Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

1. How can I spend less and get a higher click-thru?

Yellow Page Categories you select and Ads you create determine how much you spend on your Campaign. To obtain higher Click-thru Rates and more cost-effective Campaigns, select Yellow Page Categories and Ad copy specific to the services or products you offer. Create and maintain multiple Ads for each Yellow Page Category in your Campaign. We'll rotate Ads in a Campaign automagically to help you find and retain better performing Ads and disable the others. Don't edit an Ad that has run a while. Disable it instead and create a new Ad with the edits. That way you can compare the performance of the two and decide which one is better based on data, not guesswork. Click here for tips on creating effective Ads.

2. How do you determine my Ad's position?

We display at most 10 Ads in a column on the right-hand side of Yellow Page Category Pages, one Ad above another.

We assign an Ad's Position (1 to 10, highest to lowest) based on its past performance. We run Ads with higher Click-thru rates in higher positions because they are more likely to be of interest to Prospects than Ads with lower Click-thru rates.

Click here to see how Ads appear on the page or click here to sign up with Smarter AdWords and preview your own Ad.

3. How do I add money to my campaign?

To purchase additional Impressions for your Campaign, follow these steps:

1. Log into your Account.
2. Select the View / Edit Campaigns link at the top center of the page.
3. Select the amount you want to increase your Campaign Balance by $20, $50 or $100.
4. Select the "Increase Campaign Balance for ..." link for the Campaign of interest (where "..." is the name of the Campaign) and complete the PayPal transaction.
5. We'll increase your Campaign Balance by the amount of your payment when we receive confirmation. If your Ads haven't been running this will automagically enable them to run.
6. You might want to enter/update your Target Notification Threshold.
7. Note that increasing your Campaign Balance is absolutely free in the next several months during the beta phase.

4. How do I stop running a Campaign or inactivate my entire Smarter AdWords Account?

You can stop running a Campaign at any time by following these steps:

1. Log into your Account.
2. Click the View/Edit Campaigns link near the top of the page in its center.
3. Under Campaign Status clicking on an Active link will make that Campaign inactive (and clicking on an Inactive link will make it active).

To completely inactivate your Smarter AdWords Account, inactivate all of your Campaigns.

5. How do I begin my Campaign?

Create at least one Ad. Complete Account setup by responding to the email we send you. Then we setup your new Campaign with an initial free Campaign Balance of $10. To add to your Campaign Balance see How do I add money to my campaign? See How can I predict my Impression cost? to estimate how much to add to your Campaign Balance.

6. How do I place an Ad under multiple Yellow Page Categories?

When you created your Campaign you created an Ad that appears on Yellow Page Category Pages of the Yellow Page Category of the Listing your Ad's URL links to.

You need to add a Listing under EACH additional Yellow Page Category you want to add an Ad under. Once you've created new Listings log into your Account, select "View / Edit Campaigns" and then select "New Ad" for the Ad you want to replicate. The form will appear with all fields filled in. Leave Ad text as is and replace its URL with the URL of one of the new Listings. Click on "Create Ad." Repeat with the new URL of each additional new Listing. (To add new Ads under the SAME yellow Page Category follow these directions and change the Ad text while leaving the Ad URL unchanged.)

Don't take the time to re-type Listings to replicate them under additional Yellow Page Categories. Simply view the Listing you want to replicate and select the link at the bottom titled "Send SMARTERyellowpages.com your feedback (about the above Listing)." Use the form to send us a list of additional Yellow Page Category NAMES (as they appear on SMARTERyellowpages.com) you want to replicate your existing Listing under. We'll advise you when we've added your new Listings. Then add your new Ads as described above.

Yellow Page Categories you select for your Listings and Ads MUST be relevant to your service or product offerings.

About the Smarter AdWords Program

1. What is Smarter AdWords?

Smarter AdWords Program is a simple and quick way to purchase highly-targeted advertising, regardless of your budget. We display at most 10 Ads one Ad above another on the right side of Yellow Page Category Pages. Yellow Page Categories you select for your Ads must be relevant to your service or product offerings.

Users looking for a CPA, for example, select Yellow Page Category Pages about CPAs, on which we display Ads by CPAs. Which means we display your Ads to users who are specifically looking for your offerings. And is why we call SMARTERyellowpages.com users Prospects, and why Smarter AdWords highly-targeted advertising can be a cost-effective way for you to reach them.

This is contrasted with Ads on Internet search engine result pages that are displayed to users looking for services or products, but are also displayed to users doing research for work or a school paper, or to users looking up an old friend, etc, who may have no interest in buying your services or products.

Highly-targeted advertising averages four times the industry standard Click-thru rate. Many advertisers experienced even higher rates. We cannot guarantee your Ads will perform this well, but we do offer you tools to help you create Ads that are effective in driving traffic to your Listing. Once a Prospect Clicks-thru to your Listing its purpose is to motivate them to contact you and make it easy for them to do so.

