For many search advertisers, the transition from Yahoo! Search Marketing to Microsoft Advertising adCenter
was a move to an unfamiliar environment. But online cell phone retailer
Wirefly.com already used—and preferred—adCenter. When the two platforms
merged, it found that it started receiving traffic that performed
better than traffic from either platform did separately.
The Challenge
Wirefly,
which lets consumers comparison-shop for wireless phones and plans,
depends on search to drive traffic to its site. “We manage everything
down to a cost-per-acquisition goal, so we have a mandate to get the
most possible conversions through search engine marketing channels that
we can,” says Andrew Rios, manager of search at Wirefly.
For Wirefly’s audience, Bing had usually performed better than Yahoo! Search Marketing,
converting at a higher rate and a lower cost. Wirefly’s Search Team
also found the adCenter interface to be less complex and easier to
manage. So while they were looking forward to the transition, they hoped
that the combined traffic would perform as well as the Bing traffic had
for the company in the past.
The Solution
When Wirefly started to transition to the adCenter platform, it opted to have its adCenter account take over all Yahoo!
traffic and not transfer account information from Yahoo! Search
Marketing. That decision made the transition smooth—traffic simply
ramped up on adCenter while spending decreased on Yahoo!.
Wirefly’s
Search Team quickly found that the transition created the best of both
worlds from the combined search platforms. Traffic continued to perform
as it had on adCenter, and the volume from Yahoo! made adCenter
performance more stable. “Because our Bing traffic was so small, it
fluctuated a lot more,” Rios says. “Now that it’s the combined Search
Alliance traffic, it’s a lot more stable.”
Wirefly’s Search Team
also managed to cut down the time they were spending on maintaining
search accounts. Bringing both search environments to a single interface
meant that they had to only optimize a campaign once, and get far
better results.
The Results
Wirefly has found the
combined search platform to be much more efficient. In fact, its team
now spends 50% less time managing the Yahoo!-Bing campaigns. “Instead of
half our time on Yahoo! and half our time on adCenter, we are now
focusing on one, and we are able to optimize it better,” Rios states.
But
the real gains are in Wirefly’s search marketing performance, where it
has been able to achieve the same or better return-on-investment with
much higher volume. In fact, in the first quarter of 2011, the site saw
its conversion rate go up 12%, with 6.6% more conversions overall. Its
cost-per-acquisition also dropped 5.5%.
“The combined traffic
definitely matched our previous adCenter performance,” Rios says. “But
with the higher traffic volume and better stability, it’s maybe even
better.”
About Wirefly.com
Founded in 2003, Wirefly.com
is one of the Internet’s leading authorized retailers for cellphones
and cellphone plans. Owned and operated by the wireless solutions
provider Simplexity, Wirefly.com lets customers shop for the latest
cellphones and smartphones from top-rated carriers, receive unbiased
advice, and get their phones activated quickly with no hassles.
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