Yahoo! Search Marketing Changes Managed Bids

As many Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers continue to wait for the implementation of the new ad management platform dubbed Panama, some changes have been rolled in the way bids will be managed. This has been done in order to help prepare advertisers for the new platform. The changes will affect the Sponsored Search Manage Bids page so that all advertisers – both those who have upgraded and those who have not – will have equal access to the same relevant bidding information.

What’s changing exactly? The “Top 5 Max Bids,” “Position” and “Your Cost” columns will be removed from the current account interface. The View Bids tool will also no longer be available. See example below.

Instead, you’ll see two new columns on the Sponsored Search Manage Bids page:

1. Estimated Average Position
This column provides an estimate of the average position in which your ad may be displayed on the results page, based on your max bid and the bids of other advertisers.

2. Bid Range for Top Positions
This column displays the bids for the positions at the top of the search results page for each of your keywords.

Yahoo tells us that these two new data points will remain once accounts has been upgraded, and you’ll be able to use them in the same way.

Another thing that will be changing which is not surprising is that grandfathered bids from the GoTo/Overture days will disappear once advertisers upgrade. In an email sent out to advertisers, Yahoo states:

Important Note Regarding Grandfathered Bids : In addition, our current minimum bid requirement of $0.10 will be enforced after an account is upgraded. This will impact your keywords that are grandfathered to bids below $0.10.

Original post on the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog can be found here.