You don't need a website to profit from Smarter AdWords. Your free Listing may include 500 words of copy, which equals 2 standard web pages, which is more than enough to motivate Prospects to contact you.

2. What are the guidelines for my Ad content?

All Ads must meet the advertising standards found in our Editorial Guidelines.

Text: Ad content is in the format of 25 characters for the title, 35 characters each for three text lines, and 100 characters for the URL to your Listing at SMARTERyellopages.com. Fewer characters may fit on the line if the text line contains too many wide characters like capital letters, lower case 'm' and 'w', and certain punctuation marks like '@', '&' and '%'.

Family Safe Ads and Listings must be Family Safe, which means they do not contain adult themes like gambling or pornographic content.

3. How much will my Ads cost?

Your Ad cost depends on:

• Where we display your Ad (its Position)

Prospects are more likely to click on higher Ads than lower ones, so a higher position is worth more to you, which is why we charge higher rates to display Ads in higher positions:

$15	to display 100 ads in position 1
$12	to display 100 ads in position 2
$10	to display 100 ads in position 3
$8	to display 100 ads in each position 4 through 10

When you are one of multiple advertisers in a Yellow Page Category, your Ad's position is automatically determined by its past performance. We run ads with higher Click-thru Rates in higher positions because they are more likely to be of interest to Prospects than Ads with lower Click-thru rates. We display at most 10 Ads.

The total cost of Impressions depends on more factors than Position as is discussed here: How will I be charged for my advertising campaign?

4. What kind of reporting is available?

As a registered Smarter AdWords customer, you can log into your Account at any time to view reports on your Campaign's performance. Reports can be generated for the day, week, month or life of your Campaign. Report results include number of Impressions served and Click-thru Rates for all Ads. Also financial data. The data in these reports will typically be up to the minute.

5. How secure is my information?

We understand that making an advertisement purchase online involves a great deal of trust on your part. We take this trust very seriously, and make it our highest priority to ensure the security and confidentiality of the information you provide to us. The information you provide us will only be used by us, and only in an effort to better serve you. We do not trade, sell, or share your personal information to anyone.

6. Can I place my Ads above the results?

We do not accept "premium service level ads" placed at the top of Yellow Page Category Pages on which we also display Smarter AdWords Ads, or anywhere else.

7. Will my Ad appear in all browsers?

Some old browsers like Netscape 2 or below and IE 2 or below may not display some Ads properly. Far less than 1% of SMARTERyellowpages.com Prospects use browsers with this constraint. Click here for current SMARTERyellowpages.com statistics on browsers (click on "Browsers" in the left menu, then click on "Browsers" in the drop-down).

8. Which firms may have an Ad campaign?

Smarter AdWords Ad campaigns are available to San Francisco Bay Area Firms only.

About Syndication

1. What impact will syndication have on my account?

We do not syndicate your Ads to other websites. Your Ads will appear at SMARTERyellowpages.com only.

About Your Campaign

1. How can I predict my Impression cost?

We estimate below how many Impressions to expect per month. We base estimates on historical data so they cannot precisely predict the future. To increase the time-relevance of estimates we limit them to the last 30 days. (Estimates are actually made over the last 720 hours, which means estimates can vary throughout the day, not just from one day to the next.)

Yellow Page Categories cannot be exclusively purchased for a Campaign. Currently, all categories are available to all customers (as long as the category is relevant to your service or products offerings). When more than one customer uses the same category for a Campaign, all customer Ads triggered by that category are made available to be served as Impressions. The Position in which each Ad is shown depends on the past performance of the Ad. When more than 10 customers use the same category in a Campaign, the 10 Ads with higher Click-thru Rates tend to be shown more often and in the top Positions, which means the estimates below will tend to be an upper bound. (All Ads in a Campaign are rotated into the cycle based on their Click-thru rate.)

Historical data is on this page. It lists the 200 most popular Yellow Page Categories. The most popular category is Accountants-Certified Public, for which we displayed 1303 Yellow Page Category Pages in the last 30 days. The category name Accountants-Certified Public is followed by a "(1-1303)". The first number is the ranking, 1 to 200, and the second is the number of times we displayed Accountants-Certified Public Yellow Page Category Pages in the last 30 days (Page Impressions). If your Ad is shown every time its Yellow Page Category Page is this would be the number of Impressions for your Ad. If your Ad category is one of the top 200 you can use this page to estimate Ad Impressions. For all categories in the top 200 an upper bound to your monthly Impression cost is the sum of the $0.15 x that categories' Page Impressions for each category you have an Ad under.

If your Ad category is not one of the top 200, you can use the last of the top 200 categories, Video Equipment-Service & Repair, with 119 impressions in the last 30 days, to estimate the upper bound of page impressions for your category (because all categories not in the top 200 will have fewer Impressions than 119). For the 3395 categories not in the top 200 an upper bound to your monthly Impression cost is about $17 for each category you have an Ad under. If you need a more accurate estimate, the bottom of each Yellow Page Category Page displays the number of Yellow Page Category Page Impressions in the last 30 days for that category.

