Ms. Bartz, Mr. Ballmer,

Congratulations are in order! We know you’ve been talking about it for some time now, but you’ve finally decided to take the plunge. Mazel tov, salut, slainte and all that. Come on now, it was no secret – we knew you were going out, we heard the rumors, we saw all the hush-hush PDAs you thought were on the QT. Two years ago, we never would have expected this from either of you. But you’ve both come a long way, and it seems like you’re made for each other. At least, we’re hoping that’s the case and this isn’t just to get back at the one that got away.

But instead of yammering on about how married life sucks the lifeblood out of you brings eternal joy and happiness to both sides, or the prospects of how the search industry landscape would look like, or what this means for either of you in terms of business models and whatnot (we’re looking at you, Yahoo), we at e-storm want to wax poetic on what could be a beneficial union when the best of both worlds meet. Yahoo, simply put, you maintain a larger share of the market. And Microsoft, your days of single parenthood are over – Yahoo can make sure that little baby Bing grows up to provide more targeted traffic and higher conversions than, well, the one that got away.

So we’ve decided to compile a list of 12 items, a “wish list” if you will, outlining what we’d like to see from this blessed partnership. So without further ado let’s give a toast to the future of Micro-hoo! (or if this is one of those more modern romances, Ya-bing!):

1. How about a dashboard and keyword/ad management system that’s seamless, easier to navigate and more intuitive for search marketers?

As it currently stands, it takes quite a long time to update bids and ad copy, or manage optimizations in both Yahoo and MSN dashboards. Particularly in MSN, it’s almost like pulling teeth trying to update bids and setting keyword match types. Time is always of the essence for us billable-hour types, especially for larger campaigns, so a clear and customizable dashboard is much overdue.

2. Make geographic targeting more comprehensive with radius, block targeting and an expanded list of cities

More often than not, we need to account not just for all cities in a region, but their server locations too – which could be just a few miles shy of where we set up our targets. More accurate and precise targeting makes for happier clients and much more successful campaigns and takeaways – and overall, it’s also just cool data to analyze.

3. How about Search Query reports with Conversion Data?

This is one major piece lacking in both of your dashboards, and it often makes or breaks the success of many SEM campaigns. If you could help us better accurately target the keywords that drive conversions, it would not only make for more efficient managers, but we’d likely be a lot more willing to drop a few more dollars to increase our volume.

AND….. with conversion tracking already in the system, how about we track the pathway to conversion by keywords? In Yahoo, we can already see which keywords assisted in a conversion, but how about the creation an attribution system by keywords, from the initial keyword to the last one leading up to the conversion. (Google, we’re looking at you too.)

4. Three words: Desktop tool, please!

For a software company, Microsoft’s adCenter Desktop is neither intuitive or user friendly for most SEM managers. And that’s if you’re one of the lucky few who can get it installed in the first place, let alone not giving up after the trauma of using it. As for Yahoo, your tool has supposedly been in “alpha testing” for the past two years. So how about you both combine efforts and make something kick-ass to beat AdWords Editor?

5. Keyword Approvals, Editorials and Red Tape

In our experience, obtaining editorial approval in either of your search engines is like watching Ballmer’s hair grow back or waiting for YHOO to hit $50 again: it’d be nice, but is highly unlikely. Often, we have to manually expedite the approval by kvetching through either of your account teams. And for those who don’t have the luxury of account representation, we have to rely on the help of God (or Google, who is just as omniscient.)

6. Take Behavioral Marketing up a notch

From what we’re reading about the deal so far, Microsoft is bringing AdCenter for the management of paid search, while Yahoo is keeping its Display Advertising function. Yet, there is no doubt that AdCenter has been more aggressive in providing more demographic data than both AdWords and Yahoo. Let’s hope that this is not lost in the move. It really would look nice next to Yahoo’s display side of the business.

7. Promote stronger adoption of Yahoo! Web Analytics

Yahoo’s analytics software, based on IndexTools, is a powerful and sophisticated platform that easily compares better with the features of Omniture SiteCatalyst than it does with Google Analytics (heresy, we know!). e-storm was a long time partner of IndexTool long before Yahoo! bought ‘em out. We loved the superior analysis they provided, and we were a strong advocate and evangelist ‘til the very end.

8. Greater data integration with the AdCenter Excel 2007 Add-in Tool

The Excel add-in tool from Microsoft’s AdCenter has great potential to couple data from AdCenter with the user’s own data from Yahoo! Web Analytics, providing for much better actionable keyword analysis. For example, if the tool had access to AdCenter data and Yahoo! Web Analytics, it could identify what types of keywords are already converting for the client and suggest other similar (but cheaper) keywords to use.

9. Reports for content campaigns

Google allows search marketers to see placement performance reports for their content network sites. If search marketers had the ability to see which placements perform better than others, it would help dispel a lot of confusion before initiating campaigns on either of Yahoo and Microsoft’s content networks.

10. Google has an Insights report, but neither Yahoo nor MSN does. Can Ya-bing pull that off?

Overture, Yahoo’s traffic estimator tool, has been inactive for a while now. If you can reactivate these functions, imagine what a powerhouse of analytics Ya-bing can provide. We can compare search volume for keywords on Yahoo and MSN in the US as well as international markets by different categories, regions and timeframes.

11. Better revision tracking: log and report each change made to the account/campaign

While we can’t always Ctrl-Z everything we do in our campaigns, sometimes search marketers just need a reminder of the significant changes they make – say on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. If Ya-bing can implement a system to help track changes (like Google does), then we can be more much more precise in our future optimizations.

12. Minimum Bids – Yeeeeah… how about we just get rid of those?

Remember, Yahoo, when you maintained a standard across-the-board minimum bid policy of $0.10? Then came the change a year ago where there would be no more minimum bids at the keyword level. Well, life starting sucking after that. With minimum bids, one has to monitor and update their keyword bids daily, not to mention updating the bids for inactive keywords that become inactive due to low bid to make sure they are not losing the market share.

So that’s that. We’ve said our piece. We hope we don’t sound like we’re complaining or asking too much. We really do admire and appreciate everything you’ve done for the area of search marketing over the last several years, and we think this relationship will only usher in a brighter era for search marketers. We just want to make sure that you’re both aware of the issues that search marketing industry professionals face on the ground-level, and also provide our high hopes and expertise (e-storm has over 11 years of doing this) to help your product development and account teams make Ya-Bing the force to reckon witha great platform to work with.

Nevermind the naysayers, – this looks like the wedding of the decade.

Sincerely,

The e-storm Search Marketing Team

Image Above Courtesy of www.ifcci.com