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: Ya-who?

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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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Heh. Mapquest.

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The Yahoo Ecosystem

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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 CSEBing 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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Enter Polyvore

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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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Who Uses Polyvore?

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Polyvore Usage

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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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Polyvore: How It Works

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Polyvore Promoted Products

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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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What to Ride Next

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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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I Lied. One More

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Thanks Searchfest 2016!

@ebkendo

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