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Watch Out for Yahoo’s Content NetworkPosted by Amber on October 29, 2008 in Content Network, Yahoo! Search Marketing |
We’ve mentioned before that you can’t have the “set it and forget it” attitude when it comes to managing PPC accounts. While reviewing my Yahoo! account a few weeks ago, I noticed that we had generated a ton of extra clicks and spend with zero conversions via the content network, which was completely out of the norm. At the time, I went ahead and paused the content network in that one particular ad group. However, the next day I saw the same thing in two more ad groups in the same account.
I remembered that recently Yahoo! announced an improvement to their content network. “Content match now combines a better understanding of web page and ad content with insights from users’ geographic and behavioral profiles, says Yahoo!” Despite their so called “improvement”, I emailed my Yahoo representative immediately to ask what was going on with my account. Just yesterday, I got an email from him stating that the ‘click activity investigation’ was complete and they would be refunding my account $1300.00 for ‘invalid clicks’.
This just goes to show you MUST keep an eye on your accounts at all times for crazy things like this. And it never hurts to ask your reps what’s going on if you see something abnormal. My recommendation, if you’re running PPC in Yahoo, check your content network stats for the past few weeks, if you see an increase in clicks and spend with no conversions I would ask Yahoo to investigate your account as well.
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October 29th, 2008 at 8:52 am
[...] Amber at PPC Hero: My recommendation, if you’re running PPC in Yahoo, check your content network stats for the past [...]
October 29th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Couldn’t agree more, the whole thing sounded sketchy from the beginning. Glad to see you got a refund though!
October 29th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Putting auto pilot with PPC is such a bad idea. You need to be monitoring your account and what is going on it everyday. If don’t you could burn through cash so quickly.
October 30th, 2008 at 6:02 am
Elizabeth and Nick, thanks for reading! I couldn’t agree with you more.
October 30th, 2008 at 6:03 am
Particularly when you are dealing with Yahoo!
Their search network used to have some of the worst quality in the market – I dread to think what would happen if you left the content network on ‘auto pilot’!
Silv
October 31st, 2008 at 5:10 am
I worked for YSM for two years…and the first thing I did, now that I am on the client side was to switch off the Content match on all the Y! accounts I manage.
October 31st, 2008 at 6:46 am
Hi Merrill, can you explain any further what you learned about Yahoo’s! content network from your experience working there?