Google and Bing have long had Product Ads for their search engines, so it makes sense that Yahoo would follow suit. Fortunately for us, the announcement comes just before the holiday season, and can appear in both Yahoo search results (through Gemini) as well as Polyvore, a social commerce site. In other words, they can launch in several different places.
Just as with the other product ads that you use, ads are built from your (the merchant) product feeds and you can use Yahoo data for targeting and insights across the ad systems. Among the first to try out the ads were Kohl’s, Wayfair, and Overstock. They display on mobile, table, and desktop and will soon be available as native ads.
The moral of the story: The sooner you can get started the better.
How Yahoo Products Ads Will Work
Yahoo Product Ads are all about showing off your products to not only a targeted audience, but a new audience. You want to make sure you’re consistently reaching new customers to grow your business, and this is a big area where product ads can help. According to the official Yahoo announcement, there are three major ways that Yahoo Product Ads will work for you:
- Superior targeting. Yahoo offers product ad data and insights that can help you target your ads in order to reach new customers and increase awareness with them early in the sales funnel. It’s also a great way to drive sales from your recent visitors.
- Expansive reach. We all know that around the holidays people are shopping around for the best deal. According to Yahoo, 53 percent of customers spend more time online looking for the best deal when online. Yahoo Product Ads allow you to reach customers while they’re researching on Yahoo and then drive them to your website.
- Engaging ads. You can create image rich, dynamic search and display ads in order to pop out and catch a users attention. Creativity is key!
According to the announcement, one retailer with product ads on Yahoo Search since July saw a 14-to-1 return on ad spend, and it makes sense — the more relevant your viewers the more likely you are to see conversions.
Yahoo also added, “Early advertisers using product ads have seen up to 20 percent higher conversions rates and more than 30 percent lower cost per acquisition, enabling them to scale campaign impact without scaling budgets.”
Small Business Deals
In order to get started with Yahoo Product Ads, talk with a Yahoo account representative and they will get you started on the right path.
In the end, if you’re going to try and up your PPC advertising game then the holidays are the right time. This is when you’re going to have your audience most active (most likely), so it’s the perfect opportunity to start gathering your own data so you can continue to improve year after year. After all, Product Ads aren’t going anywhere.
Are you planning to use Yahoo Product Ads this holiday season?
Republished by permission. Original here.
Image: Yahoo
I really would have liked to see them launch a couple months back so the system was battle-tested before the Black Friday/Cyber Monday onslaught, but we’ll see how it goes. My guess is they’ll have some growing pains, but it’s definitely a good offering and will really help ecommerce advertisers.
I can see what you mean. Now that retailers are massively promoting their products, we really need a system that is somehow tested before the holiday rush.