Yahoo - 70 Character Limit on Titles and Descriptions

Yahoo will be shortening  ad descriptions to 70 words or less, forcing all to be a little more brief and concise in our marketing copy. Yahoo claims that the change is driven by a better user experience, which will result in a higher conversion rate. (DigitalGrit team: Please comment with your experiences on conversions vs. copy length?)

The skinny on short copy rules from the Yahoo blog:

As an advertiser, you have two options for your ad descriptions, one long (up to 190 characters) and one short (70 characters or fewer). At present, you may use either. Starting in May, however, a short description will be required, while a long description will be optional. This means for all new or modified ads you must provide a short description.  And starting in June, ad descriptions longer than 70 characters may automatically be cut off in Yahoo! Sponsored Search results. We will shorten the description at the nearest complete word to 70 characters, followed by an ellipsis (”…”).  Long descriptions will continue to be shown on some of our external distribution partner web sites.

One more change: "The space limit for titles will remain at 40 characters, while display URLs will be reduced to a maximum of 35 characters." Yahoo promises more information on this soon. 

I see many, many long nights ahead for the SEM team...

Thanks to MarketingVox for the tip!

Comments

[Christine Goldthwaite]

This is absolutely the future for online communications. For more about writing concise online copy read, “Your Attention Please: How to Appeal to Today's Distracted, Disinterested, Disengaged, Disenchanted, and Busy Consumer.” Here is a bit from the book description on Amazon.com: The audience you're writing for is going, going, gone... Today's consumer doesn't want to read anymore-they're already overwhelmed by overflowing e-mail, millions of Web pages, and 24/7 news proliferation. Your Attention, Please. is the new strategy guide for communicating to the reluctant consumer. It shows you who the new audience is, how to reach them, and how you must communicate differently-or risk losing mindshare and marketshare.