Hello, I’m Leo Sato (@slamdunk772), the CEO of applemint, a digital marketing agency in Taiwan!
When it comes to digital marketing promotion in Taiwan, Google and Facebook are the most popular choices, but did you know that there is also Yahoo ads?
You might think Yahoo ads are already gone but they are still present.
In fact, Bing Ads is actually run by Yahoo in Taiwan. For those who use Windows probably know about “Bing” and think it’s run by Microsoft, but that’s not the case in Taiwan. Also, the search engine for Yahoo Taiwan is actually Bing.
You may think “Bing” is negligible since a lot of people use Google but in Taiwan, people over certain age continue to use Yahoo Taiwan as their primary search engine.
In this blog, I’m going to share with you the background of Yahoo Taiwan and some key numbers in regards to Yahoo ads in Taiwan. If you are interested in digital market of Taiwan, this blog may tell you Google and Facebook are not the only options.
Contents
Differences between Yahoo Japan and Yahoo Taiwan
First of all, let’s talk about the differences between Yahoo Japan and Yahoo Taiwan. Did you know that Yahoo! in Japan and Taiwan are operated by different companies? If the companies are different, the search engines they use are also different.
Search Engines
Yhoo JAPAN’s search engine is the same as Google’s. In other words, Yahoo! JAPAN and Google theoretically have the same search results. However, if you search for the same keyboards on both Yahoo Japan and Google, the results are actually different.
The main reasons for this are as follows:
- Why the search results are different even though they are the same search engine
-
- Personalization
- Browser environment (search location)
- Differences in advertising
However, it is important to understand that Yahoo Japan search and Google search are the same.
Next, Yahoo in Taiwan (Yahoo! Qima) uses Microsoft’s Bing as its search engine. The search engine for Yahoo in Taiwan (Yahoo! Qima) is Microsoft’s Bing, and Yahoo search engines outside of Japan also use Bing.
Now that we know the background of Yahoo Taiwan, let’s move on to the main topic of Yahoo Taiwan usage and advertising effectiveness.
Usage of YAHOO Taiwan
In this section, we will summarize the usage rate and user distribution of each search engine in Taiwan. In order to make it easier to visualize, I have lined up the data for Japan for comparison.
Below is the data as of November, 2021. First, let’s look at the search engine market share in Japan and Taiwan.
Google is the dominant player in both Japanese and Taiwanese markets, but Taiwanese people’s dependence on Google is very pronounced. Yahoo Taiwan’s search engine share is only 7% of the Internet population.
Since there are approximately 21.5 million Internet users in Taiwan (as of 2021/12), Yahoo Taiwan’s 7% share translates to approximately 1.6 million actual users.
Therefore, the final decision on whether or not to run search ads (Bing ads) on Yahoo Taiwan hinges on whether or not there is a core target audience for your product among these 1.6 million people.
User Distribution
The following table shows the gender ratio of the 1.6 million Yahoo search engine users.
In both Japan and Taiwan, the ratio of male and female users is about 50-50, so there is not much difference. Next, let’s compare the age ratio.
In Japan, the ratio of users expands as the age group increases, and users in their 50s are particularly fond of using Yahoo.
Conversely, in Taiwan, the largest percentage of users are in their 30s, and the average age of users is lower than in Japan. This means that search advertising on YAHOO Taiwan could be a tailwind for companies that are developing products for people in their 30s.
Next, let’s take a look at YAHOO Taiwan’s advertising menu.
YAHOO Advertising Menu in Taiwan
Currently, there are three major types of Yahoo advertising menus available in Taiwan
Bing Ads (Listing Ads)
Search ads in Yahoo Taiwan and Bing search ads are available.
You will be amazed at how low the cost per click is when you actually run Bing ads.
Because there are such few advertisers on Bing, the competition is so low that you can bid very low on keywords that would otherwise cost a lot of money on Google’s search ads. I’ll show you the actual cost-per-click comparison in the next section, along with some examples!
Yahoo banner ads are ads that appear in Yahoo Taiwan. Yahoo banner ads are relatively inexpensive and provide a large amount of exposure.
