Here's some nuggets of humor from Yahoo's FAQ about their PPC program:
1. How do I know the Click Protection System is working?
First of all, to verify the effectiveness of the Click Protection System, you must have a tracking URL in place on all of your listings.
We provide our advertisers with traffic from many sources and this means that an advertiser's Web logs often show a click or a pageview as coming from Yahoo!, MSN or CNN. This can be confusing.
An Yahoo tracking URL removes the possible source of confusion. Suppose you are the advertiser who owns the site http://www.joesbagels.com
Your tracking URL would be: http://www.joesbagels.com/?source=yahoo.
With the tracking URL, you are able to review your Web logs for the phrase "source=yahoo." You will be able to see that Yahoo is delivering you lots of targeted traffic, including lots of traffic from sites like Yahoo!, MSN and AltaVista. Read more about tracking URLs.
Um... That doesn't address the question at all. It's a nice, long answer, and most people will probably never read it to realize that it has nothing to do with what was asked, but I did.
2. Does Yahoo! Search Marketing monitor the effectiveness of its Click Protection Software?
When situations arise in which our specialists discover click patterns that do not seem to be valid clicks, Yahoo! Search Marketing immediately refunds affected advertisers.
We had some fun with this one recently. We got charged $14,000 for clicks on an account where we had budgeted $30. We were told it will be four weeks for them to investigate. That's a pretty drawn-out "immediately."
3. How close to my budgeted amount will I actually spend?
...your monthly spend comes very close to 30 times your daily budget.
Great. I'll tell accounting right away. We'll be very close to our budget, folks. Yahoo assures me. How close? Which way? Will be slightly overdrawn? Do I need to deposit an extra 5% to cover the potential overage? An extra 20%? I dunno. Maybe I'll go check their FAQ.
4. Can I modify my budget amount after I've set it?
Yes, you can change your budgeted amount at any time on the Budgeting page under the Money Manager tab by logging into your account. Please note that any changes you make to your budget will take effect within a few hours, and only affect your spend going forward (your target monthly budget will be recalculated and a new 30-day period will begin).
This is fantastic. Not only will my changes be implemented within a precise "few hours" (is it 3? or 8?) but Yahoo will helpfully start managing my budget on 30-day cycles from that point. So if I see my spend is a bit too high on the 15th and I nudge it down, Yahoo will begin sending me traffic spikes on the 16th of each month. Unless one of the months is February, or one of the other non-30-day months. (Count your knuckles.)
I won't mention the references to their monthly minimum fee, which was discontinued months ago.
How can Yahoo do this? They're an Internet company. They're supposed to be good... aren't they?
I thought Google's PPC program was clunky and hard to work with, but Yahoo has changed my perspective rather dramatically.