2. How do I change my Ad text?

You can change your Ad text at any time by following these steps:

1. Log into your account and click the View / Edit Campaigns link.
2. Scroll down the page until you see the Ad you want to edit.
3. Click the Edit link adjacent to the Ad you want to edit.
4. Make your text changes and don't forget to click Update Ad.

For tips on how to create successful Ads, click here. Rather than changing Ad text, you may want to deactivate the Ad and create a new Ad with the modified text. That way you preserve the performance data on the deactivated Ad and can determine if the new version performs better or worse than the original.

3. How do I change my campaign yellow page categories?

You can change your Campaign Yellow Page Categories as follows:

1. Log into your Account and click the View / Edit Campaigns link.
2. Scroll down the page to an Ad you want to edit the yellow page category for.
3. Click the Edit link adjacent to the Ad you want to edit.
4. Update the URL to refer to your Listing in the new Yellow Page Category and don't forget to click Update Ad.

4. How quickly will my scheduled ad appear?

Most new Ads are posted within minutes after an order is placed.

5. How do I select the best keywords and key phrases to include in my Ad?

Smarter AdWords does not use keywords and key phrases as search engines do. We place Ads based on Yellow Page Category Pages only. Appropriate keywords in the text of your Ads can be useful in motivating Prospects to Click-Thru to your Listing.

Charges, Billing and Payment

1. How will I be charged for my advertising campaign?

When you open an Smarter AdWords Account, we grant you a free $10 to start your Ads running right away. You then pay an amount to obtain the Campaign Balance you need to meet the budget you select for your Campaign. See How can I predict my impression cost? to decide how much you want to budget per month initially (as time goes on you'll be able to determine a more accurate monthly cost). To update your Campaign balance, see How do I add money to my campaign? At the same time you should also set a Target Notification Threshold.

Your total Impression cost depends on:

• Where we display your Ad (its Position)
• The number of times we display your Ad (number of Impressions), which depends on:
  • How many Yellow Page Categories you assign Ads to.
  • How popular your Yellow Page Categories are with Prospects.
  • How many other advertisers are competing to place Ads in your Yellow Page Categories

Prospects are more likely to Click-thru on higher Ads than lower ones, so a higher Position is worth more to you than a lower one, which is why we charge higher rates to display Ads in higher Positions:

$15	to display 100 Ads in position 1
$12	to display 100 Ads in position 2
$10	to display 100 Ads in position 3
$8	to display 100 Ads in each position 4 through 10

When you are one of multiple advertisers in a Yellow Page Category, your Ad's position is automatically determined by its past performance. We assign Ads with greater Click-thru rates to higher Positions because Prospects are more likely to be interested in them. We display at most 10 Ads per Yellow Page Category Page.

2. How and when will I be billed?

When campaign Impression charges reduce your Campaign Balance near zero we'll email you that we stopped running your Ads. To increase your Campaign Balance see How do I add money to my campaign? To insure your Ads run without interruption you can set a Target Notification Threshold.

You can view your Campaign Balance, Target Notification Threshold, total fees, plus many statistics at any time online by logging into your Smarter AdWords account.

3. How does the target notification threshold work?

Target Notification Threshold As we run your Ads your Campaign Balance is reduced by the cost of Impressions when your Ad is displayed on Yellow Page Category Pages. When your Campaign Balance falls below the Target Notification Threshold you set for your Campaign this triggers an email from us notifying you that your Campaign Balance has fallen to your target amount. You can use your notification email in many ways, including:

• You can use your Target Notification Threshold as a Campaign Spending Limit, log into your Account and suspend your Campaign. You might do this to keep to a monthly budget.
• You can use it as an automatic advisory of how fast your Campaign Balance is falling, log into your Account and reduce your Target Notification Threshold to the next Campaign Balance level you wish to be advised about. (You can always log into your Account and get an up-to-date accounting of your Campaign Balance, but this is not automatic.)
• You can use it to log into your account and increase your Campaign Balance to keep your Ads running without interruption. To increase your Campaign Balance see How do I add money to my campaign?.

4. Can I pay by check? Credit card?

We currently accept payment only by PayPal. With PayPal you may use your PayPal account or use your credit card.

5. What if my ad isn't being shown often enough, and I decide to cancel my campaign?

Our cancellation policy is outlined in our Terms and Conditions. You should investigate whether there are additional Yellow Page Categories you want your Ads to appear under. You also may want to experiment with different text in your Ads to improve your Click-thru rate. Click here for tips on how to create successful Ads.

Contact Us

1. What if I have a question about my campaign, or if I have a suggestion to make?

Please send us a message about your Campaign by logging into your Account and submitting your message or suggestion there. You can also submit your suggestion/question by selecting the "Contact" link below. We look forward to hearing from you.