Those duplicitous yahoos at Yahoo

showing the wrong ads to increase their revenues

[beren]

There are two phrases: ExpensiveKeyword and CheapKeyword. ExpensiveKeyword might be considered a subset of CheapKeyword, but fewer than 0.2% of searchers for CheapKeyword are interested in ExpensiveKeyword. The two phrases have separate sets of bidders with different business models. The top CPC differs by a factor of 30.

If you do a search on Overture.com for CheapKeyword, you get a set of results, the advertisers who have signed up for CheapKeyword. A search on AltaVista.com brings up the same results.

But a search on Yahoo.com for CheapKeyword brings up the results for ExpensiveKeyword. Yahoo isn’t taking Overture results straight; they are displaying different ads in an apparent attempt to increase their revenue.

We advertise on ExpensiveKeyword and notice this discrepancy. We complain to Overture because Yahoo’s policy flies in the face of “targeted” advertising. A few days later, a search for CheapKeyword on Yahoo continues to bring up Overture’s ExpensiveKeyword ads, except ours no longer shows up.

I am tempted to anonymously email the other advertisers for ExpensiveKeyword and let them know what Yahoo is doing. Even though they are our competitors, I would rather them save money than allow Yahoo to get away with this.

Moral: don’t trust Overture when they say that their affiliates display ads in response to search terms that you bid on. In this case (and I suspect there are others), the affiliate showed irrelevant ads for a more expensive keyword.

[werty]

Could you use the "cheap keyword" as a negative keyword on that "expensive keyword"?