I run 1 Yahoo account offering keyword group campaigns to UK businesses. I currently run approx 2500 keywords.

I had it set up so that each customer was a category that I could click on to see all the keywords, adjust the bids where necessary & and adjust titles/descriptions all from that page.

These categories are now ‘campaigns’, and I am now forbidden to create new campaigns when I take on another customer, as I am above their new maximum of 20. Customer Services told me that I will have to bunch customers together into single campaigns or open new accounts!

With the old system I could have, say, 10 keywords in a category, each with different titles/descriptions(ie. ads). To do that now I would have to have 10 different ad groups within the 1 campaign- which is above their adgroup maximum.

To enable me to take on new customers after the upgrade I spent several hours setting up a hundred empty ‘spare’ categories prior to the forced upgrade last night, which I was told would transfer across OK, even though their campaign max is 20 for new accounts. Guess what? THEY DIDN’T TRANSFER ACROSS!!! What a total waste of time that was.

The ‘manage categories’ console was perfect for me before, now it’s utterly hideous. This new setup hugely increases the number of clicks and menu levels I must navigate in order to achieve the adjustments required. It has reduced or removed much of the information I really need, and has given me the huge administrative task (days) of reorganising/renaming groups/subgroups/subsubgroups/subsubsubgroups!

All this means I must now base all future business on web design, adwords and Google optimisation.

The whole reason yahoo have done this is to obsure the bid amounts required for top positions, and encourage high standardised bids across large groups of keywords under the bullshit banner of ‘ad quality’ and ‘user experience’.

The proof of this is in the fact that there was no optout.