WebProNews

Google's not the only one passing out some tips to get businesses ready for the holidays. They recently offered some tips for utilizing Google Analytics, Google Checkout, and of course, the ever-popular, Google AdWords. Had their deal with Yahoo gone through, you may have been able to incorporate some of these tips with Yahoo's advertising platform, but it seems that it was not meant to be.

Moving on, Yahoo would still like for you to use their ad service, and to prove this point, they're offering some useful holiday tips of their own. Communications Manager Kastle Waserman discussed ad testing with Yahoo Sponsored Search on the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog today. Waserman specifically talked about A/B Testing and using your Yahoo account to measure results (control the display by adjusting the Optimize Ad Display setting as shown below).

Ad testing leads to better performance, not to mention saved time, and money. It can also be a good way to see what kind of promotions work better or worse for your own products. It will also help you tweak your landing pages and figure out any geo-targeting that you wish to implement.

When it comes to using your Yahoo account for testing, Yahoo offers this overview of how to do so:

1. An ad is comprised of a title, description, display URL and destination URL.
2. For each ad group, you can create up to 20 unique ads (ads must adhere to our Editorial Guidelines).
3. Your ads will be rotated for the keywords within each ad group.
4. You can enable ad optimization, which will favor ads that receive the highest-click through rate.
5. We encourage you to leverage our insert keyword feature, which will dynamically insert the bidded keyword into the title and/or description.

Tips Wasserman offered include:

- Set a performance goal.

- Remember the “watched pot” theory—give your ads enough time to go to work.

- The holidays are a perfect time to test your ads.

- Spot check: The ad that receives the most impressions will appear in the Most Displayed Ad box.

- Use what you learn. If you find certain offers really attract customers, start applying that strategy to the rest of your ads.

Yahoo offers additional tips on the Ad Testing Overview page:

- Develop a strategy
- Plan out your schedule for ad testing
- Create ads with unique messages
- Choose keywords for each ad group carefully
- Test and refine you ads regularly

Yahoo's deal with Google may have fallen through, but the company is showing that it can still hold its own in the search engine advertising department. Google may have the search market dominated by a large margin, but last I checked, Yahoo was still number two. There's no question that there is still a wide audience who turn to Yahoo first. Yahoo News was the number one site on election night. That's not exactly the same as Yahoo Search on a day-to-day basis, but it proves that Yahoo is still a force as a brand.

When it comes to search engine advertising, Yahoo recently enhanced its geo-targeting capabilities, which puts it in the same ballpark of targeting as AdWords, and targeting breeds relevancy. And though it doesn't get as much coverage as Google's, Yahoo also has its own analytics platform. I discussed some advice that Matt Lillig of the Yahoo Analytics Team shared here (he even stopped by WebProNews to add some further commentary).

The point is that Google isn't your only choice for search engine advertising, and with the holidays approaching, the more options you have at your disposal the better. Of course there are others too, like Microsoft and Ask's platforms, but Yahoo is number two, and Google was willing to do business through theirs (until legal issues became too much of a hassle) so that could even be considered something of an endorsement from number 1. Don't let the Justice Department's dismantling of the Google-Yahoo deal dissuade you from using another perfectly viable advertising option. Your site needs traffic. Why should it all be from one search engine?