For the past several years I had wished for a desktop PPC editor for Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM). Not every campaign using Yahoo Search Marketing meets the guidelines to qualify for bulk uploads, and the user interface in YSM is fairly clunky feeling – especially after using a desktop editor for pay per click management. Easy bulk changes? Yeah right! Across blogs there had been rumors for sometime, but no confirmation from Yahoo. Eventually the trail leading to the promised land of a Yahoo Search Marketing desktop editor went cold and I didn’t hear much chatter on the subject aside from requests and wish lists. Until now.
While going through a client’s Yahoo PPC campaign today I noticed a welcome link to download the new Search Marketing Desktop. You can download this handy new tool from your qualified YSM campaign or at http://advertising.yahoo.com/desktop/en_US/install. This tool is only available to “larger advertisers”, so some accounts may not qualify.
I first started using AdWords Editor sometime in 2006, and back then without a proprietary API tool, many bulk changes on large campaigns could take hours. AdWords editor completely changed the game and freed up hours of PPC management time.
A bit later Microsoft joined Google and presented their own desktop editor – AdCenter Editor. This freed up more time and made importing campaigns from Google AdWords a piece of cake.
Yahoo has been lagging behind for several years at this point, so this is a big step in the right direction. The Search Marketing Desktop has basically every bell and whistle you’d expect from a desktop PPC editor – including the always awesome ability to import campaigns from other PPC search engine accounts.
Some of the more robust features include downloading account metrics and a built-in keyword research tool. This is probably the biggest YSM related news since the MSN merger, and definitely a good sign for YSM PPC advertisers. Now if only Yahoo would allow all advertisers and YSM accounts to access the Search Marketing Desktop.
