expertSEM

Last week I posted how easy it is to migrate a Google AdWords campaign to Micrsoft’s adCenter. At the same time Yahoo! Search Marketing announced a new import feature that allowed you to take the same AdWords CSV file and dump it directly into their web interface without any modifications or converting it to a Yahoo! CSV. This has made my account manager life just that little bit easier. It was a long time coming and with the advent of Yahoo! and Bing’s merger later this year it may be a little late but it will make the last few months on Yahoo!’s ad interface less frustrating.

Unlike the adCenter Desktop, Yahoo! will strip what is considers duplicate keywords (plurals, similar phrases) and all keywords are set to advanced match. You will have to go through an reset any geographic targeting and set the campaign to run on Yahoo! Search only as it defaults to the Yahoo! Network (which is not considered high quality). It will also import any tracking (analytics, etc.) that you have set on your text ads so you may want to change this in the AdWords CSV before continuing (Google Analytics needs the keyword tag to be set to YSMKEY for Yahoo!).

As with adCenter you will need to have the client account already created on Yahoo!

Start by exporting your campaigns from Google’s AdWords Editor (File – Export Spreadsheet (CSV) – Export Selected Campaigns and AdGroups). Log in to the Yahoo! Search Marketing interface and navigate to the account you will be importing the campaigns in to. Even if you already have campaigns running in this account with the same names you will be given the choice to either create brand new campaigns, merge or overwrite.

On the right hand side of the screen you will see a Import Campaigns button. This will take you to the Import screen.

Import PPC Campaigns in to Yahoo

Browse for the AdWords CSV file from the Choose File button. Once this is selected you will be shown additional options for your import including how the system should handle duplicate campaign names, campaign budget settings and negative keywords.

Importing Options on YSM

Advanced Import Options

You also have the option to create a converted file. This will convert the AdWords CSV to a Yahoo! CSV that you can edit offline before importing.

Convert AdWords CSV to YSM

When you have selected your options click Import File. Like with adCenter, it takes a little while if it is a large campaign but there is a handy status bar to let you know where you are at with the procedure. After the import has finished you can review the summary including any errors that occurred during the process. It will tell you that 0 campaigns were imported but you will have to ignore this. I did try and download the error file it generated but I had better things to do than to wait for an 18mb CSV file to download.

Campaign Import Summary

Unless you have set the campaigns to Paused in the Google CSV before starting the process they will be live on Yahoo! Search and on the Yahoo! Network as soon as the import is finished. Any campaigns that were imported that had the same name as an existing campaign will be appended with “New_CMPGN_” if you chose to create a new campaign instead of overwriting or deleting the old.

Reset your targeting and you are good to go!