Have you ever wished for someone to come
along and compete with "Google's Adsense Program"? With the launch of
"Yahoo's Publisher Network"(YPN) you could say that some wishes really do come
true.
If you're not familiar with Adsense or YPN, both programs
allow you to add specialized coding to your website pages and then display text-based ads
which are related to the content on the page. For example, if you have a sports related
website theme, then ads would be shown for sporting goods and services.
Google had this market cornered for a long time, but with
YPN there's now some "friendly competition" -- which is a good thing for
everyone involved.
Yahoo's Publisher Network (YPN) is currently in beta and
only available to publishers in the United States. You can apply for the program at http://publisher.yahoo.com. Word on the
"Internet Street" is that Yahoo hopes to be out of beta by the end of the year
and has plans for offering additional services as well.
Once accepted into the program (which they're calling
"Content Match"), you'll need to log into the YPN control panel to select your
ad formats and colors. There are 10 different ad unit sizes to choose from. For example:
Square 250X250, Large Rectangle 336X280, Small Rectangle 180X150, Banner 468X60, and so
on. Most of the sizes offered are similar to those you'll find on Google's Adsense.
Customized color schemes can be created for your ad
lay-out, or you can go with any of the standard ad colors. You can set background color,
text and link colors.
YPN offers full reporting and tracking capabilities. You
can track up to 50 channels to find out which pages and ads are your top performers.
Once the code is in place on your pages, Yahoo will crawl
your site's content to insure that relevant ads appear. If no targeted ads are available,
public service ads will be shown.
YPN gives you a bit of control over competitors' ads
showing up on your site, with the option of blocking up to 200 of them.
In their efforts to differentiate themselves from Adsense,
YPN is also offering something called "Ad Targeting." This allows you to choose
up to two ad categories for your entire site, or just for specific pages. This is done in
order to target your visitors with ads based on their specific interests. This in no way
guarantees that only ads from those categories will be shown; it just gives Yahoo a better
idea of what types of ads you'd like to see appear on your site.
You can choose up to two categories per targeted URL, to a
maximum of 50. If you don't see a category that fits your pages you can always suggest it
be added. There are currently 20 categories to choose from. For example "automotive,
B2B, computing," with 109 sub categories.
If you've been showing Google ads on your site for some
time now and are thinking about adding YPN's to increase your revenue, keep in mind it is
against Yahoo's terms of service to display any other contextual ads on the same pages as
theirs. So if you want to run both programs on your site you'll have to put one on each
page, or get your hands on a rotation script that will rotate both ad types, one at a
time, on all pages of your site. One such script can be found at Shoemoney http://tinyurl.com/bg3kf.
Another really nice feature that Google is lacking is
Yahoo's "Balance Transfer Option." If you also use Yahoo's Search Marketing
Program for your pay per click advertising and you use the same user name and password for
both, you can transfer money from your publisher network account at YPN to your sponsored
search account. There are no minimum amounts for transfers and you'll need to manually
make the request in order to move the funds, but this is a handy feature.
When it comes to payday and any earnings you may have
coming to you, there is a minimum pay-out of $100.00 before Yahoo will cut you a check.
Checks are sent 45 days after the close of the calendar month. For example, any earnings
made in September will be paid to you by November 15th. I'd like to see them shorten up
the pay cycles in the future, as most small entrepreneurs generally need cash sooner
rather then later.
It's going to be interesting to watch this new race heat up
between Google and Yahoo. Competition is always a good motivator and who knows, it may
encourage Google to offer new features as well knowing they don't have the corner on the
contextual market.
Keep your eyes peeled for future changes and enhancements
and may the best man win! |
