Yahoo! Search Marketing just announced (well, for me anyway — how come I always get the email notices 2 days later than everyone else?) that they’ve added some demographic, dayparting and ZIP code-level targeting options for their advertisers.

Demographic targeting: Select your audience by age and gender in both Sponsored Search and Content Match. Demographic targeting lets you specify a premium bid amount for desired audience segments, without losing other traffic volume… meaning you’ll pay more.

Ad scheduling (dayparting): Select the time of day and day of the week during which you’d like your campaigns to run according to users’ time zones or your account’s time zone. Adwords has been doing this for what… years? Applicable to both Sponsored Search and Content Match, and at the campaign or ad group level.

ZIP code-level geo-targeting: Get really focused by targeting individual ZIP codes and ZIP codes surrounding them.

While I appreciate the Zip code and dayparting options, I’ll have to test their audience demographic intelligence. Should be interesting.

Seems like everytime I hear the news, or read my email, another company directly related to our Internet marketing businesses is tightening the reigns due to the recession.

Last week I mentioned that a number of banks have either temporarily suspended or permanently shut down their credit card affiliate programs.

Back in December, I received notice that the Westin and Sheraton hotels changed their affiliate program payout structures to pay on completed stays rather than on bookings.

Also in December, Yahoo! Search Marketing announced that it would no longer provide telephone support on many of their advertisers’ accounts.

Then last Wednesday, Google announced that 70 workers would be affected when it closed 3 engineering offices in the U.S., Norway and Sweden. Worse still, the free cafeteria for employees was closed and Christmas gifts to workers this year weren’t quite as lush as usual. The cutbacks at Google are apparently due to the fact that although its advertising revenues are still growing, they’re not growing quite as rapidly as before.

Aaaah, Poor Google. Apparently we’re not spending enough.

Has your site traffic tanked like the economy in recent weeks? Well, as you can see from the Google Analytics screenshot below, the traffic to one of my sites has dropped from 3569 visits on September 9th to an average of about 700 per day since September 15th. (Note: Former Fed chief Alan Greenspan said this economy is the worst he has ever seen on the 14th and the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 300 points in the first 15 minutes of trading on the 15th.)

That traffic is 20% of normal levels. Not only that, but the bounce rate more than tripled and the average time spent on the site was cut by more than half. UGH!!!!

(Click the graphic to see the full size.)

Am I troubled by the decline? Not at all! Because despite the 80% traffic drop, my sales on that site are only off by 10%.

Why?

Because the traffic from the PPC campaign for that site has barely dropped off at all and that traffic is targeted. They’re people who are actively looking for the product that I’m selling, they read my ad, they click the link, find exactly what they were looking for and buy what I’m promoting. Phew! Thank goodness for PPC traffic.

That said, I’m not taking the economic crisis (traffic crisis) lying down. I’m doing what any Super affiliate who uses PPC marketing is doing right now and re-doubling my efforts.

I spent the entire weekend reviewing and re-working my Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing & other PPC campaigns. Moreover, I spend a LOT of time in my Wordtracker account building new campaigns for existing and new products.

Here’s an example of a product category that I added on the dating service review site. It’s something that I figure that many people will try to resort to when all other efforts fail to improve one’s economic situation.

But seriously, NOW is the time to get in the game if you haven’t already. The economic crisis is going to get much worse before it gets better and you CAN make it work for you – IF you work at it.

To that end, I posted a Q and A article to help you learn more about how PPC works.

Too, Anik and Amit posted another video that reveals some key PPC strategies that Amit uses.

Watch it.

Don’t be a victim of this disaster — DO something and make it WORK for you!!

Please share your comments and questions on this issue. Suggestions welcome and we’ll help where we can.

Need traffic?

Pay-per-click search engines are the best way to satisfy that need. However, with several hundred pay-per-click search engines to choose from across the web, it can be confusing to know where to start advertising first.

Too, some internet and affiliate marketers are afraid of losing money through pay per click advertising.

Well, here’s what I have to say about that. I’ve been using PPC advertising since it was introduced and spent an ‘excessive’ amount only once – and only by result of acting stupidly. There’s absolutely NO way you can spend too much when you set a budget. Simple as that.

About 60% of my traffic is generated through pay-per-click search engines – and the ‘secret’ here is that when you drive traffic initially to your site using PPC’s, the search engines notice your site (because it’s now getting traffic) and your site will rank higher than it would if you weren’t getting PPC traffic.

