Feature Comparison

Yahoo! Search Marketing: Match Types

Advanced and standard

Microsoft adCenter offers three search match type options: exact, broad, and phrase. While Yahoo! currently only offers standard and advanced match options, the three match type options in Microsoft adCenter align with industry standards seen in other search advertising systems.

If you transition your Yahoo! campaigns to Microsoft adCenter, your advanced match keywords will transition to broad match, and your standard match keywords will transition to exact match in Microsoft adCenter.

In addition to having the three industry standard match types in Microsoft adCenter, you can also specify unique bids for each match type – giving you more control over your bidding strategies.

Yahoo! Search Marketing: Ad Title and Short Description

Yahoo! Search Marketing: Keyword Canonicalization

Microsoft adCenter uses a normalization process to find and flag duplicate keywords in your keyword list so you can remove them. This saves you time because you don't have to manage as many keyword variations.

When you import keywords, if there are duplicates caused by normalization, you'll see an error message, but you can still import your list. Microsoft adCenter removes the duplicates automatically.

Microsoft adCenter does not normalize for plural forms or misspellings like Yahoo so there are significantly higher number of keywords that can be entered, optimized, and bid on in Microsoft adCenter. Use the free tool, Advertising Intelligence, to help expand your keyword lists to help capture more queries by your target consumers.

Yahoo! Search Marketing: Params

A customized ad is more likely to appeal to potential customers because it is more relevant. Using dynamic text can help improve the click-through rate and conversion rate of your ads, and when you use dynamic text as a placeholder, you can quickly update multiple ads simultaneously.

You'll find three types of dynamic text: keyword, which allows you to customize your ad based on search queries; destination URL, which changes the destination URL based on search queries; and placeholders, which enables you to revise multiple ads simultaneously by using placeholders.

For placeholders, Microsoft adCenter offers more param options beyond {keyword}, including {keyword:default}.

You can also customize your search ads by using text variables. You first create a base ad, and then you indicate which parts of the ad will change, depending on factors such as keyword search queries by potential customers.