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I have some very strong relationships with some companies in my niche that spend alot of money advertising on some of the same terms we do.
Collectively we have been complaining to Yahoo about the quality of traffic we have been receiving from their system and each time are told "sorry" there is nothing we can do to exclude you from showing up on "partners" website.
These "relationships" spend ALOT of money on advertising, to put it into perspective, I know one spent at least $1500 per day just on Yahoo advertising.
I implored my relationships to contact Yahoo again and to keep complaining about these "partners". What happened next is extremely troubling.
My "relationships" were removed from selected "partners" and were added to exclusive partner results such as MSN, Yahoo product Search etc. Since they started receiving less "junk" traffic they have money to spend on "good" traffic, thus they have been driving bid prices through the roof!
This makes it almost impossible to compete in this niche for at least 2 of the top positions that I know about, these companies are getting top ROI, while the rest of us are getting swollowed by the ballooning bid prices.
I called the yahoo "customer service" line and informed them about what was happening and that I was exteremly unhappy about this turn of events. After several hours of telling the same story to about 4 different people I was transfered to a "Double Diamond", "Executive" rep who informed me there was nothing they could do to prevent the display of ads on "partners" websites, however he would look in to the matter and call me within 24 hours.
Its now been 1 week, I have received no response from my wonderful sales reps over at Yahoo, and this same issue continues to persist.
All I can say, is beware. I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory on my part, but what better way to drive up the bid prices? You have your MAJOR players excluded from results that everyone else pays for, thus increasing their ROI and their willingness to spend more on their bid prices to maintain TOP placement.
Here is an example of how this has skewed the bidding system:
BEFORE EXCLUSION:
#1 SPOT: .45
#2 SPOT: .45
#3 SPOT: .44
#4 SPOT: .35
#5 SPOT: .34
#6 SPOT: .34
#7 SPOT: .33
#8 SPOT: .32
#9 SPOT: .32
#10 SPOT: .31
AFTER EXLUSION
#1 SPOT: .70
#2 SPOT: .69
#4 SPOT: .69
#5 SPOT: .56
#6 SPOT: .55
#7 SPOT: .51
#8 SPOT: .50
#9 SPOT: .42
#10 SPOT .35
Anyone wants current working proof of this, please send me a PM.
Good Luck,
J
Perhaps if you told me that Ebay or Home Depot demanded not to have their ads shown on various search partners I could believe that, but not anyone spending less than $1,000,000 a month. $1,500 a day on Yahoo I assure you will not get you any special favors :) Clients' of mine (in the past) spent 10 times that a day and I requested all the time to be removed from specific search partners but that never happened.
They are the top producers for this particular niche, so if you were looking to drive up prices for that niche, you would obviously work with your top producers.
You may have people who spend more on a daily basis, I do not doubt that, but I can assure you that this is what is happening, intentional or not.
J
And i think you will find that the proof speaks for itself in the results.
J
i am noticing this with an area that we just pulled from overture.
there was a very well known brand that was appearing on about 30% of the top 100 referrers to us from overture.
after speaking to the rep and telling him why we had closed the account, for some reason, they are showing on all of them today... work that one out. it's definately not a budget thing.
briggidere
Guess the positive here is that Yahoo is actually "trying" to weed out the garbage but has to wait until enough advertisers complain about a partner.
The other sad aspect is that you are paying Yahoo/Overture real bid rates for a BETA program! That to me is just utter nonsense and yet another reason I have abandoned Yahoo/Overture advertising.
