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I'm trying to set up a large (to me) monthly spend with Yahoo. It all started well enough, phoned them up and spoke to a guy that seemed to know what he was talking about, on top of that he delivered on all of his promises and kept to timescales.
When all of the information was in front of us it was decided to wait a month before commencing due to changes that were happening on our site.
Got back in touch with the helpful guy to be told he had been promoted and he would have to pass the account on to a different 'Platinum' team member. This is where the problems start.
3 days of a wait for a call; nothing, so I called up. We'll get him to call you ASAP. O.K. I thought I'll give him a couple of days. Surprisingly there was still no call (bearing in mind I'm trying to spend a 5 figure GBP sum with them). I called back to be told the guy was now out of the country and I would get a call back in a few days.
On the afternoon (late) of the guy coming back I phoned and spoke to him (for the first time), he said he would get back to me that day or the next. That was 3 days ago. I've still had no reply. I even phoned around lunchtime today and was told he was on lunch and would call back ASAP, unsurprisingly there has still been no call (now 2:40PM - 2 hours after he was due back).
I'm now considering not bothering, if the service is that bad BEFORE you pay for anything what will it be like AFTER?
I hope YSM read this. It looks as though I had struck lucky with the guy I had initially talked to but now have a poor replacement as my contact. I'd do it manually if it wasn't for the fact we need to do a spreadsheet upload.
Rant over...
Anyone else want to get anything off their chest (I feel a lot better for it)
Thus, it's pretty well understood that most YSM advertisers have seeen a significant drop in conversion rate in the past few weeks.
My response has been to decrease my YSM ad spend and increase Google and MSN. I have a feeling many other SEM will be doing the same.
Many other advetisers have already done the same, prices on most competitive keywords on Yahoo are way down.
I'm aware of the negative press that YSM has had. We are looking at 10 to 12p bids so we're hoping to avoid the junk traffic that goes with 'major' keywords.
We've had really good results with AdWords and can absorb even 50% fraudulent/poor clicks as long as the others perform as well as G. I suppose the next few weeks will show how well YSM works. I'll report back.
Then you are going to love Yahoo they will deliver you at-least 50% fraudulent clicks and sometime more
You are a prefect customer for Yahoo, agreeing for 50% fraudulent clicks before you even start. The only way to go with Yahoo
Yahoo has been adding junk ad vendors to their lists and you cannot exclude them. Even if you identify them, your CS rep will not exclude them for your account.
Yes. They are getting worse and worse. Under tremendous pressure to grow revenues, I'm sure, but they take all sorts of low quality affiliates.
This is by far the worst thing about YSM, and that's saying something.
Here's my latest communication with YSM after getting the usual "we have systems in place" BS:
<Sorry, no email quotes.
See Terms of Service [webmasterworld.com] #9>
You can probably tell I re-wrote this several times to tone down the language...
[edited by: tedster at 2:16 pm (utc) on Mar. 28, 2006]
WHAT?!?!
I mentioned he should look at a similar campaign, to which he replied,"I couldn't divulge that information". No kidding? You mean you can't drop the ball on my competitors and give away any secrets? Nooooo.
How about looking at their campaign in order to see what your missing and make some suggestions? Me and my 2 million dollar budget are still waiting Yahoo!
His answer,"I'll get back to you".
How about refunding me the $199 I paid for your "expert opinion" that was a big flop?
I also turned in over $1000 worth of verified click frauds and they gave me a $33.52 credit after about 14 days or so. They seem to think if they bury your claim you'll forget about it.
I call it click fraud but really its non-US traffic, when I have a non-US filter activated.
So here I am, a total of 3 weeks since my first contact, and still no word.
Never knew Yahoo was so cash rich.
Of couse I got a woman to do me a "favor" (thanks!) and do the first one, but since the editors didn't think my terms like,"auto loans", "bad credit auto loans" and "Auto Loan application" had nothing to do with my site <snip> , an application landing page, plus 493 of 800 associated KW's I spent half a day with #*$! and excel working on, I guess it doesn't matter.
If I could use the $199 advice they gave or they could come up with ANY suggestions, I might be upset, but most of the keywords they approved (blue cross blue shield, aetna, car insurance and loan calculators), my conversions are pathetic.
Guess I need to start selling BCBS, aetna and add a loan calculator so my site with conform with their editors precise evaluation procedures.
[edited by: werty at 3:03 am (utc) on May 3, 2006]
[edit reason] Removed URL - please see TOS #13 [/edit]
It's taken me several weeks to try to get a call back after initially dealing with affiliates and lower level sales reps... I don't want commissions for some silly signup fee, what I'm really looking for is a better system to use than the ancient Overture tools. And an Agency-level login would be nice too.
Marketing on behalf of many clients we don't really have the option to just skip Yahoo altogether. But I do need to be frustrated a lot less with their Reps and their tools if we're going to keep spending money and recommending that our clients do.
If I can't get them to understand what I'm looking for from them as a business/agency, I'm guessing they won't be much help with my accounts either.
