning budget allocations, Clickable has suggested that advertisers who spend less than $100,000 per month on search advertising place 70 percent of their budget with Google AdWords, 20 percent to Yahoo Search Marketing and 10 percent to Microsoft Advertising adCenter. It’s still suggesting a similar breakdown of 70 percent with AdWords and 30 percent with adCenter.

For those with budgets of more than $100,000 per month, Clickable recommends 80 percent with AdWords and 20 percent with adCenter, since there isn’t enough inventory on Yahoo and Bing to justify $30,000 or more on monthly spending.

“We also suggest that advertisers set keyword bids on Microsoft Advertising adCenter to somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of their corresponding Google AdWords bids,” according to the report.

Source:

http://storage.pardot.com/2912/16883/Clickable_Search_Alliance_White_Paper.pdf

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