Marketing Pilgrim

I just scanned the last six posts here at MP and they all have the Google logo attached to them. What’s strange about this story is that while Yahoo is announcing an improvement in their paid search offering it still relates to Google. As for bing? Where are you? The company that is having their search platform replaced by you is making more noise.

So what has Yahoo done? It has created an easy way for users of the Yahoo paid search platform to import data from their Google Adwords campaigns. In other words, Yahoo is saying “We know how much you use Google Adwords so just ‘copy and paste’ it to us and spend with us. Please!” MediaPost reports on this and let’s us hear Yahoo’s version.

Despite the agreement with Microsoft to power the search engine’s backend infrastructure, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo continues to invest in advertising and consumer search tools. This time the company is releasing Network Distribution, and Import Campaigns.

David Pann, vice president and general manager of Yahoo Search Advertising, tells Online Media Daily that Yahoo’s investment in targeting tools provides another option for advertisers to reach consumers — an alternative to Google AdWords. So the hope is that these tools will end up in Microsoft’s search platform and adCenter.

Boy, if that doesn’t sound like someone who has simply decided to bow to the superiority of Google’s offering and settle for the crumbs from its table. By saying that Yahoo’s Search Advertising provides another option (read: something other than Google AdWords) it sounds like Mr. Pann is trying to remind people that “Hey, we do paid search advertising too!”

While this is all well and good one has to wonder what the impact will be for Yahoo if any. The following example provided from the article tells the tale much better than I can.

One of the biggest complaints from advertisers has been the tedious process of importing online campaigns into more than one search platform. Each engine relies on different types of files and formats. Many advertisers such as Brad Butler, chief operating officer at Asadart Ecommerce Specialty Shops, begin their campaigns on Google, simply because AdWords has been easier to understand and use.

“Nice idea, but at the end of the day I want results,” were the first words out of Butler’s mouth after hearing about the new features.

Butler runs several online stores. “It’s like putting lipstick on a pig,” he says. “It’s a good idea, but I remember talking to my rep about it a few years ago. Hey, guys, you’re three years late to the party.”

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but I can smell a “So what?!” response from a mile away. How about we let Mr. Butler put it in even clearer business English, the one that involves dollar signs.

Butler’s Yahoo account reps used to import AdWords files for him. The rep would come back a week later after completing the job. It just took too long, he says. That’s one reason that last year, Butler spent about $50,000 with Yahoo, compared with $1.2 million with Google.

I have to guess that Mr. Butler won’t be moving a lot of that spend over to Yahoo but that’s just me. Well, while I am glad that at least someone else is trying to do something in the search space I hope that there might be a little more innovation and less playing catch up in the future.

Search advertisers weigh in on this and just how much you use other paid search options outside of Google. The world needs to see if there is a pulse on the industry outside of the Googleplex.