Let me tell you a tale about Yahoo! minimum bids, Quality Score, and the Yahoo! Ambassador test…

Being the new guy here at Amplify, I have been slowly but surely working my way through the PPC certification process. Luckily, I’ve been gaining practical experience along the way. I was certified as a Google Qualified Professional in March and plunked down the $50 to take the Yahoo test last week. All went fine and I passed my certification – but I was surprised to see that I possibly got a question wrong about minimum bids! Here’s why:

Kristin received an update from Yahoo last month stating that sponsored search minimum bids are no longer fixed at $0.10, although content match minimum bids will stay at $0.10. Also stated was that higher ad quality may help advertisers receive lower minimum bids. From Yahoo:

“The amount set as your minimum bid on a keyword in Sponsored Search can vary depending on multiple factors, such as:
•The number of bidders and bid amounts in the particular keyword market
•The quality of your keywords, or their relevance to advertisers, as measured by the quality of the ads associated with them”

It would appear that Yahoo! will start using a metric like “Quality Score” that Google uses. Possibly/Probably this has to do with the fact they announced they will be running some of Google’s Adwords ads in their search results. My pure speculation is that this is the case. They have no choice but to use this metric if they want to run these ads in their searches, otherwise Google would be charging based on this metric for search but not returning based on this metric in Yahoo!.

Either way, when I took the Yahoo! Ambassador test later that week (aced it!), the information about this had not been updated as you can see in this screenshot. Somebody might want to tell them. Also, please refer to me as “The Ambassador” or “Ambassador Jules” if you see me out.

I’ve emailed the test administers about this, and when/if I hear back, I will make a follow-up post. Perhaps, I will get some bonus points and be a Super-Ambassador.