Ride the roller coaster - Bing Ads, Yahoo & Polyvore

Ride the Rollercoaster: Bing, Yahoo & Polyvore
Elizabeth Marsten, Director of Paid Search
CommerceHub Searchfest 2016

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@ebkendo
» 9 years in the Search industry
» PPC, SEO, Analytics, Social & Content
» Speaker: MozCon, SMX
(Adv/East/West), PPC HeroCon,
Searchfest, Marketing Profs
» Author: All in One Web Marketing for
Dummies, Lynda.com, ClickZ/Search
Engine Watch
Elizabeth Marsten,
Director of Paid Search

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What’s a CommerceHub?
» DemandStream: retail focused, product/shopping paid search and
marketplace platform
» In 2015 for Google AdWords & Bing Ads Product & Text Ads
 $39 million in spend
 $307 million in sales
 71,505,387 clicks
Exactly what I asked myself this time last year…

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The Baby Picture
January 25th: Genevieve

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Secure Your Belongings, Buckle Up & Roll Bar Down
» What’s Happened
 Bing-Yahoo, Yahoo-Google, Yahoo-Polyvore
» What IS Yahoo Doing?
 The Yahoo ecosystem and it’s effect on Bing Ads
» Poly-what?
 Categories, getting started, who
» What to Ride Next
 Given the above, where should you be?

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Bing Ads & Yahoo Ads
CommerceHub can separate out bing.com and yahoo.com referrers and have been tracking ever since the
launch of the “unified marketplace” – the below is text and product ads.
*Revenue redacted

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How Much Did Bing Ads Lose?
Yahoo started pulling inventory back for Gemini, and in some cases, opting to serve ads from Polyvore.
Which meant that categories like apparel and home were hit the hardest, particularly around holiday.

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Holiday Q4 – What We Saw
» Cyber Monday landed on Nov. 30th
» December struggled all month and finished weak and continues to climb out of the
hole even today- down 10% in January and 5% in February, YoY
November was solid, up year over year, 48%. December was down, around 10% in total but almost 40% in
apparel categories.
SSS = 15months or more on DemandStream platform

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What’s Bing Ads Doing About It?
» March is only down 1% YoY MTD
» adMarketplace partnership
» AOL partnership launched in January
Right now, we’re waiting for a few things to kick in…and they are, slowly.

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AOL Partnership
» Who uses AOL?
 US, UK, Canada, Australia
» My theory
 Lead gen/brand type ads showing
» Expected 5-8% increase in traffic
» No site search on TechCrunch or Huffington Post
 AOL.com, AOL Mail, Desktop, Autoblog, Mapquest
Almost no traffic coming across the CH retail system from AOL.

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What is Gemini?
Technically the structure is a bit more complicated, due to the branded terminology. I had to have
someone from Yahoo explain it to me.
Product
Ads
•Polyvore
Promoted Products
•Bing Product Ads
(Search Partner)
Native
(Display)
Search
(Text
Ads)
• Bing Ads (Search
Partner)

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Add in the Yahoo-Google Partnership
Yahoo is serving Google PLAs as part of Google’s Search Partner network on Yahoo.com SERPs – October
2015 deal.
Google PLA
Bing Text
Ad

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Bing Ads Text Ads on Yahoo.com SERPs
Nextag CSE
Bing Ads
Text
Yahoo Text
Ad
Yahoo
Product Ad

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Ecosystem Updated
Product
Ads
•Polyvore
Promoted Products
Native
(Display)
Search
(Text
Ads)
Text
Ads
•Search Partners
•Yahoo
•Ask
Product
Listing
Ads
•Search Partners
•Yahoo
•Amazon
(defunct)
Display
Ads
Text
Ads
•Search Partners
•Yahoo
•AOL
•adMarketplace
•Syndicated
Search Partners
Product
Ads
•Search
Partners
•Yahoo

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Yahoo Product Ads
» Set up feed submittal using Dropbox
» Easiest with a Yahoo Rep
» Not all 3rd party tools supported yet (like bid management)
» Billing is the same with Gemini as with Product Ads
» Easy submit of Google feed
 Though I wouldn’t if you have thousands of SKUs/short on time for management
 Cherry pick, the same way you would for any new platform
 Keep a top level/simple account structure
Setting aside text, native and whatnot, how can you get started?

