Yahoo! Time Capsule captures data for all ages

The Web can seem to be a place so transitory that one o’clock’s news is 1:05’s cat box filler.   

As a publisher, have you ever desired immortality? Have you posted something on your blog that goes beyond ephemera, something that you think is absolutely timeless in its import? Do you have photos or video that you think will help people in the future understand what’s going on now? Well, now is your chance to preserve it for future generations.  

“Time capsules”—sealed vaults of historic artifacts meant to be unsealed at a future date—go back at least as far as Gilgamesh, the ancient Sumerian epic. Historically, these artifacts have been of the physical variety—spools of thread, newspaper clippings, hair curlers, small gadgets and what not. Until now, the size and scope of these time capsules have been limited by physical space.

The Yahoo! Time Capsule, which involved the artist Jonathan Harris, aims to transcend the limitations of the physical world. The Yahoo! Time Capsule, which will be open to all until November 8, 2006, will allow you to upload your content for the edification of generations to come.

To learn more and play your part in history, visit the Yahoo! Time Capsule home page.

—Michael Mattis, Blog Editor

SEM gurus give feedback on our new advertising platform

So we asked some industry insiders over to the Yahoo! Search Marketing clubhouse here in Burbank for a couple of days to chat about the new Yahoo! search advertising platform we announced recently. Not only was it a lot of fun, but we—Yahoo! that is—were able to gain valuable insight into the future of search advertising from people who have made successful careers in the field. Talk about win/win.

Judging from some of the responses on our guests’ various blogs, we think our little soireé was a bit of a hit. 

Star blogstress, Jen Slegg of JenSense fame was “very impressed with a lot of the new features in the new system” though she was disappointed that the “infamous sock monkey” never made an appearance. It’s OK, Jen, Sock Monkey is your biggest fan.

Barry Schwartz, editor extraordinaire for Search Engine Watch, pens copious notes both from the advertiser perspective and from the publisher perspective in addition to a point-by-point run-down of the new implementation. He also likes the even more copious Yahoo! schwag that was offered to attendees.

Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence says he “got a ‘deep dive’ on the Yahoo! Publisher Network” that showed “an interesting and expansive roadmap with a range of small business implications.”

Internet marketing consultant Andy Beal, who, by the way, speaks with the elegant cadence of a southern gentleman, recognizes that the new roll-out is “no small initiative.” Thanks, Andy.

Andrew Goodman of Page Zero Media and Traffick enjoyed the live demo of the new platform and gained an appreciation of the “hectic but structured development process of the last 18 months.”  And Mona Elesseily, also of Page Zero / Traffick and the author of The Yahoo! Search Marketing Handbook, was pretty impressed as well.
 
Catherine Seda, Internet marketing veteran and the author of Search Engine Advertising says, “just spent two days at Yahoo!’s office. We test drove the new platform. It’s good.”

Golly…all this makes us feel like a debutante at a coming-out party.

—Michael Mattis, Blog Editor

Yahoo! Search Marketing launches a blog of its own

Last week we announced Yahoo! Search Marketing’s new search advertising platform. This enhanced platform offers advertisers more features and control, in a more intuitive interface, helping lead to higher quality ads. It’s very cool.

To help advertisers take advantage of these enhancements, we’ve launched the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog. It’s the first blog dedicated to the new platform. If you’re a serious publisher, you’ll want to keep up on all the latest from Yahoo! Search Marketing via the blog.

The new Yahoo! Search Marketing blog will:  

• Include contributions from our executives and managers working on all the new products and features, from geo-targeting and analytics to customer service
• Respond to user community feedback
• Feature guest posts from online advertising industry insiders
• Report on industry events
• Offer tips and tricks to help advertisers learn how to optimize their search marketing campaigns and help improve the quality of the ads you see on your site

And that’s just for starters. In case haven’t already had enough of my golden prose, I’ll be penning the occasional post there myself. Be sure to bookmark the URL—http://www.ysmblog.com—or add it to your RSS reader.

To hear more about the new platform, listen to Jen Slegg’s interview with Steve Mitgang, Yahoo! Search Marketing’s Vice President and General Manager on WebmasterRadio.fm.

—Michael Mattis, Blog Editor

We’ve put all your publisher services under one click

Yahoo! offers a cornucopia of publisher-related services and content, from domains and hosting services to content badges and APIs for you to mash up in original ways. Now we’ve put them in one place, accessible to you whether you are in the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta program or not.

