Bid Amount and Ad Quality will Determine an Ad’s Rank in Search Results in Sweden the week commencing October 22nd, 2007.

Dear Advertiser,

With new features like ad testing, geo-targeting and fast ad activation, the new Sponsored Search gives you more ways to connect with customers searching for what you sell.

During the week commencing October 22nd, 2007, we are introducing a new ranking model in Sweden that considers an ad’s quality and bid amount. The new model is designed to help you spend less time in bidding wars with other advertisers and more time creating the most relevant, effective ads, which can help drive better results for your business.

Here’s a quick summary of this important change:

* Both bid amount and ad quality will determine an ad’s rank in search results the week commencing October 22nd, 2007.
* This will replace the current method, in which ads are ranked by bid amount only (bid-to-position).
* This is designed to allow you to focus less on competitive bidding practices and more on the quality of your ads.
* By improving the quality of your ads and making them more relevant to users, you may be rewarded with a better ranking and/or a lower cost for your ads.

Example of How Ads May be Ranked
The graphic below helps illustrate a scenario that may result from this change:

Note: The graphic above is provided for illustrative purposes only, and will not actually appear in your account.

What is “Ad Quality”?
Ad quality is determined by:

1. The ad’s historical performance – its click-through rate relative to competitors and normalised for position.*
2. The ad’s expected performance – determined by various relevance factors considered by Yahoo! Search Marketing’s ranking algorithms, relative to other ads displayed at the same time.

Overall ad quality is displayed in a graphical form by the quality index.

Other Important Things to Know

* We recommend that you review your current max bids. Keep in mind you may be charged up to this amount. Learn more (Swedish only)
* Standard match type ads will no longer receive priority placement over Advanced match type ads. Learn more (Swedish only)
* Starting the week commencing October 22nd, there will be a transition period during which forecasting tools will accumulate more data about the new ranking model to provide better traffic estimates.

To learn more about the quality index, the new approach to ad ranking and helpful tips, please click here (Swedish only).

Regards,
Yahoo! Search Marketing

*When the Quality Index launches for the first time, it may in some cases consider historical data. Please note that ads that at the moment perform well, will in most cases continue to perform well when the new quality index launches.