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June 30, 2006

Yahoo PPC and Microsoft Search Deal Comes to an End Today

As previously reported, the agreement where Yahoo Sponsored Listings were being shown alongside search results in MSN will be coming to an end today. The end of this agreement was announced when MSN began running its MSN adCenter beta campaign earlier this year. MSN gradually reduced the percentage of sponsored ads being shown by Yahoo on its search listings and this transition to its own sponsored ads will be complete today. This change only affects US advertisers as non-US markets will still have Yahoo ads shown alongside the MSN results until adCenter is rolled out worldwide. The official announcement from Yahoo can be seen here.

This change should not cause much change for Yahoo Search Marketing clients as the transition has been gradual. Many accounts have noticed a decrease in their impressions as a result of not being shown alongside MSN search results. For advertisers looking to purchase sponsored listings in Microsoft's new adCenter advertising platform can visit here or give MasterLink a call!

-Mark Barrera

June 12, 2006

Adwords PPC Advertisers Have Another Required Task

If you are a current Google Adwords advertiser or are thinking about joining the Adwords program, take notice of recent changes by Google.

Recently Google displayed a notice in all Adwords accounts notifying advertisers of a change in the terms of service and a change in the way an ad's quality score is determined.

In the new Adwords terms of service it states that the price an advertiser now pays is partially determined by the relevance of the landing page. Google will now be sending spiders to crawl the landing pages and check for the presence of keyword material that is relevant to the term that the searcher intially used.

What does this mean?

This means that you can most likely no longer simply pick a page in your site to send traffic to any more. The better targeted your landing page is, the less you will pay for each click. This can mean big savings for large ppc campaigns. Web site owners must now put up the initial investment needed for the creation of optimized landing pages in order to achieve long term savings.

I am pleased that Google has implemented this requirement as it rewards the advertisers who already knew the importance of post click marketing and the value of a properly optimized landing page. If you need help creating landing pages, choose a web design and internet marketing firm that is able to understand all aspects of proper on page optimization as well as in depth knowledge of the PPC advertising programs.

-Mark Barrera
PPC Management and Consulting