Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Yahoo! Web Analytics vs. Yahoo! Search/Campaign Analytics

I'm starting to think that there might be some confusion out there about the new Yahoo! Web Analytics (formerly IndexTools) and Yahoo's Search/Campaign Analytics. So let's clear things up!

Yahoo! Web Analytics (http://www.web.analytics.yahoo.com/)

Y!WA is the re-branded version of IndexTools that was announced about two weeks ago. While Y!WA is not available to everybody just yet (expect a full launch in 2009), it is currently being made available to:

- Yahoo! Small Business owners, also known as Yahoo! Stores http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/

- Y!OS - Yahoo! Open Strategy
http://developer.yahoo.com/yos/intro/

- Yahoo! Micro-sites (partners sites that Yahoo! builds).
Example: http://promotions.yahoo.com/honda


Y!WA is an enterprise level solution that provides both web site measurement and campaign/keyword measurement capabilities.


Yahoo! Search/Campaign Analytics

Yahoo! Search/Campaign Analytics is available to all advertisers with a Yahoo Search Marketing account and provides campaign tracking metrics only (does not provide web site metrics). It is accessible in the advertiser's search marketing account.

There are two free analytics tools available:

Conversion Only (accessible to all Yahoo! Search Marketing clients) - Provides ability to track your Yahoo! paid search campaigns, ad groups, and keywords down to the conversion. It also provides Yahoo's campaign Assist report. It also provides campaign Cost data, Revenue data (if passed through the tracking tag), and ROI data (if revenue data is received).

Full Analytics - Provides ability to track any range of campaigns including: Yahoo! paid search, display (banner ads), email campaigns, other search campaigns (such as Google, MSN, etc), Yahoo! Shopping ads, Yahoo! Search Submit Pro (paid inclusion) ads, etc. It provides more detailed reporting about the visitors who have clicked on your online campaigns. Some of the reports include:

Leads
Browsers
Prospects
Conversions
Assists
Referrers
Cost
Revenue
ROI
....etc.


If you're looking for a full enterprise analytics solution, please visit: http://www.web.analytics.yahoo.com/

But if you're just looking for campaign tracking analytics, please visit either the 'Conversion Only' or 'Full Analytics' product within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Tracking Display Ads Is Easy With Yahoo's Full Analytics

Lately I've been seeing a lot of stories being written about the growing gap between search and display spend. During these hard economic times, it appears that more advertisers are starting to move their online advertising budgets towards search instead of display because:

1. Advertisers prefer search advertising over display advertising because of the simplicity of tracking search.

2. Advertisers feel that search advertising performs better than display advertising.

I'm here to say that nothing could be farther from the truth! Tracking display ads is actually pretty easy. And if you feel that search ads perform better, then you may be risking a 22% lift in conversions by not running display advertising with your search advertising.

Let's tackle these myths one by one.

Question 1

Sure, tracking search is pretty easy when using Yahoo Analytics or Google Analytics. All you have to do is add the vendor's tracking scripts to your web site's pages. But tracking display ads is pretty easy too! It only takes two steps using Yahoo's Full Analytics:

1. Add Yahoo's Full Analytics tags to your landing page and your confirmation/thank-you page (which you may have done already to track your Yahoo Sponsored search!)

2. Add 3 special tracking parameters to the end of the display ad's destination URL

Let's say I've already added the Full Analytics tags to my landing page and my confirmation/thank-you page. All I have to do now is add the tracking parameters to my display destination URL which is: http://www.mattlillig.blogspot.com/

The 3 Yahoo! parameters that I need to add to the end of my destination URL are:

- Campaign Name: ysmcpn=Unique+Campaign+Name+Here
- Channel Name: ysmchn=YAH (for Yahoo)
- Tactic Name: ysmtac=AD (for advertisement)

My final appended display destination URL will look like this:
http://www.mattlillig.blogspot.com/?ysmcpn=Matts+Banner+Ad&ysmchn=YAH&ysmtac=AD
(click on this link and you'll see that these parameters are appended in the landing page URL)

Now how hard was that????

Question 2

Display advertising may not perform as well as search advertising on its own, but run it along with your search advertising and....BAM...INSTANT CONVERSION LIFT!!!!! Did you know that visitors who were exposed to a combination of search and display ads converted 22% more than visitors who were exposed to only search ads?

As an advertiser, are you really willing to risk a 22% dip in sales or leads because you thought that display advertising didn't perform as well as search? Well it does...if you run it along side search!

If I was running only search advertising during these tough economic times and was looking for a great way to drive up conversions, traffic, and brand awareness....I would definitely look into running and measuring some display campaigns. If I was already running BOTH search and display advertising right now during these tough economic times....I would NOT be pulling my display ad budget knowing the information above.

Of course, I would also be using Yahoo's Full Analytics to track this info too! :)

Check out the various studies on the benefits of search + display advertising here:
http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2008/08/hi-im-search-hi-im-display.html