Advertising online is one of the best ways to help grow your business. Search engines are a popular place to advertise because most people rely on them to answer questions and help find the products they want to buy.
Yahoo is a popular search engine and web publisher that offers businesses a powerful advertising platform with digital marketing options.
What are Yahoo Ads?
Yahoo is a web services company that offers a web portal, a search engine, and various related services, including news, publishing, and email.
Yahoo ads let companies place advertisements on various websites around the internet, giving them exposure to potential customers. Ad placements can go on Yahoo services and websites partnered with Yahoo.
Why You Should Use Yahoo Ads
There are a few reasons to consider using Yahoo advertisements.
Show advertisements in search results
Though Yahoo’s competitor Google holds the lion’s share of the internet search market, Yahoo still helps millions of people search the web daily.
Yahoo search ads make it easy to display your advertisements in search results, delivering information about your company to people searching for the types of goods and services you provide. That exposure can be an effective way to target your ads to produce the best return on investment.
Multiple advertisement types
Yahoo lets you include many types of ads in a single campaign. You can use images, videos, and carousel ads and display them in many locations across the web.
Potential for lower competition
Yahoo is not the largest search engine on the market, meaning many other companies might focus on advertising through the company’s competitors, like Google. With fewer people competing with you to place ads through Yahoo’s services, you might be able to secure lower prices and get more prime positioning for your campaigns.
Yahoo Native
Yahoo Native, formerly known as Yahoo Gemini, is the company’s platform for creating and managing a native advertising campaign. Native pay-per-click ads appear seamlessly on websites, so they are less intrusive and better at generating trust and engagement than other types of advertising.
Through Yahoo Native, you can produce a campaign that places native ads across the web. The system includes useful automation to ensure you’re getting reasonable prices for ad placements and reporting tools that make it easy to track your campaign’s performance.
Who Should Advertise on Yahoo?
Yahoo is a good fit for many situations and types of businesses, including the following.
You’re building a results-driven advertising campaign
Yahoo Native, the company’s native advertising service, has powerful reporting tools that you can use to track your campaign and its results. You can use these reports to track the ads people see, when they see them, and how many people click through to your website.
If you have a specific goal or trackable target, you can use these reports to measure your progress toward those goals, then refine your campaign to improve your results.
You’re looking for a low-cost option
Yahoo ads can vary in price but tend to be less expensive than advertisements from other ad providers. Yahoo’s share of the search market is lower, meaning some advertisers focus on different search engines, leaving less competition for Yahoo ads and below-average pricing on the site.
You want to target your ads carefully
Yahoo lets you target your advertisements precisely, allowing you to put your brand in front of the consumers you want to attract.
You can target based on user interests, age, location, and other demographic information, helping you get the most bang for your advertising buck.
Do you want to use a native advertising strategy?
Yahoo Native makes it easy to implement and manage a native advertising campaign. Native ads are less intrusive than other forms, often making them more impactful.
Through Yahoo Native, you can place ads around the web and use multiple ad formats.
Types of Ads Available on Yahoo
Yahoo offers many different types of advertisements. You can use Yahoo Native to place native ads around the web or use non-native ads. You can also use search advertising to place targeted ads on relevant search results pages.
Some of the different ad formats you can use on Yahoo include:
Image ads
Video ads
App install ads
Carousel ads
Yahoo Mail ads
Moments ads
How to Set Up and Run Yahoo Ads
The best way to run Yahoo ads is through the Yahoo Native service, which lets you manage all your ad campaigns in one place.
Set an objective.
Start by choosing a goal for your ad campaign. Yahoo Native does best when it has a measurable goal to work toward. You can choose from options, including:
Drive app installs
Boost brand awareness
Get customers to visit your website
Get customers to re-engage with your app
Choose a campaign type and give your campaign a name.
You’ll give your ad campaign a name so you can find it easily in your dashboard. Then choose the type of campaign you want to run, such as a web search campaign, a native advertising campaign, or one that uses both.
Choose an audience.
Yahoo lets you target your ads to a specific audience of searchers, helping you get your ads in front of precisely the type of people you want to draw to your company.
Some targeting options include
Geographic location
Language
Type of device used
Time of day
Age
Gender
Interests
Set a budget.
Advertising isn’t free, so you’ll need to provide a budget for your advertising campaign. You can set a daily budget or an overall budget for the campaign. You’ll also choose how you track conversions from your advertisements.
Build an ad group.
When you set up a campaign, your advertisements will separate into multiple groups. As you build a group, you’ll select the start and end date of the campaign and choose what bidding strategy you’ll use for purchasing ad placements.
Start building ads.
Finally, you can build your ads on Yahoo and its partner websites.
You’ll see a form that you can fill out to provide Yahoo with the info it needs, such as a title, description, and URL to your landing page. You’ll also offer required assets, such as videos or images, that Yahoo can display.
Finally, you will choose the list of keywords to target with your ads to provide further targeting for the campaign.
Track and refine
Yahoo recommends letting your campaign run for at least a few weeks, giving its reporting system time to track your campaign results and optimize how it displays your ads to improve outcomes.
During this time, keep track of your ads' performance and refine your advertising strategy. You might realize that an ad performs well at a specific time or with a particular demographic. You can adjust to target that demographic or time of day more closely to improve your campaign’s performance. It may also give you the confidence to spend more on a successful campaign.
The Final Word
While Yahoo’s search engine isn’t the most popular, it offers marketers a solid digital advertising platform at much lower rates than its competitor, Google. Yahoo Native provides a comprehensive, all-in-one service that can put your advertising campaign in front of your target audience. If your business is looking for affordable, results-driven search advertising, Yahoo ads might be for you.
