Should You be Advertising On Yahoo Gemini?

Emelina Berkshire | January 5, 2016

So you’re running PPC campaigns on Google AdWords and Bing Ads… what about Yahoo Gemini?

Yahoo launched its advertising platform, Gemini, in February 2014, but it’s been slow to gain traction. In the spirit of trying new things (we also recently checked out Yellow Pages advertising), we decided to give it a try.

Overview of Yahoo Gemini

Gemini is composed of two parts, much like Google AdWords Bing Ads:

1. Search – Ads in Yahoo search results.
2. Native Advertising – similar to display advertising, ads are placed on sites throughout Yahoo’s partner network.

Yahoo Gemini ads are served up to 49% of the time on desktop searches performed on yahoo.com, inherently limiting the volume of searches substantially. Our Gemini Account Executive also warned us that the Search side of Gemini gets significantly less volume (in terms of impressions and clicks) than the Native advertising. However, given the majority of our clients are interested in PPC advertising, we decided to forgo Native for the time being.

We’ve been running our test campaign for two weeks with a budget of $500. So far, we’ve received a whopping 14 impressions and 1 click… To it’s credit, the click only cost us $0.06.

Analysis of Gemini’s Search PPC

Upsides:

• In my opinion, this is the most attractive feature of Gemini – cheap clicks. If you were to ever get a client from Gemini, the ROI would be insane.
• Account Executive. When you sign up for Gemini, you get matched with an Account Executive who holds your hand through the set up process. None of the three I talked to had any knowledge or experience with other PPC platforms, but were nice enough.
• AdWords Import. As of 12/9/15, you can now import Google AdWords campaigns into Yahoo Gemini. As of now you can’t import Bing Ads campaigns, but our rep said this was on the list for future improvements.

Downsides:

• Low volume. We were instructed “not to bother” with branded campaigns, as the expected search volume would be too low. Even using very broad keywords in our initial test, 14 impressions isn’t worth the effort required to set up the campaign, in our opinion.
• Confusing. We had to go a lot of places to learn about and use Gemini. There’s this Tumblr, their “intuitive” bulk edits schema objects and fields guide, the actual Gemini advertiser platform, billing done through Yahoo Wallet (which is now Aabaco Small Business’ Yahoo Wallet?)… You get the idea.
• The first three times we tried to sign up, Gemini gave us incredibly helpful “Server Error.” After some troubleshooting, we’ve gathered that if you don’t use Google Chrome and turn your ad block off, you should be okay.
• Bulk Edits Are a Nightmare. Common features in AdWords and Bing Ads, such as ad extensions, are only available in Gemini via their Bulk Edits process. Unfortunately, this process requires downloading a 51 column CSV and manipulating it referencing the protocol outlined in their bulk edits schema objects and field guide.

The Verdict

I’d suggest holding off on Gemini for now, unless you’ve got lots of time to kill. New features claiming to make your life easier will continue to roll out in the coming months, but right now, Gemini is a little too difficult and doesn’t produce results. Clicks may be cheap, but the time spent setting up campaigns doesn’t seem to be worth the effort.