The Clickable Search Engine Marketing Blog

Today, Yahoo has announced a major change to the way they price their Content network. Starting now, cost per click will be based on their “assessment of the performance of traffic coming from sources within our distribution network [i.e., the Content network].”  This will mean, as Yahoo’s announcement also explains, “deeper discounts on click charges for lower-performing traffic and potential premiums on click charges for higher-performing traffic.”

While Yahoo does not give any details about how they asses traffic “quality,” we believe that this announcement represents a shift from pricing based on click-through rates to pricing based on conversion rates. This change will offer fairer pricing to advertisers, who don't want to pay the same for low-quality clicks (less likely to convert) as they do for high-quality clicks (more likely to convert), as well as offering fairer payouts to publishers, whose compensation will now be better aligned with the results they deliver to advertisers.

As a result of this change, some of your clicks will get more expensive, and others will get less expensive—whether total costs increase or a decrease will vary from advertiser to advertiser. And while the new "get what you pay for" model will lead to more consistently-performing Yahoo campaigns, it won’t necessarily lead to better-performing campaigns. 

Whether your individual situation worsens, improves, or stays the same, you now have the tools to analyze and modify your account to get the most out of Yahoo Content network campaigns. In tandem with the pricing changes, Yahoo will make available a new "Ad Delivery Report", which will list the actual publisher sites on which your ads appeared.  You will be able to see for yourself which sites on the Yahoo Content network are generating traffic and leading to conversions. Taken together, these updates will offer advertisers who run ads on Yahoo Content network more consistency in the quality of traffic they get and more transparency into where that traffic is coming from.  Based on data from this report, you can use Yahoo's pre-existing Blocked Domains tool to block domains that are giving you poor results on the Content network. 

So, how will this impact your Yahoo campaigns, and what should you do about it?

1.  Monitor your costs in the coming weeks to look for changes.

• If you find that your costs have decreased significantly, you can think about increasing your bids in order to get more traffic at the same cost. 
• If you costs have increased (or even if they haven't), proceed to step 2.

2.  Examine your new Ad Delivery Report to identify any sites that are costing you money, but where your ads are not performing well, and block those domains.


Ehren Reilly, Clickable SEM Guru

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