Web Analytics Vendors Gain Access to Yahoo! APIs
A conflict over analytics vendors accessing Yahoo! Search Marketing's APIs has been resolved.
Yahoo Search Marketing has resolved an ongoing dispute with Web analytics vendors to access its search marketing application program interfaces (APIs).
Coremetrics, Omniture, WebTrends and WebSideStory have signed agreements which will allow the vendors to more closely integrate their analytics and bid management tools with their joint customers’ Yahoo paid search campaigns. Other Web analytics vendors may be given access to the APIs in the future.
Marketers will be able to use data from their Yahoo search marketing campaigns to access enhanced campaign reports through their analytics software. In addition, by sharing click-through rates, conversions and other information from their analytics software, Yahoo says it will be able to help marketers optimize their Yahoo campaigns.
“Based on our ongoing dialogues with our customers, we recognize they want more insight into their campaign performance and the quality of traffic they are receiving through their search marketing programs,” said John Slade, senior director of product management at Yahoo Search Marketing.
Yahoo will also use the information shared from marketers’ analytics programs to combat click fraud, or “unwanted clicks,” as Yahoo now calls it.
“It’s a common misperception that search engines have all of the information necessary to identify all unwanted clicks. The fact is, advertisers possess information in their Web analytics data that is proprietary to their business and can help engines detect questionable traffic,” Bryan Eisenberg, chairman of the Web Analytics Association, said in a statement.
Both WebSideStory and Omniture announced plans for a bid management application earlier this year. In addition, WebTrends has been steadily working to increase integration between its analytics product and the WebPositionGold analytics platform it acquired in late 2003. So far, Coremetrics has only detailed plans to use the APIs to integrate Yahoo campaign analytics into its Marketing Management Center (MMC).
Yahoo opened up its APIs in 2001 to a range of providers, such as SEM agencies with proprietary tools, as well as vendors like Atlas OnePoint. Analytics vendors began having conflicts with Yahoo over gaining access to its API when they began developing keyword bid management tools that would integrate with Yahoo
