There, among the ads I'd written, were things with titles like, "Affordable Gourmet Gift Baskets" and "Buy Great Cookies at Low Prices." If you're at all familiar with this site, which Yahoo's "editors" clearly aren't, then you know that we don't use words like "affordable," "low prices," or "discount" to sell our products.
In fact, we told Yahoo! this when they sent us a proposed list of keywords, which included the above offending terms along with the ever-popular "cheap." Who wants cheap gourmet cookies? Anyone? Anyone?
Compounding the problem was a series of ads I don't recall creating with URLs pointing to our home page instead of the appropriate category pages on the site. Here's an example:
Buy Great Cookies at Low Prices
Visit 1-800-Bakery.com for great birthday cakes. We also offer pastries,
chocolates, candies, cookies, desserts, bread and more. Amazing prices. Order
online.
http://www.1-800-bakery.com/?src=overture
That conversion code doesn't work with any of our tracking programs. Every one of the suspect ads featured this URL, so my advice to anyone out there running a PPC campaign is to sort through your ads (good luck with their terrible interface, which sets a new benchmark for lack of usability), look for that URL, and see if they've been playing with your campaigns.
I'm infuriated about this on two levels:
1. Yahoo! has misrepresented our site with claims of "amazing prices" and directed potential customers to the home page instead of appropriate landing pages. We paid money for every click generated by these fradulent ads, so we handed somebody cash to make us look bad.
2. I now have to spend my valuable time undoing the damage caused by this editorial tinkering. The deeper I look into what they've done, the more problems I discover.
Once I saw what was going on, I sent them the following e-mail:
Dear Yahoo! Team,
If you want to continue having us as a customer, I would like answers
to the following questions:
1. Who is editing our ads?
2. Why are they editing our ads?
3.
How do I get them to stop doing this?
When we were first approached by Yahoo!, we made it very clear that
terms such as "low cost," "affordable," and "inexpensive" were, under no
circumstances, to ever appear in any of our advertising. Yet there it is.
I've also noticed a number of ads with incorrect URLs and conversion
tracking code. This is, quite frankly, unacceptable on any level.
If these issues cannot be addressed, immediately, then I will take
actions to suspend our account with Yahoo! We will also be reviewing our recent
bills to determine whether or not we paid for misdirected links provided by your
editorial staff.
Sincerely,
Derek Gerry
Senior Producer
1-800-Bakery.com
I did get a prompt reply, as follows (edited to remove identifying account information):
Hello ,
We have reviewed your account per your e-mail concern about your ads
being edited. Your ads are being edited by members of our editorial staff. They
are being edited in order to help your ad get approved. We can stop your ads
from being edited by notating your account. We do apologize for any
inconvenience this may have caused you. Per your request, we will notate your
account internally, for no changes to be made to your title and description in
your account.
If your URL's and tracking codes are incorrect, we apologize for this
inconvenience as well. We can change any part of your ads to whatever you want
us to change them to. You can submit these changes via spreadsheet in your
account, through the edit listings function in your account or you can call us
or e-mail us to inform one of our Gold specialists, the changes that you want to
make.
Once again, we are truly sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused
in your account. For assistance or questions with your account, please call us
at 1-866-YAHOO-SM (1-866-924-6676). Our hours are Monday - Friday: 5:00
a.m.-8:00 p.m., Saturday: 5:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., and Sunday 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.,
Pacific Time.
Sincerely,
Mark Taylor
Customer Solutions
Yahoo! Search
Marketing
Gee, thanks, Mark, I'll be sure to put a spreadsheet together for you guys. If I'm putting that much effort into it, I might as well make the edits myself. Here's a better idea for future reference: Don't mess around with my campaigns. I don't have to take this aggravation from Google or MSN, and if an ad agency or PR firm ever did this to me, I'd fire them on the spot and sue for breach of contract.
We're in the process of reviewing our logs to determine how much of this unqualified traffic came to our site, and I'm considering whether or not we'll continue to maintain a relationship with Yahoo! Search Marketing.
To the rest of the marketing folks and Web masters out there, let me again advise you to carefully check your campaigns and make sure you're getting the traffic you're supposed to be paying for.
UPDATE:
I've taken 29 listings offline because the descriptions and/or titles contained "low prices," "affordable prices," or "amazing prices," three phrases I would NEVER use to drive qualified traffic to the site.
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