Simply Clicks has just received an e-mail from Yahoo. The e-mail states that from February 8th, the Overture system will change the appearance of ads that it delivers. The key change is that the number characters used in the body copy will be restricted to 70. The current limit is 190 characters. Overture does already use a limit of 70 characters on ads it supplies to some affiliate search engines. It will be interesting to see if there are further changes in the pipeline.
It's about time their datacentre gets an overhaul too. Editorial comments still don't show in FF and it's very very slow. Complete mish mash of stats lying about. I hope I don't have to rewrite all ads and cut them down?!
Tops30, the cut down will be automatic. I think it would be worth checking the logic and grammar of what's left behind.
You got that right. It's been three days now and still waiting for two adds to be approved. They are rediculously sloooooooooowww.
I concur, and their interfact is terrible, takes twice as long to do anything and its not easy to use.
Apparently they've been shortened for most (all?) advertisers in the USA since January 18th. Has anyone noticed a change in CTR in the last week or so? I haven't yet, so it looks like I've got the daunting task of re-optimizing over 1800 listings
I did about 200 keywords to overture last week. The editorial process is stupid. Its sooo obvious how its done. Words that have no other bids are approved almost instantly. Words that have 2-3 bids are approved next Words that have lots of competition are approved last - obviously, they actually check these, so that crappy new ads don't overshadow current moneymakers.
Lorien, This just my opinion, as you must be aware the bulk of their editorial staff is now done by bots. The keywords with no competition are instantly approved. The keywords with bids are held up so that they can be released at odd hours. Why? Have Unlike your approved listings you do not have the ability to easily change all bids. They must be done one at a time. That being said, how many advertisers wake up to find they have new approved listings at big $$$??? Jack
i hope yahoo makes it easier to report bad publishers, there is this one site http://www.runescape-billions.com/ that must be breaking the rules but i couldn't find where to report it!
I used Overture many years ago, but I gave up because of the monthly minimum and editorial process. When I was chosen for beta testing the Adwords Select (as it was called then), I never looked back. Maybe it's time to test Overture again.
Yeah, honestly I don't see this really having much of an effect on user's results. 70 characters is still plenty and as you said, many of Overture's aff engines already required this. Not too concerned. Brad