“Behind the Click” advancing Yelp’s search advertising platform

At Yelp, a key area of focus and product investment for us is building a more efficient ad system that delivers greater value to advertisers in the form of more high-intent clicks at a lower average cost. Our goal is to help advertisers connect with potential customers in ways that elevate the experience for both sides of the marketplace.

According to a survey of Yelp users, 90% of people make a purchase within a week after visiting Yelp* — helping match businesses with this high-intent audience is where Yelp’s ad system comes in. A lot is happening behind each click as our machine learning models and bidding algorithms are constantly improving ad relevance to better match advertisers. This includes analyzing hundreds of signals — from search location to search filters to time of day, and more — to create a robust matching system that prioritizes showing the most relevant ad to that user.

Watch the video below to learn more about the significant advancements we’ve made to Yelp’s advertising system.

These product investments have contributed to lower average cost-per-click and higher retention rates. In the second quarter of 2021, average cost-per-click declined by 20% and ad clicks increased by 87% compared to the prior-year period. Our retention rate for non-term advertisers’ budgets also increased more than 40% compared to the second quarter of 2019.

As we continue to innovate on our ad system to deliver more value to our advertisers, our teams are consistently executing on our multi-year portfolio of product initiatives to help better connect local businesses with the high intent users that come to Yelp every day.

Read more about how we continue to develop new products and features to help businesses succeed on Yelp here.

*June 2019 survey by SurveyMonkey of people who reported having used Yelp in the prior 3 months