At the new Yahoo! Publisher Network home page you’ll find all you need to help:

• Drive traffic—Syndication, feed submission, pod- and video-casting, and search marketing tools and products
• Enhance your site—Yahoo! content, including easy-to-implement search tools, badges, APIs and Creative Commons open content
• Build a new site or re-establish an existing one—Domain registration, custom email, web hosting and design, and online merchant solutions

In addition, the new home page includes headline feeds directly from the blog, and a sleek new look.

It’s all on the new Yahoo! Publisher Network home page. Check it out »

—The Team

Publisher Account Interface to experience scheduled maintenance Friday, Oct. 20, from 8:00 p.m. to approximately 12:00 a.m., Pacific Time

On Friday night, from 8 p.m until about 12:00 a.m., Pacific Time, we’ll be doing a little scheduled maintenance on the secure account interface.  For the duration of this maintenance your account will be unavailable.
 

This will not impact your account earnings nor the serving of ads to your site.
 

We apologize for any inconvenience.

—The Team

New platform ushers in search advertising enhancements

If you’re in business you’ve probably heard the famous truism, “I know that half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which half,” uttered by John Wanamaker, who opened the first department store in Philadelphia in 1870.

You may also have heard that Yahoo! Search Marketing went live with a major new initiative designed, in part, to help tackle Wanamaker’s problem.

It’s a completely new, completely redesigned ad platform that provides businesses with an easier way to connect to customers, and will provide more tools and capabilities to advertisers, along with an enhanced, more relevant experience to users.

So what’s in it for me, the publisher?
If you are a publisher not currently using Yahoo! Search Marketing products, such as Sponsored Search, this release will only affect your business in small ways. The changes you should notice in your ads are those we have noted previously and include:

• The removal of ellipses (…) 
• Fewer truncated words
• The inclusion of 40-character titles on certain ad units
• A change in the number of ads displayed on certain ad layouts

These changes are now live across the network. Other than that your experience should not change—at least not in the short term. Over the long term, however, this initiative, which touches systems all across Yahoo!, should improve the relevancy of your ads.

Double duty
If you are a publisher who also uses Yahoo! Search Marketing, here’s a run-down of some of the enhancements that you’ll be able to take advantage of once you have been upgraded to the new system:

• An intuitive new control panel
  Using this completely redesigned, easy-to-navigate control panel will help you see what’s working and what’s not.
• Fast ad activation
  Most ads should now go live within minutes.
• Easy ad testing
  You’ll be able to test multiple versions of an ad to find the message that works best.
• Geo-targeting
  Target your customers as broadly or narrowly as you want on a geographic basis, and customize your ads to help control costs.
• Campaign budgeting, forecasting and scheduling
  You’ll be able to create, budget and schedule your individual advertising campaigns for greater control over your advertising strategy and spending.
• See-through visibility
  The new interface can will help you understand how well your ads are performing relative to your competitors.

For more information on the new search advertising platform visit the Yahoo! Search Marketing home page.

Wanamaker was able to open his department store because technological innovations like steam power and the telegraph provided the means to acquire and ship goods faster and at more affordable prices. The Internet has accelerated this process to lightning speed. We think that the new advertising platform will help take even more friction out of marketing, benefiting advertisers, publishers and consumers alike.

Congrats to the team who worked so hard on the new search advertising platform!

    

—Michael Mattis, Blog Editor

 

 

Webmaster World’s PubCon Vegas 2006 can help you beat the odds

We’re hoping that what happens in Vegas definitely does not stay in Vegas, at least not this time. This Vegas trip is not going to be about late nights at the roulette tables, exotic shows, bourbon and rich food—well, at least not entirely. This Vegas trip’s going to be a learning experience that we think may help make you be a more successful publisher.

