Ben Edelman's bringing to light stuff many of us have faced month in, month out, for years: Yahoo Search Marketing's shifty relationships with shady partners such as 180 Solutions. (Latest Via Searchviews.) You can debate what-kind-of-ware they are, but there seems to be no debating: Yahoo Search Marketing advertisers want to be able to explicitly opt in and out of unorthodox placements. Even if you opt into something called "advanced match," I would argue that few would want their matching to be, um, that advanced. Whoops-I-tried-to-get-rid-of-a-popup-and-now-I'm-on-your-site. Lovely. No, if I wanted that, I'd buy it directly.
We've posted exhaustively about such matters. It's too bad they still seem to be riding this merry-go-round.
It's as simple as this: our clients want us to deploy "volume expansion" plans because they don't get enough targeted clicks (who can ever get enough?). Problem: if we're getting fire-hosed with nonsensical clicks at random times, we shut the campaign off. We can't expand it. We have to wait until things develop a certain degree of clarity.
Transparent, we don't expect. Opaque, we cannot tolerate.
Yahoo: we can't wait for the day that you upgrade to translucent. I hear it's going to be the hottest look for fall. (Notice all that lead time we're giving you, and extra time for golf.)
In the meantime, everybody had better upgrade their idea of what web analytics means, to get the full picture on their incoming traffic. The simple reports won't tell you enough about the nasty stuff. And on that note, I'll be back in awhile with a review of the Eisenbergs' new book. Later Gators!
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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