Retail & ecommerce Ads¶
Yahoo Ad Tech now provides you with a new feed ad solution: Dynamic Product Ads for Retail.
This guide describes what you need to know to get started and take advantage of this new strategic offering and product solution from Yahoo Ad Tech.
Because Dynamic Product ads automatically show products to shoppers who have already viewed, searched, initiated checkout or purchased a product, they provide an effective solution for product retailers.
Mobile example¶
On mobile, you’ll see this example of a retail solution using Yahoo Native feed ads.
Important
For best results with this new product solution, you should work directly with your Account Manager team. They’ll walk you through the steps you need to follow in order to take advantage of this new product.
Tip
If you’re an advertiser who is familiar with Facebook Retail & ecommerce ads –– specifically Retail feed formats –– you’ll want to be sure to sign up for this offering from Yahoo. Our implementation is similar to that of Facebook’s.
Key Benefits¶
Viewed listings: Reach customers who have viewed your catalog listings and dynamically retarget them across Yahoo Ad Tech properties, including mobile, desktop and tablet. One feed enables several native ad formats.
Cart Abandoners: Target customers who have not completed their purchase with offers to help drive the conversion.
App Re-engagement: Drive users back to your app to increase engagement and in-app bookings.
Get Started¶
Follow these steps to get started. A Yahoo Ad Tech Account Manager will walk you through them systematically, so you can get optimal results with your product feeds for ROI with your retail catalogs.
Steps |
Retargeting |
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Required |
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Described in the documentation for setting up your Yahoo Dot tag. The Account Manager will also provide you with a sample tag file, replacing all instances of the numeric sequence 12345 for the pixelId with your preferred Dot tag ID that was selected from your account in the Yahoo Native UI. |
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Your Account Manager will set up a meeting with your webmaster and a Yahoo Native solutions engineer in order to confirm your Dot tag and Custom Event script, as well as provide additional technical support. |
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Required |
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Supported formats: |
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If you don’t host the file yourself, the Account Manager can create a Yahoo Dropbox FTP account; Yahoo Dropbox is an enterprise solution owned by Yahoo, not Dropbox. Instructions on how to create a yahoo dropbox ftp are provided. |
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Your Account Manager will access the Yahoo Native Ad Platform UI under Shared Library - Product Catalog, and enter the url location and filename, with login credentials as needed. You can also perform this through the Yahoo Native Ad Platform API. |
Create Product Sets¶
When you create a new Product Set in the Native UI (shown below), you’ll be able to set filters on your product catalog, enabling you to collate a group of products. Product sets give you more control over who you want to run dynamic ads to - for example, people who viewed specific types of items in your catalog.
Start by selecting Shared library > Product catalog.
In the panel that opens, you can select the types of products, either Hotel or Retail.
If you select Retail, you’ll have a range of choices for your product set.
Click Create to finish creating your product set.
FAQs¶
Is there a recommended feed size?¶
To maximize the benefits of Feed Ads, we encourage you to provide a feed with your complete product offerings. With 1 billion users, a complete feed (regardless of size) helps Yahoo Native map more relevant products to a relevant audience.
Is there a minimum/maximum feed size?¶
We can load tens of million of ids. If you have a product feed that is a concern, try loading it into a Yahoo Native Ad Platform Test Account to see if it will load. There is no minimum feed size.
What is the pricing model?¶
The pricing model is CPC bidding.
What are editorial policies for Feed Based Ads?¶
Prohibited categories are still not allowed: i.e., weapons, tobacco, recreational drugs, illegal activities (location specific), and so on. For current ad policies, refer to Yahoo Ad Tech Advertising Policies.
Is there an option for carousel ads?¶
Carousel ads are supported on some devices. The primary image is the product that the user has last interacted with. The secondary images will be recommendations from the product set that the advertiser sets for the ad group. (Thus, all three product images will come from the same ad group.)
Can I target by purchase funnel?¶
Funnel targeting allows you to retarget based on a user’s progress in the purchase funnel - for example, whether a user has searched vs. viewed product vs. initiated checkout vs. made a purchase.
You can set campaigns (or ad groups) to target users based on the following actions on the site are possible:
Target people who viewed a product in the last X days and have not purchased.
Target people who added a product to the cart in the last X days and have not purchased.
What is the appropriate lookback window to set for funnel targeting?¶
The number of days X is configurable and can be set to any value between 1 and 30. Setting the funnel is possible through bulk.
