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