Have you heard the news? Yahoo! has decreased the minimum bid for keywords for French advertisers from 0.15 € to 0.10 €. This means 0.10 € is now the absolute maximum French advertisers have to pay for any keyword to participate in Yahoo!. We saw the first changes to French accounts on the 30th July 2009. For advertisers that are working against very low margins, this will certainly have a positive impact. Let us look at the historical changes to Yahoo’s minimum bid.
Before October 08 – Minimum bids were static
Yahoo! used static minimum bids that varied from 0.05€ to 0.15€ depending on the keyword. For those advertisers that were working against very low margins, it was difficult to justify paying 0.15 € per click given their business model.
October 2008 – Minimum bids are dynamic
Minimum bids were changed to update regularly based on factors such as CTR and relevance. This was a very positive move from Yahoo! as French advertisers were forced to be more targeted with their campaigns, which resulted in an improved user experience.
Initially advertisers and agencies expected to see the 0.15€ minimum bid decrease for a large number of keywords but in reality, lots of cheaper keywords actually saw their min bid increase to 0.15€. French advertisers were impacted by this change which resulted in eroded performance and budget cuts.
The example below shows anonymised data from one of our French clients that has a high ROI target and is working against a low margin. The table below compares the average CPC of the client’s top keywords on Google against the keywords minimum bid on Yahoo! after the October 2008 changes. This client clearly couldn’t afford to buy any of its top keywords on Yahoo! anymore. This resulted in a strong decrease in investment.
July 2009 – Minimum bids reduced further
At the end of last month, Yahoo! brought the highest min bid down to 0.10 € which will be hugely beneficial for those French advertisers like the example above that were impacted by the October 2008 changes. The July reduction will help more advertisers bid on all keywords, allowing some advertisers to get back in the game. If we look at the example above, our client is now able to bid on all of its top keywords. I expect this client and all those in similar situations to see an increase in performance on Yahoo! in the coming months.
Time will tell how much this change will help low margin advertisers increase their performance on Yahoo! I will publish part 2 of this post in a few weeks to discuss the real effect on our French client base.
Olivier Lemaire – FR Account Manager
Super l'article avec la comparaison Olivier
Christophe
www.adchieve.com
Posted by: Christophe | August 12, 2009 at 02:22 AM