We have been spending a fair amount of time lately exploring the new Yahoo Search Marketing interface, and we’ve come upon one new feature that we are very excited about. It’s the Alternate Text option for your keywords. This option lets you place a specific word or phrase in a particular location in the ad associated with the keyword. For this to work, the copy for the ad must contain the placeholder {KEYWORD:default_text} in the ad body or title. If alternate text is specified, then the ad will contain the alternate text. However, if the alternate text causes the ad to exceed the maximum character limitation, then the default text will be used.

Here is an example:

Let’s say you sell shoes on your website. Let’s also say you sell a line of shoes called “Hudsons”, so you have an ad group set up for keywords related to Hudsons. Let’s say the Hudsons come in three colors: red, yellow, and blue. You might have the following keywords in the ad group:

Hudsons
red Hudsons
yellow Hudsons
blue Hudsons

Your ad could be written like so: Find the {KEYWORD:default_text} you are looking for here!

The default text would be “Hudson”, so the “Hudsons” keyword would use the default text.

The “red Hudsons” keyword could be set with the Alternate Text property “red Hudsons”, so when the ad was displayed for that keyword, it would read: Find the red Hudsons you are looking for here!

The same would be done for the yellow and blue Hudsons keywords so that depending on which keyword had triggered the ad, it would be customized to match the exact search phrase.

This is an extremely powerful feature because it splits the different between using a single ad for every single keyword and using an ad for lots of keywords. The more personalized the ad copy seems, and the more tightly coupled with the user’s search phrase, the more likely it will generate a click.

For help managing your Yahoo Search Marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.