Yahoo announced yesterday that on Feb 5th they are rolling out a new advertising system that will among other things base the price of advertising on both bid price and quality/relevancy of the advertising. This follows Google's strategy to do the same thing. You can read the press release here.
As I wrote before upon Google's announcement this will force advertisers to use more talent in creating an ad, which even if they don't agree today is a good thing for them as well. The new technology will use the relevancy of an ad as well as its historical performance in arriving at a "quality rating".
The relevancy is really a key because with so much information on the Internet misleading ads causes people to waste a lot of time by clicking on ads they think is about one thing, but it turns out was simply a bait tactic. That creates a very poor prospect for the company and causes them to lose money. Therefore, choosing relevant key words to your product or service and writing good advertising will help create a better prospect.
The next grade is determined by effective advertising. Just like in normal direct advertising a compelling headline or opening statement that gets a prospect's attention is key. Using solid copywriting that builds your case to the customer is the next most important item. Finally, you want a compelling call to action. As with any direct marketing if they don't take action you have lost a lead. Using these principles in both the ad as well as the landing page will not only boost the conversions from the ad, but also the quality score that Yahoo is going to assign it.
Once you think you have developed a winning ad you are going to want to test it with an A/B split test at a minimum, but now there are tools on the Internet that will let you test multiple variables in your advertising at once. Test, Test, Test is an old rule in direct marketing and now it appears Internet marketing as well.
If you are running an online advertising campaign or considering one it might be very beneficial to hire a good copywriter and/or Internet marketing expert to help you get a quality ad campaign off the ground. With Yahoo's new search technology going into effect it will save you both marketing dollars, by helping to lower your cost of advertising, but also make each marketing dollar you do spend work harder by creating more conversions from the ads that are placed.
Michael Temple
