Yahoo! Launches New Search Marketing Platform. Special Emphasis on Small Businesses in India

Yahoo! India has just announced it’s new search marketing platform, which has a few augmentations with respect to search marketing when compared to Google. They also have a few innovations on the front end, which will no doubt help advertisers track their advertising better and also deliver better, more relevant messages. With certain feature additions, the Yahoo! Search marketing product is playing catch up with Google, with others it seems to be setting the standard. On the whole, I think their India strategy is impressive mostly because they seek to capitalize on the long tail. The big advertisers will come to Yahoo! anyway due to their syndicated network in display advertising and also due to the number of people using Yahoo! Search. The future of the business though largely depends upon SME’s and the mom and pop shop kinds. Yahoo! is looking to get those kind of people in the loop by allowing more experimentation features, more assistance, more transparency etc.

With respect to the platform, Yahoo!’s aim is to make it simpler. I just checked it out and the creation of a self-serve account seems pretty straightforward to me. A step up from Google’s platform, only marginally though. The Geo Targeting Options are not too great – I can only choose ‘entire market’ for India (for now). For smaller advertisers who may freak out when they hear the word ‘technology, Yahoo has an assisted set up for a certain cost (Rs. 500, one time). They also have a special unit looking after small businesses in India (headed by Sandeep Deshpande). I spoke to Prashant Mehta who is the VP & Head of the Advertiser and Partner Group for Emerging Markets at Yahoo! and he also spoke about Yahoo! helping small businesses ‘find themselves’. This would include things like brand positioning, defining the USP and finding the core for small businesses. I’m not sure about the depth of quality of this service but I think some of these things will definitely help advertisers in the small business sector to frame their ads in a better way and make them more contextual so that the consumer wins, the advertiser wins, and in the process – Yahoo! too, wins.

For those of you who have heard of Yahoo!’s codename ‘Panama’ Project – this is the India version. The platform remains the same; the servicing models are slightly different; but only just. Yahoo! seems to be stressing on its new ad ranking model. Moving away from only bidding to (bidding + relevance). Something that helps the user experience. While this is commendable, it is a trick pulled straight out of Google’s hat. But better late than never.

The search marketing tool also has what they like to call enhanced conversion tracking. The campaign management application will not only track campaigns that convert immediately, but also those that contribute over time through deferred transactions. In addition, the new application will be able to record “assists” – instances when a keyword contributes indirectly to a conversion – allowing marketers to see the full impact of their keyword mix on the success of their campaigns. That will probably be done through things like cookies in the consumer’s computer. This will give lead related insights, im just not sure about the value of this information with respect to branding. It does tell the advertiser something about consumer behaviour though. The other thing that the platform has is ad testing. Advertisers can test multiple versions of their ad to figure out what copy works best. Not sure if Google already has this – do they, anyone? Another feature that I found interesting was the one that estimates the maximum bid a person should make for a particular keyword keeping in mind his/ her advertising goals. I think Google has this too – they give cost estimates. Yahoo does more of the math for you.

Yahoo was always advertising on content sites but now they seem to be even more bullish about advertising on content sites. They may not be able to do anything in that market though because their strategy is one where they individually tie up with websites and blogs etc. as opposed to Google which has an entire syndicate – another platform that lets publishers sign up – AdSense. So while Yahoo Search Marketing is better than Google Adwords (in terms of the interface and ease of sign up and analytics atleast), it still lacks an ‘AdSense’ in its stable.

Yahoo has recently tweaked its search engine technology, they have also introduced Glue Pages. Apart from that, Yahoo’s share of search spending by selected advertisers rose to 23% up from historic levels of 18 – 19%.