You can place ads on pages operated by Yahoo such as news, investment, weather, and some news sites. Targeting is possible using user information collected on the browser such as age, gender, interests, purchase history and search history.
There is also a menu of ads called native ads, which look like part of a newspaper article. They have a slightly higher click rate than banner ads (unfortunately, the click rate has been very low in recent years).
Yahoo Shop Owner Menu
This is an advertising menu for those who own a store in Yahoo Taiwan.
The price varies depending on the number of exposures. Normally, there are two types of digital advertisement: pay per click and impression-based advertising. In the former, the cost is incurred when the ad is clicked, and in the latter, the cost is incurred when the ad is exposed. This menu is for the latter.
This type of advertising is mainly for those who have a store on Yahoo. You can attract users to your Yahoo Shopping site by exposing your ad.
Unfortunately, I have not tried this type of advertising yet, but I would like to share a story about the time I placed an ad on “momo shopping network” instead.
I was working for a client once who ran a top page banner on momo.com, and I remember they charged by impressions, just like Yahoo.
The cost was not cheap, but the result was a significant influx of traffic to the client’s momo page and a certain number of purchases.
Examples of YAHOO Ads
Now that we’ve covered the ad menu, let’s take a look at some examples of Yahoo search ads (Bing ads) in action, along with some numbers.
High desktop purchase rate
Yahoo Search Ads (Bing Ads) tend to have a high conversion rate from desktops. Products with a high desktop purchase rate may be expected to be purchased at a better price than Google.
Here are the numbers for clients who rent out their WIFI routers (pre-corona)
| Device | sessions | Conversion rate | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Desktop | 9600 | 14.61% | 1403 |
| Mobile | 4924 | 4.81% | 237 |
| Tablet | 461 | 10.41% | 48 |
This CVR is exceptional. You normally won’t get this high CVR.
Low Cost Per Click
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are few advertisers in Taiwan that engage in Yahoo’s search advertising (Bing advertising). In general, the more keywords you bid on, the higher the price. This means that even for popular keywords that are expensive to bid on in Google, you can bid unbelievably low in Bing.
Yahoo Search Ads (Bing Ads) is a great option for those who are struggling with the high cost per click in Google.
The following is a comparison of the cost per click for skincare keywords in Google and Bing.
| Keyword | Bing Cost per click | Google Cost per click |
|---|---|---|
| Brand Name | 3.01 NTD | 4.27 NTD |
| Japan Wholesale | 3.12 NTD | 7.41 NTD |
| Japan Recommendation | 4.00 NTD | 30.07 NTD |
Disadvantage: Difficulty to cooperate with other media
Let me tell you about some of the disadvantages. So far, we know that Bing ads do not contribute to the number of conversions for media other than Yahoo! For example, there are extremely few examples of users coming into a site from a Bing ad, and then a few days later, coming in from an ad on Facebook and making a purchase.
This is good because the conversion path is simple and the results are easy to measure.
However, I feel that it may be difficult to work with other media to strengthen the conversion of Bing ads.
Recommended Products for Bing Ads
Based on the above examples, applemint recommends Yahoo ads for advertisers with the following product characteristics:
1) Many conversions via desktop (BtoB as well)
2) Products and services with high market competition
3) You want to target direct conversions rather than linking to other media.
If you have any questions about Yahoo advertising, please contact applemint!
To sum up the blog in a nutshell:
(1) Yahoo Taiwan is owned and operated by Verizon, an American company.
(2) Yahoo Taiwan is used by about 8% of the Internet population, with the largest number of users being men and women in their 30s.
(3) Yahoo Taiwan has search ads (Bing ads), display ads, native ads, and ads for stores.
(4) In our case study,
- Low cost per click with few competitive bids
- However, it is difficult to promote across different media.
- However, cross-media promotion is difficult.
Bing ads are not as scalable as Google ads, and some people are concerned about the cost of outsourcing operations. In addition to this, we also provide consulting and support for in-house operations.
For more information, please contact us here.
Click to contact applemint.
