6 Questions about Ad Optimization Through Yahoo Search

April 13, 2009 by Pablo Palatnik

The YSM blog had a post regarding 6 Questions about Ad Optimization. In a simultaneous matter, you have to optimize your keywords as well as your ads. Yahoo explains some FAQ from users:

Q: How can my ads be rotated within a campaign?
A: The ad optimization feature, which is turned on by default, will automatically rotate your ads in a campaign evenly, and track their performance. Then whichever ad begins to outperform the others will be shown more frequently. If you turn off the ad optimization feature and have more than one ad in an ad group, the ads will be displayed equally.

Q: What is a good measure for keeping an ad or deleting it? For example, should I delete any ads running under 20 percent?
A: We don’t recommend using specific percentages as a factor in determining ad performance, because each keyword market is different. But you should use ad optimization and test different ads, which will enable our system to optimize to the better performing ad.

Q: Is there harm in keeping low-performing ads?
A: You probably would not want to keep low-performing ads if you have others that are performing better. Ads that perform poorly can drag down your quality index score. As you know, a higher quality index score can help raise the position of your ad and/or lower your cost-per-click.

Q: Do I need to remove ads that not working that well, or they will be deleted automatically?
A: Although ad optimization will automatically display the ad with the best performance, poorer performing ads are not deleted by our systems. This enables you to potentially refine them for further testing.

Q: Where can I turn optimization on and off within my account?
A: To turn ad optimization on or off:

* Click the “Campaigns” tab.
* Click the “Ad Groups” subtab beneath the Campaigns tab.
* Check the box(es) next to the ad group(s) you wish to optimize, and then click the “Optimize Ads” button above the list of ad groups.

Q: Is ad optimization based on performance statistics only, or does Yahoo! analyze the content of my ad copy and factor that in?
A: The click-through rate of your ads is the main metric used in determining which ads are displayed. Additionally, the relevance of the ad—how closely the ad copy matches to your keyword—is also factored in.

The post can be found here.