We recommend creating multiple lookback windows at launch (1, 3, 7, and 30 days for Search, ViewProduct and InitiateCheckout funnels). Depending on the size and variety of your Feed, you may wish to further divide these by different sets for a more granular understanding of performance. You can also experiment with a lower or shorter lookback window before reducing bids. Most conversions happen from recent site interactions, so lowering the lookback window can help.
Can I pursue mid-funnel targeting to target new users?¶
Custom audiences can be utilized to target new users (or exclude current users).
Can I use feed ads to upsell/cross-sell other products?¶
Yes, you can upsell and cross-sell by driving to different pages for a particular sourceid or group of source ids. You can utilize funnel targeting for additional granularity.
How should I bid?¶
We suggest starting with $0.60 - $0.80 bids, then optimizing based on performance.
Do fed ad Shopping Campaigns support bids by supply?¶
We are aware that BBS is currently accessible in the UI. However, BBS for shopping campaigns is not yet supported.
Do feed ad Shopping Campaigns support adding Custom Audience/Custom Segments?¶
Custom audience and custom segments are supported for both Shopping Campaigns. As the site-retargeting signal is so strong, we recommend using custom audiences/segments for prospecting campaigns only.
Do feed ad Shopping Campaigns support Geo targeting settings?¶
Yes. Geo targeting is supported.
Can we apply targeting to campaigns?¶
We currently support geo and custom audience targeting with feed ads.
If I already have a product retargeting partner that works with Yahoo, can I target users only on Mail?¶
This option is currently unavailable, but we are exploring possible solutions.
Will I be able to bid on recency?¶
Yes. Multiple windows can be created for both Add to Cart and View Product funnels.
What countries can we target?¶
You can target any countries that serve native ads.
Am I required to display price in the title?¶
The requirement of including price in titles to reduce friction in onboarding clients has been removed. You can control the creative and exclude price as needed. Sale prices are also available for advertiser use.
Does the feed auto-update?¶
When importing the feed into Native Ad Platform, daily and weekly update options should be set to correspond with your feed update schedule (or shortly afterwards). If you update your feed daily at 9 AM, you should set your feed update schedule to daily to 10 AM.
Do Feed Ads Shopping Campaigns support adding Custom Audience/Custom Segments?¶
Yes. Custom Audience and Custom Segments are supported for Shopping Campaigns. In the bulk sheet, we recommend for the object type that you use segment target, then enter the custom segment number into “segment id”. If negative, enter “negative” into the match type column.
Strategies¶
Retail strategies are described in the table below:
Advertiser |
Strategy |
Best solution |
|---|---|---|
Retail |
Take advantage of large retail product catalogs. Use personalized ads based on each user’s unique shopping history, and funnel targeting to automatically show products to shoppers who have already viewed, searched, initiated checkout or purchased a product. |
Retargeting with Feed Ads |
Retail |
Deal with high cart abandonment rate. |
Retargeting with Feed Ads |
Retail |
Need to consider purchase decisions and research that can span multiple steps across devices |
Retargeting with Feed Ads |
Best Practices¶
When working with Retail feed ads, here are some best practices to follow:
Use product sets to highlight particular products within the feed.
Use Funnel targets to differentiate based on intent signals.
Use different lookback windows to differentiate based on age of intent signal.
Use bid by supply to prioritize the best performing traffic.
Considerations¶
Some considerations when implementing best practices:
Different products have different values/priorities for advertisers.
Performance varies by funnel. For example, Add to Cart behavior is usually more valuable than View Product behavior.
How recently the funnel behavior occurred (1-30 days ago) can impact performance.
Traffic sources can vary in performance.
Take this example: A $2000 TV is more likely to have multiple visits over a longer time period before purchase than a $3 impulse buy.
Important
Different product sets for different funnels with different bid by supply options and lookback windows let you optimize the combinations of product set, funnel behavior, lookback window and supply options that will perform best for you.
Dive Deeper¶
For a deeper understanding of how to work with Retail Dynamic Product Ads, you may wish to explore these topics.
A Dot tag can be either a 1x1 image pixel or a snippet of JavaScript code, which we provide to an advertiser.
In general, you’ll instrument your website with the Dot tag (pixel) in order to share user data with Yahoo. When a user visits your website, for example, this Dot tag pixel will transmit important data about the user – like user activity. The Native Ad Platform targeting system will then “listen” to the signals from the Dot tag pixel and store that data in the User profile store.
A Product Set contains filtering criteria that maps Dynamic Ads to Adgroups and to a Native ad campaign.
This mapping is required in order to determine the bid and budget for products in an advertiser product catalog. One product, for example, can belong to multiple products sets and thus to multiple ad groups and campaigns.
Dynamic Product Ads are represented by this domain model:
