Yahoo PPC = Me Go Insane
June 12, 2007 by ian
I am trying
desperately
to find a way to e-mail Yahoo PPC reports. Or get access to the API.
Yahoo has no apparent way to find any of that information. Here's their super-helpful reports documentation:
Really?! Use the reports page to generate reports?! Wow. I never would have thought of that.
Please help. Before
I
go
ins
a
n
e
Disclaimer: It's 8 AM. I may be missing something painfully obvious. But really, with 3 Yahoo-certified folks on staff you'd think we'd be able to figure this out...?
Follow up: My staff helpfully pointed me to the Yahoo Help Center. Then we couldn't find it, either. So here's a follow-up dare: Log into your Yahoo PPC account. Then try to find the help center. I dare you. However, I took a moment, on her advice, and searched for 'automated reports'. That took me right back to the helpful page above.
(Ian goes away to cry, quietly)
Follow up, 2: A search for 'API' got this:
Okaaayyyy....
(Ian goes away to find something to stomp on)
Follow up, 3: I went to developer.yahoo.com. Found the Yahoo search marketing api. Yippee! If I can't get e-mail easily, at least I can write my own program to do it. Joy! More later...
Follow up, 4: They charge for use of their API. I'll pay, but somehow forcing everyone who wants to pull PPC data, rather than having to log in every time to get a simple report, seems wrong, dontcha think? Yahoo, if you want to catch up with Google Adwords, you'd better introduce e-mail reporting capability.
Technorati Tags: ppc marketing, yahoo, Yahoo Panama
Join the Conversation:
James says:
June 12, 2007 11:29
I agree with you completely. Sometimes dealing with yahoo PPC makes you want to stomp on things. I tried to update my PPC account and it wouldn't accept the changes... the Yahoo help didn't help.
Finally I found a number to call Yahoo customer service. Long story short, they couldn't update my account and didn't know why and now my account is closed :).
Andy Brice says:
June 12, 2007 14:58
I dumped Yahoo PPC some time ago due to the lousy interface and poor ROI (negative, actually). I was thinking of giving them a second chance, but gave up when I found that the mimimum PPC was £0.10. Why? They are cutting out people like me who sell niche products at £20 per time and rarely bid more than £0.05 per click.
I also tried MS PPC click recently. I am far from impressed.
Google can continue to do what they like while the competition is so far behind.