I tried Yahoo pay-per-click a few years ago, but gave up due to low traffic, high minimum bid prices and a horrible user interface. I am glad I did. Apparently Yahoo Search Marketing have given themselves permission to:
- create ads
- add and/or remove keywords
- optimize your account(s)
for US advertisers, without asking their permission first. One can only wonder what ‘optimize’ means – double your bid price? You can revert their changes, but you are still liable for any costs their changes incur. Isn’t this a bit like the phone company deciding you aren’t making enough calls and phoning people on your behalf? There doesn’t even appear to be an opt-out. Yahoo must be getting pretty desperate. Let’s hope they are better at picking new keywords than Microsoft Advertising.
More details here:
- Yahoo To Advertisers: We Can Create Ads & Edit Keywords Without Asking First
- Yahoo Gives Itself Permission to Change Your Search Marketing Campaigns
If you have a Yahoo PPC campaign you might want to think about cancelling it. Or at least keep a very close eye on it. If you have actually experienced Yahoo making changes to your campaigns please post details in the comments.
(via Adriana Iordan of Avanagate)
Successful Software 
Sounds like people need to keep a very close eye on PPC.
A short time ago, didn’t Patrick warn that Adwords had decided to add people’s bids to mobile PPC automatically?
I think Google were already running your ads on mobile – they just gave you the opportunity to switch off or set separate bids for mobile users.
I remember Overture (which I don’t know if it’s used by Yahoo anymore since I stopped using it entirely) changing the text of my Ads all the time on me. And most of the time it was detrimental. It’s only with a lot of trial and error can you really know what works and what doesn’t work for your niche.
Which is why I quit Overture and use Google exclusively now. Is it a wonder why they’re having issues. Might as well continue what they’re doing, because if it didn’t work the first time it might work the next time ;)
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