Matching Options
Matching Options - A Pox on Both Their Houses. But Advantage: Google
Google's matching options remain the most flexible and transparent. Google has broad match, phrase match, exact match and negative matching. Whereas, Yahoo offers "standard match," which is apparently similar to Google's exact match but includes some automated verb stem, plural and similar-term mapping.
Yahoo's "advanced match" appears to exist somewhere in the continuum between Google's phrase match and broad match options and broadens the net to a wider variety of related terms. Yahoo also offers negative matching. Advertisers must either opt-in to standard match alone or advanced match (which includes standard match). In Yahoo, each match type version is not a distinct match type like in Google.
There is some lack of transparency to Google's broad match, so proceed with care. Yahoo's matching can be fickle and tends to be poorly documented. Advertiser misconceptions abound on either side. This is one of those areas that separates the professional campaign manager from a pretender.
Control Over Distribution - Slight Advantage: Google
Google offers slightly more control of how ads are distributed with Search Partners and even in content targeting. Yahoo often promises to allow advertisers more control over distribution, but its instinct is to lump a lot of traffic together, not all of it coming from search. Both companies do a poor job of disclosing that alternative navigational pages like parked domains may be associated with what these companies think of as "search" inventory.
Dayparting - Advantage: Google
Google offers a full ad scheduler utility and an advanced mode that allows you to set bid percentages by time of day. Yahoo has no immediate plans to offer this. Google offers a number of advanced delivery options such as "accelerated delivery" and "budget optimizer," which are so cryptic that they're only used by advertisers for whom they appear to have been tailor-built. Yahoo doesn't have much of this stuff, which for 95 percent of advertisers is actually preferable because it lessens confusion.
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