Lightburn

Finally, something of use from Yahoo! Search Marketing. After years of suffering through their online UI, Yahoo! delivered a useful and beautiful desktop application. Adobe Air makes this app work like you’re on top of a cloud; smooth transitions, nice rollovers, and attractive download screens. I actually don’t mind using Yahoo! Search Marketing any longer. I used to dread it.

The things I like:

Design is good. The proper things are highlighted, it scales very well, and it’s a reasonably comfortable workspace.

Cut Copy and Paste keywords and ad copy. Enough said.

Revert Changes. I know, most Search Engine Marketers ARE perfect. But a Revert Changes/Undo feature is nice…for some of us.

Import / Export is a nice feature. It makes copying a campaign from Google or Microsoft adCenter pretty easy.

Time for Negative Nancy* to join the conversation:

Status of a keyword is either Paused or Unpaused. What’s wrong with the word “Active”? Apparently at the Yahoo! offices, the employees walk around reinventing the English language. Eat lunch and you’re Unhungry. Drink some coffee to become Untired. Yes, I am annoyed by the smallest of things.

Horizontal Scroll becomes an issue if your keyword stats are downloaded. It’s impossible to just glance at a single keyword stat without losing your place in the extremely wide list of information. It’s annoying. My resolution is 1280 x 1024 and I still had an issue.

Lack of view options add to the frustration of horizontal scroll. There are no options to hide or cut out columns of data.

The Help button is an external website link! One of the best things about a desktop PPC editor is that you can use it without an Internet connection (Yahoo even boasts this as a feature). What use is a link to your help website if I’m not connected to the web?

The Verdict

This is such a huge improvement from the online UI that I have to be happy with it. I will definitely spend more time and probably more money with Yahoo! because of this tool. It’s easier to create new accounts, build additional campaigns, add keywords, and even easier to update single keyword bids. Even if they are late to the game, this is definitely a step in the right direction. A much appreciated step.

For more information and the download, visit the YSM Desktop website.

*apologies to those of you named Nancy. I’m sure you are a delight to be around and not at all negative.