Yesterday, I spent some time on the nice folks at Yahoo! about the new ad platform they announced yesterday. Danny blogged a ton of details, so I'll try not to be too repetitive, but I will try to be concise.
What was released yesterday? The new API and specs of the project. Who does it affect now? Not many people.
What will be released in Q3 2006? A whole new user interface, which I was previewed. The interface is very user friendly with a ton of good information at your finger tips to make your campaigns. In addition, they changed the language used in the console to match how SEMs talk and not how programmers talk. Of course they added, geotargetting elements, nice stats that show the "share of clicks" based on your spend and your "quality index" and other features Danny talked about.
What is this "Quality Index?" Well, the exact sauce of it was not revealed, but you can imagine it has to do with your CTR. So those rumors were true. The rumors that people were testing it in Sweden or Denmark, that was supposedly false. When will the quality score be integrated into the ad ranking? Some time after the new interface is released, but not at the same time as the release of the interface. The deal is, Yahoo! is trying to still figure out what will be best for the advertiser. So when I asked, if the "visible quality index" will be shown on the release of the new interface, they said they were still unsure. On one hand, they want to show the advertiser the data right away so they can get accustomed to it. On the other hand, they do not want to confuse the advertiser, to suggest it matters (at that time) in the ad ranking.
So we still have some questions, but as we get closer, I am sure they will get resolved. Overall, I am pretty happy with what I have seen.
