Yahoo Makes Important Change to Advertising TOS

Monday, January 12th, 2009 | Internet Marketing, PPC Advertising, Search Engine Marketing

In mid-2008, Yahoo changed their TOS to include the following clause:

“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.”

What does this mean for end users? It means after you spend hours creating your campaigns, adding your keywords, and deciding how much money you want to bid on each term, Yahoo has the right to “optimize” however they feel necessary. Not only can they delete some of your keywords and replace them with different ones, they can also increase and/or decrease your bids. Best of all, you are not told about the modification(s) until afterwards.

While this did happen in June of last year, businesses are just now starting to discover changes to their advertising accounts. The email you’ll receive from Yahoo will read something like this:

“Yahoo! is committed to the success of account “account name” and we believe there is an opportunity to provide you with improved performance.

To help you save time and get the most out of your campaigns, we are launching a new automatic account optimization program. It’s intended to help raise the performance of accounts that are experiencing issues like low quality scores, low lead volume or low click-through rates.

And the best part is, we will do the work for you: Our content developers will use their search advertising experience to help your marketing dollars go further.

What we will keep an eye out for:

Search ads with low click-through rates relative to competitors

Ad testing not in use? missing an opportunity to optimize ad copy

Ad groups that have a quality index score of 2 or lower

How we can help:

Create new ads for existing ad groups, enabling ad testing

Write multiple versions of ads for any new ad groups we create, enabling the use of ad testing to help ensure that the best-performing ads are displayed more often

Search our database for keywords that can drive more targeted traffic to your site

In short, our goal is to make sure that your account is firing on all cylinders–and do this while keeping your existing keywords and without exceeding your spending limits!

As always, you are in control of your account. If we make any optimization changes to your account through this program, we will notify you by email, and you can let us know whether the account changes are positively affecting your account. Also, you are welcome to contact your account manager to review, edit or ask us to reverse any of the changes. Finally, if you do not wish to participate in this program, you may opt out by contacting your account manager.

We’ve identified keywords and ads in your account that are significantly underperforming, and we’ve initiated the changes to the creatives that you will find attached.

We are very excited about this new program, and hope it will provide you with improved performance and a higher level of service. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.”

SEO and SEM bloggers seem to be outraged by the new TOS. One went as far as comparing it to your investment adviser buying stocks on your behalf or switching your portfolio from bonds to hedge funds. I can’t say I disagree.

I recommend contacting your account manager or marketing company and making sure that Yahoo doesn’t change your campaigns. You should determine how much money you spend, and what to spend money on. Not Yahoo.

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Tags: ppc, PPC Advertising, PPC campaign optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Yahoo

1 Comment to Yahoo Makes Important Change to Advertising TOS

Shireen Smtih
January 15, 2009

I heartily agree. If you look at the blog piece I’ve just written you will see that I think customer complaint is the only effective way to stop sharp practices