Paid search is a very effective way to advertise online, and Yahoo! is second only to Google in the amount of search traffic it receives. Take a look at these key statistics provided by Yahoo! to put the importance of paid search in context. According to the information on their statistics page, more than 60 million people use search every day and paid search is the most effective online marketing strategy. It's therefore in any e-marketer's interest to consider paid search as a key component of their overall marketing strategy.

If you're not already familiar with paid search concepts, read Key Components That Guarantee a Return on Investment for PPC Management for an overview of the subject.

In general, the cost of paid search advertisement depends on several factors:

• keyword
• ad position
• ad copy
• landing page

Managing a paid search campaign can be quite complex, and the goal is typically to maximize the return received for the amount spent on advertising. Other goals might be to maximize revenue, gross profit, or web site traffic. Whatever your goal may be, you'll need tools to help achieve them.

Yahoo! Sponsored Search provides many useful features that will assist in the management of your paid search campaigns. Tools are provided to estimate the number of views and clicks your ads would receive, test multiple versions of your ads, conduct keyword research, restrict your ads to appear only for specific geographic areas using Geo-targeting, and control the campaign budget. Performance and billing reports are provided to present you with a broad overview of your paid search campaign. Yahoo! has created a video tutorial to make it easy to understand the concepts and help customers get started.

Conclusion
The new Yahoo! Sponsored Search platform is user friendly and provides several useful tools to help advertisers manage their paid search campaigns. Considering the fact that Yahoo! is the second most popular search engine, the new program offers an excellent opportunity for online advertisers to increase their search visibility.

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