Webmaster World’s PubCon Vegas, 2006, begins Tuesday, November 14 and ends Friday, November 17. In between, you’ll be able to learn from some of the masters of profitability in the web world, including:

• Big thinker and entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki
• SEM guru Danny Sullivan
• Yahoo!’s Dave Roth, director of Search Engine Marketing
• Jen Slegg, famed blogstress of Jensense, and an occasional contributor to the blog
• Yahoo! Senior Director of Strategic Alliances Dan Boberg
• Webmaster Radio’s Daron Babin, who wrote a nice piece on podcasting for the blog
• Our own Cody Simms, Senior Product Manager at Yahoo! Publisher Network.
• Yahoo!’s Director of Emerging Products, Warren Kay
• Industry Standard founder and industry intellectual, John Batelle
• Search Engine Round Table’s editor extraordinaire, Barry Schwartz, also a blog contributor
• Tim Mayer, Yahoo! Director of Product Management 

And of course, be sure to drop by our WebmasterWorld booth, #411.

In addition, we’d like to ask publishers in our network to drop us a line letting us know that you’ll be there, so we can keep an eye out for you. We would love to meet as many of our publishers as possible. Please email us if you plan to attend, at publisher-info[at]yahoo-inc[dot]com, or go to the event’s Upcoming.org page and click “I’m attending.”

—The Team
 

It’s vital you provide up-to-date tax info

That famous quote by founding father, Benjamin Franklin, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” is by now an old saw.

Leaving the anti-aging efforts of modern science aside, however, old Ben’s observation still rings true. And it applies equally to Yahoo! and everyone in the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta. While Uncle Sam can be a generous old fellow at times, he’s also a pretty strict guy when it comes to the rules, especially the ones about taxes.

We’ve all got to play by Uncle Sam’s rules. In fact, if we don’t have your correct tax information, we can’t pay you, even if you have accrued more than $100 or more in your available account balance.

When you signed up for the beta, you were asked to provide your Tax Identification (Tax ID) number. If you are an individual U.S. resident (i.e., you signed up as a sole proprietor or other unregistered form of business), then, in most cases, this will be the same as your social security number. Corporations and other formal business entities should use their Employer Identification Number, which serves as their Tax ID. If you’re not sure which you should use, consult Form W-9*.

Long story short: it’s vital that the information you provide is correct and up-to-date, or your dream of attaining wealth and prestige via Yahoo! Publisher Network will likely be a non-starter.

You can always go back and double check—and update—your tax information by going to the Tax Information page under the Account Information tab. Be advised, however, that changing your tax information multiple times may invalidate it. You should only change your tax information if you are sure that it is in error.

While you’re there, it would be a good idea to double-check your account information, such as your contact information and payment options, just in case.

—Margaret Holland, Senior Account Manager

* Yahoo! does not provide tax advice. For more information, please contact your tax professional, or visit the IRS web site at: http://www.irs.gov/.

BBAuth just the beginning

During last month’s Hack Day, the Yahoo! Developer Network announced two cool code releases.

Who’s whom?
The first is called Browser-Based Authentication, or BBAuth for short. That may sound complicated and geeky, but it’s really a simplifying tool. It allows those Yahoo! users who use your tools a way to sign in using their existing Yahoo! IDs, instead of having to create a separate account.

For a solid run down of BBAuth and its capabilities, check out Dan Theurer and Matt McAllister’s video intro:

Visit the Yahoo! Developer Network for more detail »

A picture’s worth…
Using BBAuth (see above), the new Yahoo! Photos API enables you to create applications that allow your users to access and manipulate their photos. Visit the Yahoo! Developer Network for more detail »

For more info on these and other new developer gizmos, check out the Yahoo Developer Network blog.

—Michael Mattis, Blog Editor

Volunteer and get free promotion on Yahoo! Finance

You may remember hearing about the Yahoo! Finance Badge on the YPN Blog, or, maybe, you have already added the badge to your site. The Yahoo! Finance Badge enables websites of all sizes to publish stock charts, quotes and news headlines from Yahoo! Finance.

Yahoo! Finance is interested in exploring different advertising options for the badge, and we’re looking for publisher and bloggers to help us with this task. I’m organizing an ad test and am actively looking for participants. As a thank you, all participants selected by Yahoo! will receive free promotion space on Yahoo! Finance for 24 hours at a day, time and location designated by Yahoo!. Additionally, this is an opportunity for you to provide feedback to Yahoo! on what elements create the best ad experience for your site.

I’m looking for five blogs, each with a minimum of 200,000 monthly page views. You’ll need to display our badge on your site for two months in your most trafficked areas. If you are interested in participating, please contact me at katieh(at)yahoo-inc(dot)com.

—Katie Hartnack Beltramini, Yahoo! Finance Product Manager