The best PPCSE’s (pay per click search engines) offer account signup bonuses. Take advantage of these to get hundreds of dollars in free traffic to your site.

Listed below are the very best pay per click search engines for delivering high-quality, targeted traffic at reasonable prices.

1. Microsoft adCenter
2. Google Adwords

I’ve also listed other PPC seach engines at which you should consider advertising.

Top PPC Search Engines

Check in on this page every now and then to find out which of my favorite pay per click search engines are offering deals and discounts for new advertisers.

Microsoft AdCenter

Microsoft AdCenter is best for those affiliates in more mature niches and you can get started with only $5.

Open a Microsoft adCenter account.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords often offers $50 in advertising credits for new AdWords customers with self-managed signup. The offer is based on a $55 total credit, which represents $50 of advertising credit and a $5 activation fee.

Sign up for a Google Adwords account.

Money-Saving TIP: If you don’t see a credit offered on the direct link to Google Adwords and you need a hosting account, Bluehost almost always has an Adwords promo going on for their new customers… AND you’ll save the domain registration fee.

This is exciting news for PPC marketers! Version 3 of SpeedPPC was launched yesterday. Version 1 was developed by qualified AdWords Professional Jay Stockwell and Allan Gardyne for use in their own PPC marketing. Version 2 was launched publicly last year – to very strong reviews, including my own. (Note that the review applies to Version 2, however.)

Since then, Jay paid close attention to the feedback that he received from hundreds of SpeedPPC users and produced a long list of fantastic new features which have made SpeedPPC 3 even better, even more useful for rolling out intelligently constructed, large, effective PPC campaigns incredibly fast.

SpeedPPC 3 is designed to help you produce accurate, EFFECTIVE campaigns with a solid ROI that include dynamically matching keywords to ad groups, matching keywords to similar keywords on dynamically created landing pages, great Google Quality Scores, and high converting campaigns.

You can create heaps of small, tightly focused ad groups. You can have just one keyword per ad group if you wish – in campaigns that are created at blistering speed. You can track every ad group and every keyword with surgical precision so you can quickly tweak your campaigns into profitability.

SpeedPPC Version 3 has support for:

• ABCSearch
• Affiliate Radar
• ASK
• Enhance
• GoClick
• LookSmart
• Miva
• Search123
• ValidClick
• MSN adCenter
• Yahoo! Search Marketing
• Google AdWords

Affiliates will be delighted to know that this includes affiliate and CPA offers that you couldn’t normally track easily and a bunch of really clever stuff that you can do with datafeeds.

Version 3 comes with 10 new training videos and 15 landing page templates. If you have problems, you can study the training videos and ask questions on the private forum.

Because the list of features and what you can do with SpeedPPC is far too long to list here, you should check out the SpeedPPC site.

If you’re still building your PPC campaigns the OLD way, you’ll find SpeedPPC is a seriously valuable tool. I highly recommend SpeedPPC for anyone who does PPC marketing.

Hmm… there’s nothing quite like being scheduled for surgery to remove a mass of unknown origin to propel one into action. In other words, I blogged a LOT this week.

After reviewing notes and listening Affiliate Summit recordings via the web, I blogged about how Jason Calacanis offended affiliates during his keynote speech. I personally thought his point was excellent – when you got past the arrogance.

I reported on Chitika’s new Related Product Unit (RPU) and that Yahoo Search Marketing changed it’s minimum bid policy on Sponsored Search keywords.

At that point, I noticed that Brian Gardner was having an contest for affiliates who promote his Revolution WordPress themes — which then got me thinking about working on RosalindGardner.com where I ended up installing a new Premium WordPress Themes (which I blogged about at NPT).

I stopped just long enough to read success stories about sites that sell fitness, tea & gas station equipment and then started blogging again.

I blogged about how much I enjoyed using my Flip Video Ultra Camcorder and embedded some new videos along with my 3-month old godson’s first YouTube video taken at Sun Peaks Resort where we cross country skied last week.

I took a little poke at some U.S. based online merchants who really need to start thinking beyond their borders, and at the discourteous jerk in seat 12F. Of course, I won’t have to worry about rude passengers as my March and April conference plans and appearances have been cancelled.

From now until I go under the knife, I’ll be drafting a series of helpful posts to be regularly delivered during the first part of my recovery.

