The convenience of a single interface for both Yahoo and Bing is likely bring in more advertisers.  Despite AdCenter’s reputation for delivering a higher ROI than Google, many have found it brings in too little volume to be worth the effort.   But once there is a joint interface, that will no longer be the case.  Those advertising on Yahoo will most likely be automatically transferred over to the new platform, so it will become very easy (and possibly necessary) for them to advertise on Bing.  So Bing not only gets all the current Yahoo advertisers, they should get and influx of new advertisers who may not  be current Yahoo advertisers, but are willing to try the new interface because they cannot ignore the close to 30% market share that Yahoo & Bing will have combined.  So my guess is that many advertisers who have enjoyed a high ROI on Microsoft will start to see more ads competing with them for their keywords, and CPC will go up and ROI down.

The impact on Yahoo should be similar, with an increase in CPC, but to less an of extent than on Bing.  Yahoo already has a lot more advertisers than Bing, so the impact of a few more advertisers should, in general, have less of an effect on prices.   How the results from Bing look on the page could have an impact, but it is difficult to predict what that will be, so we will have to wait and see.

Aside from my concern about a rise in CPC, I look forward to the new joint advertiser platform, even though it is probably close to two years away and still has to pass anti-trust scrutiny.  I am impressed with what Microsoft has done with Bing, and if they take the best of adCenter and Yahoo and add in a few new improvements and tools, it could prove to be a productive and efficient way to reach the 30% of search that anyone who is just using Google is missing.

I used it first to import my keyword data from my server logs (you have to download your logs first).   The software apparently uploads your log files to their servers, then analyzes them.  So it took a couple minutes for this process to finish.  But in only a couple minutes I had all the keywords people used to find my site, with usage data, loaded.   You can then see how many visitors each keyword or phrase brought in, with a graphical representation that looks like the textbook keyword distritbution curve, with a perfect long tail.  You can now add additional keywords if you like from your other keyword research tools.

The beauty of the software is that now you can very efficiently segment the keywords into tightly themed groups with just a few clicks.  You can just click on a keyword or phrase, then a list of all phrases containing that keyword or phrase will pop up, and then there is a list on the right that will allow you to segment further by choosing other keywords.  Additionally, you can search for keyphrases containing certain terms and get a list of all of those.  Once you have segmented a group down to something you would like to create and ad group for, with just a couple clicks you can create an ad group in AdWords with those keywords (you need to link an Adwords account first).   Once you get the hang of it, is is far faster than messing with Excel and then manually creating ad groups.

There are also some handy workflow tools that allow you to see what things you are working on need attention.  You can quickly see which add groups have too many keywords, need an associated landing pae, etc. When you are juggling multiple accounts and tons of ad groups, this can be really helpful.

For agencies or individuals who do a lot of keyword organization and ad group creation, this looks like it could not only save a lot of time, but could also really help you to create highly targetted ad groups that could improve your Quality Score.

They currently have a free trial that so you can play with the software before buying.   The pricing ranges from $300/month for small business, $500 for agency level, and $1,000/mo for enterprise level.

1. Define your goals.  Are you looking to increase brand awareness, increase traffic, generate leads/sales etc.
2. Set up Conversion Tracking.  Without this, you have no idea whether or not your ads are generating revenue or that activity you are seeking.
3. Maximize your Quality Score.  Organize your keywords in to tightly themed ad groups linked to related landing pages.  It is better to have more ad groups with closely related terms, then a few ad groups covering a wide variety of terms. Use your SEO skills to optimize your landing pages so they are highly related to their associated keywords.
4. Test landing pages.  You can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of your advertising campaingns by testing versions of your landing pages.
5. Monitor your account frequently.  Run reports and see what kewords and ads are working and which are not.
6.  Analyze poor performing keywords.  Are they not relevant?  Do they have a low quality score?  Is the landing page relevant?  Consider moving them to their own ad group or removing them if they won’t convert despite a good ad, quality score, and landing page.

The above steps should keep you on track and ensure you are getting the best return on your ad dollar.