WebProNews

Today is the day where Yahoo begins enforcing the 70-character limit for descriptions in search marketing ads placed by their advertising clients.

"I'm the guy who's telling you the way it is."
-- Chili Palmer in Get Shorty

Michael Mattis is the guy telling Yahoo's search marketers the way it is. It's time for text descriptions to get short in a big way.

Mattis reminded users of the Panama search ad system of the change on the Yahoo Search Marketing blog. If descriptions run longer than 70 characters, they will be truncated faster than you can say "click-through."

"The optional 190-character long descriptions may still be displayed on some of our distribution partners’ sites," Mattis said in his post.

Yahoo's change brings its search ads in line with Google's. Google has long enforced a short character limit on text ads appearing through its AdWords program.

In April 2007, Mattis wrote about the forthcoming change in description length. "We’re doing this (to quote myself) because 'we’ve found that ads written more concisely give users a better experience and perform better for advertisers'."