But I really hope that that there will be an Internet connection in the room so that I can just keep on bloggin’…

Yahoo! Search Marketing announced that minimum bids for ‘a number of Sponsored Search keywords‘ would no longer be fixed at $0.10. Although they could end up lower than a dime – your minimum bids might also end up more expensive – depending on the quality and value of the keyword.

Minimum bids vary depending on keyword relevance measure by the quality of the associated ad, as well as the number of advertisers and bid amounts for that particular keyword market.

If your bid falls below the minimum set for that keyword, the ad will not be displayed and you will be notified and given some time to make changes to your bid.

Yahoo stated that the change was designed to improve their users search experience by rewarding advertisers for better quality with lower entry points into keyword markets.

I think this may prove to be an excellent opportunity to save some money on your pay per click advertising. So, if you haven’t done so lately, I highly recommend that you do a thorough review of your Yahoo! Search Marketing ad campaigns soon and beef up the quality of those ads that have so far been under-performers.

By the way, Content Match minimum bids currently will remain at $.10.

To learn more about this topic, check out the YSM Blog “Reserve Bids” post.

[tags]Yahoo! Search Marketing, YSM, ppc, bids, Sponsored Search[/tags]

Hmmm… while scanning my Eudora for information about Microsoft’s adCenter affiliate program, I found this notice – sent February 20th – in the trash bin.

…Unfortunately, the adCenter offer will no longer be available after February 29th, 2008.

Any banner or text ads that you currently have placed and are receiving traffic will still be eligible for payout through February 29th. However, any traffic after this date will no longer be eligible for the coupon or commission payout. As of today, February 20th, no new marketing material will be available to current affiliates and new affiliates will not be able to sign up for the offer.

Final commission payout for any activity through the end of February will be processed and paid out in the month of March as usual. Please be sure to remove all marketing materials associated with this offer from placement by February 29th as you will no longer receive credit for this activity.

Although that’s definitely a bummer for affiliates who found adCenter’s offer lucrative (it offered $50 in free clicks to those who opened an adCenter account), I’m personally delighted to have found the notice before I ended up sending my visitors to a “Sorry, that offer is no longer valid” page, which happens way more often than I care to admit.

Anyway, for those affiliates who promote to online marketers, there’s still the Yahoo! Search Marketing offer through CJ that pays $30 when your customer signs up for either a new Self Serve or Assisted Setup Account. They get a $25 credit on signup too.

Here’s a real policy change for YSM (Yahoo! Search Marketing) according to the lastest CJ Wire newsletter from Commission Junction:

After more than six months in the making and much customer feedback and testing, we are pleased to announce that Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) has recently updated its editorial policies and will now allow U.S. publishers to direct link to their advertisers. In the past, YSM’s editorial policy prevented publishers from linking directly to their advertiser partners and required that traffic be sent first to the publisher’s Web site. The new policy eliminates this restriction and opens a much broader search marketing opportunity for publishers.

This YSM policy change is the result of a strong relationship between Commission Junction and YSM. We have spent more than six months working with YSM to enact the new editorial policy and are very pleased that this effort has resulted in changes that are sure to create opportunities for our publishers and advertisers.

We find this policy change exciting on several levels. First, this is a significant shift for YSM and could be a great opportunity for your search marketing campaigns. Second, you heard it here first – YSM has asked us to communicate this change to the affiliate community. Third, the work we’ve done with YSM on this policy change is just another example of our commitment to listening to and speaking up for our publishers.

Although I’m sure there will be lots of blog buzz heralding this change over the next few days – I won’t be dancing in the streets as competition and click prices over at YSM increase and worse, as more affiliates choose a linking method that does nothing to build either their lists or their business in the long-term.

[tags]yahoo, search, marketing, ppc[/tags]

Want MORE traffic? Well, some of my best traffic comes from Yahoo! Search Marketing (and has for years and years).

So, do YOU have a Yahoo! Search Marketing account? No? Well, here’s your golden opportunity to get free clicks from Yahoo! … and this is a special deal from YSM… to me… to you.

New Sponsored Search advertisers (‘new’ being an advertiser who has not advertised with Yahoo! Search Marketing for the past 13 months) will receive a $50 credit when they set up an account – which requires a nonrefundable $5 initial deposit.

Sign up for an account today to check them out — you’ve got nothing to lose and potentially a LOT to gain!