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Yahoo Product Ads Performance
» Low CTR
 .20-.40, reminicent of a Display campaign
» Low CPC
 .25 average
» Conversions
 6x ROAS in Apparel
» Best categories: Electronics, Sporting Goods, Health & Beauty
 Disclosure: per Yahoo
 Apparel, Home & Garden – were…see Polyvore section on this
 Niche categories like Food & Beverage, Pet Supplies, Luggage, not optimal at this time
What CommerceHub saw during the beta and after:

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Yahoo Product Ads Performance
» Traffic/cost estimates or ranges to determine opportunity
» Case studies on ROAS or engagement (like new to file customers, lift in
organic/native or assisted conversions)
» Easier account set up/launch
» Offline editor
» Ad scheduling by hour of day or day of the week
What we (the industry) needs that we’re not currently getting:

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So Why Do Yahoo Product Ads or Gemini?

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What is Polyvore?
» Categories
 Women’s fashion & accessories (includes shoes), jewelry, home & furniture, beauty
» Countries
 USA, UK, Canada, Australia
» Demographic
 Female
 Millennial
 Shops online. A lot
In a nutshell, Pinterest for fashion on speed.

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Polyvore on Mobile
» About 40% of Polyvore traffic is on a mobile device
» More content is created on mobile and tablet than desktop

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The Yahoo Connection
Apparel query inventory on Yahoo.com being filled by Polyvore products.

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The Yahoo Connection
And now it’s not.

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How Does Polyvore Perform?
Insanely good. If you’re in the apparel or home categories, it’s worth a look. Apparel category below, we
pulled Polyvore apart from the Yahoo referrer.

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Bigger Brand & Budget Options
» Engagement Products
» Promoted Trends
 Inclusion in Trend email (5million subscribers)
 270k impressions, .28% avg CTR
» Promoted Trend Email
 Native placement, 350k opens, 3.5k clicks
» Even Bigger Options
 Trend Collection
 Promoted Collection
 Promoted Challenge
 Editorial Sponsorship

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Social Engagement Cheat Sheet
» Engagement Helps Drive Visibility
 Products will still be seen in other markets organically
 Engagement will drive brand awareness and traffic
» Be Strategic When Creating Sets
 A set lives on Polyvore forever
 Sets can drive organic traffic as well
» User Generated Content
 Follow your followers back
 Create sets and “like” sets that your followers create
 Build out collections and “like” collections created by users
As with any social shopping platform, it helps to have engagement/presence and not just be an advertiser.

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Polyvore Resources
» Getting Started Walkthrough (building your account, engaging)
» Promoted Products Walkthrough (including feed specs, campaign set
up, bidding)
» Media Kit
» Contact Form
 Get all of the above while you can

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Bing Ads is Down, But Not Out
» Shopping Campaigns
 Product Ads campaigns sunset - April
» Product & text ads are better together (non-apparel)
 Century Novelty case study with CommerceHub
» Native Ads
 Just launched, now supported by Editor
 TBD on performance yet, get the walkthrough here
» Equivalent expressions, new normalizations
 Changes in how phrase match, broad match modifiers and stop words are being triggered

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Yahoo Product Ads
» Pick & choose what to submit
 Either in the feed or through the platform, set floors and ceilings
 Consider the Yahoo audience versus what you’re selling
» Approach with caution
 Lot of volatility in the news around the company
 The ads side is relatively untouched, but developing to the platform is cumbersome and troublesome
right now
» Future possibilities
 Mobile traffic/apps (Flurry)
 Video (Brightroll)
 Tumblr
Fill inventory not covered by Google or Bing, but…

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Polyvore
» Tips & Notes
 Seasonality – watch it. Certain categories will perform better/flat at different times.
 If ROAS is high, bid higher above the recommended range (Polyvore is working on being able to give estimated
traffic estimates relative to other merchants bidding.)
 Watch the trends section to see what categories are being affected by seasonality.
 Luxury sites – AOV of $220
 Canada & Australia most successful countries, Canada with a better ROI and Australia with more traffice than
the US and the UK
 There is not a way to “group” products like we currently do with product groups in PLA/PA
Still Yahoo owned, but serving ads on it’s own.

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What to Watch All Around
» Yahoo SERP
 Now that Polyvore is not serving product ads on Yahoo.com SERPs, there are less “players” in the game for
those spots: Bing, Google and Yahoo
» Yahoo the Company
 They selling or not?
» Reducing mobile friction
 Buy button/one click purchasing
» Native is the new display
 Feels like that, doesn’t it? Remember the Content Network?

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Thanks Searchfest 2016!
@ebkendo

Ride the roller coaster - Bing Ads, Yahoo & Polyvore

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