Google is still the clear winner when it comes to search marketing, but advertisers are spending more and more of their budgets on other marketing channels these days, with Bing and Yahoo becoming increasingly popular. Yahoo Gemini is a channel that is rapidly gaining importance as part of the unified advertising marketplace. The Yahoo Gemini platform allows people to run search, native advertising and shopping campaigns from one interface. Right now it is aimed only at the US and Canada, however there are plans to roll it out to the broader marketplace. In the past, it was possible for advertisers to use Bing Ads to run advertisements on Yahoo properties, but that is starting to change now that Gemini is taking over. All mobile traffic to Yahoo properties is now being handled by Gemini, and the same goes for tablet traffic. There are still some options for Bing Ads users to get their ads on Yahoo properties, but they are limited, and will likely be removed completely over the next few months.
Product Ads with Gemini
The Gemini Product Ads service is still in testing at the moment, and it is not offered as a default option for advertisers. However, it is possible to opt in by talking to a Yahoo Gemini representative. They will ask for your product feed (which can be sent as a URL, or by uploading it to Yahoo’s Dropbox). If you have campaigns in Google Shopping, then you can export that information and copy it into Yahoo. For the most part, Gemini Product Ads supports the same type of feed as Google Shopping, but there may be some changes required. The CPCs on Gemini tend to be lower than the CPC for the same product on Google, but some advertisers are opting to keep CPCs for their most popular products the same, so that they get sufficient volume. Google and Yahoo users tend to be different demographics, so it is worth running ads on both platforms. The total number of clicks on Yahoo will likely be lower, since the pool of users is lower, but it is a fresh audience, so the net result is that your ad campaigns will enjoy greatly expanded reach, with minimal extra expenditure. Tracking options are limited, so you will need to set up Google Analytics separately, but Yahoo is planning on improving tracking soon.
