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OPTIMIZATION. In the U.S. only, for those advertisers not bound by an Insertion Order, we may help you optimize your account(s). Accordingly, you expressly agree that we may also: (i) create ads, (ii) add and/or remove keywords, and/or (iii) optimize your account(s). We will notify you via email of such changes made to your account(s), and can also include a spreadsheet of such changes upon your written request. If you would like any of such changes reversed, please reply to such email within 14 days of the change(s), and we will make commercially reasonable efforts to reverse the change(s) you specifically identify. Notwithstanding the foregoing, you remain responsible for all changes made to your account(s), including all click charges incurred prior to any reversions being made. It is your responsibility to monitor your account(s) and to ensure that your account settings are consistent with your business objectives.
I'm not sure how wide spread this optimization is yet (my account manager said her department is not participating in the practice at this time). But to opt out you need to email them.
Link To Yahoo! TOS [info.yahoo.com]
[edited by: werty at 10:39 pm (utc) on June 4, 2008]
[edit reason] Added Link to TOS [/edit]
Par for the course, given YSM's strategy for the past year or so.
This has been going on for much longer than 1 year.
Read back through the threads for the last 4 to 5 years.
I was actually criticized by a moderator for being Overture (Yahoo) negative some years ago. Within days of this admonishment the Yahoo forum was full of other negative comments.
The people that have been in control of Yahoo / Overture for the last years are morally deficient. There is no "do no evil" here.
I let them take a stab at it. Basically, they took phrases I was bidding 0.25 for and jacked them up to 1.00.
Took me a couple of days to notice. I threw a fit and they refunded all the money they burned through - but there's no way I'd let them touch my account like that again.
I can't really knock Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Why? Truthfully? I've not used it since Overture. And, if my clients wish to use it, I direct them to the proper destinations to get them set up. We'll let them manage from there. I think I only have one client actively pursuing a PPC Campaign outside of Google. Hey, I'll be honest...
Back in the late 1990s I did a local radio show to help small businesses and entrepreneurs. One of the messages I tried to hammer home to my audience was "It is said that it costs 5 times as much to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing customer - so keep your customers happy".
Perhaps this is a first stab at some new web 3.0 business model: Drive your costs up and your revenue down while generating brand mistrust in a weak economy...
And some folks here said Microsoft would ruin Yahoo. Heck, they seem to be doing it just fine by themselves.
Doh!
They only touched my account once by changing my company name and changed the spelling to something different so it was then all wrong. Touch my account again and I'll delete it and all my clients as well.
[edited by: PCInk at 12:41 pm (utc) on June 5, 2008]
Classic short term versus long term thinking going on.
We must be an anomaly. Yahoo actually performs for us with a lower CPA than Google and MSN, but we still spend less with them than with Google because they just don't have the traffic.
Not an anomoly, we're in the same boat. The CPA is better, but overall its less than a tenth of the traffic that Google drives.
I just got off the phone with a rep who told me pretty much the same as everyone else, I could request an opt-out and they would "do their best" not to change my account but would make no promises.
The one new thing she did mention is that I would receive an email outlining any upcoming changes before they were made. I would have 14 days to respond before the changes went into effect.
If that's truly the case, I can live with it and just decline any changes they plan. If not, I'll have to close the account. There's just not enough reward to warrant the risk.
I would have 14 days to respond before the changes went into effect.
It sounds like this is a direct response to Google's Automatic Matching beta. If the number 1 player in search can run an opt-out effort to get more cash out of advertisers, why shouldn't the number 2 player in search do the same?
I'm including it as part of this thread since it seems related to those TOS changes.
I've already paused about 90% of the campaign. If someone were to reactivate and up the spend, I could burn through some serious cash pretty quickly.
I think this may be the final straw, the risk has finally outweighed any conceivable benefit. I'm out.
Wait and see? You mean like we do with their search/publisher partners? Wait for them to spend more of our money without our involvement? That's your solution?
Even YSM's evangelists aren't making sense these days.
To anyone who doesn't want an IO and doesn't want to "wait and see", I'd recommend emailing every YSM rep you have contact info for and making it known that you do not want this done at any time to your account. I did that and got a response in writing stating that my account would be opted out of any optimization programs.
