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Yahoo has decided to drop some knowledge on Yahoo Search Marketing advertisers about a tool it has that it says will speed up their campaign optimization. If you are not familiar with it, it's called the Bulksheet.

Yahoo describes the tool as simply a spreadsheet with specialized fields that allow you to modify campaign, ad group, keyword, and ad information. Yahoo says it makes tasks faster and simpler than they would be in the Sponsored Search user interface. The reason for this is that you can make changes and upload them at once.

"Say, for example, you want to add a destination url for all your keywords," explains Yahoo Senior Manager, Advertiser Experience, Malin Kennedy. "The bulksheet lets you make the change just once, and then apply it to all instances within your campaign. Similarly, if you’re running a "free shipping" promotion for just a weekend, you can use the bulksheet to add this component to your creatives all at once.

The Bulksheet also lets advertisers translate campaigns from other engines to Yahoo Sponsored Search. Yahoo provides the following checklist to avoid errors while using the Bulksheet:
  
1. Remember to make sure that everything has an associated bid.

2. Uploaded files have to be in the correct format. (save as ‘unicode text’ and a .csv extension)

3. Don’t duplicate ad group names.

4. Use unique campaign names.

5. Adhere to the 35-character limit for display URLs.

The Bulksheet can be downloaded from the "import" link under the campaign tab in the Yahoo Sponsored Search interface. Yahoo says to pay attention to the Update Header Row, ignore the IDs, don't worry about the display status, and select a valid campaign start date.