Yahoo's Contextual Ads in the Wild

Here's hoping that this competition results in higher revenue sharing with the publishers.

And along with the hopes of higher revenue sharing, I'd like to add that I'm hoping this competition will bring communication about percentages of revenues being shared.

While we're asking for ponies, I'd like to see real-time stats as well.

I hope you don't mind a bit of self linkage - but here's a bit of a heads-up on what this actually is: http://www.10two.com/blog/2005/03/yahoos-adsense-or-is-it.html

Andy: good point, well made; I've updated my post accordingly. However, I don't think the technology is new. I do wonder why Yahoo/Overture have left it so long before opening this up to all publishers.

Tobacco product in the ad ? Seem Yahoo going on some niche Google have refuse to go !

It will be very nice if Yahoo will provide more accurate stats than current Overture Keyword Selector tool. But it sounds too good to be truth, no?

It's a minor point, but how hard would it be for programmers to add a / after br tags to make them xhtml compliant?

I bet they're going to roll out second quarter, along with an Overture name change:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050301/yahoo_overture_2.html

Well, the ads appear to have good context from here. I mnean, really, have you seen what's advertised to the right of this page? :)

Yahoo’s network will undoubtedly rise to the number two position if/when it’s released for small publishers. I agree that things will improve for publishers, but will this spread ad buyers money to thin and lower costs?

Good for advertisers - bad for publishers. By decreasing the depth of the advertiser pool (effectively splitting it while opening new venues) text ad prices will drop in the short run.

It will be good to see some good competition to google's monopolised Adsense.I hope it helps the publishers.

the post from the yahoo guy is more than a year old.... when do you belive the testing is done?

This is great news for webmasters who use Adsense. A little competition will be GOOD. There's a discussion which stemmed from this blog (the link was taken down by a MOD, something about no links to blogs) at webmasterworld. Here's the link.

Competition will be good for everyone

Wow, the targetting on the individual entry (players cigarettes) is quite off.

Finally a long needed alternative. Google arrogance and greed is unspeakable. Who said "Make no evil"???

Now they have to change their bad attitude and start thinking for publishers who make their money, not just for themselves. Hope the Overture service would be available very soon and will serve very relevant contextual ads.

Great to see this... thanks for it...
I am looking forward to test the YPN service ASAP

cheers,christoph c. cemper

Google just closed my AdSense account. My router is unsecured network with the name of my site .com so I can "advertise" with the residents of my building.

I guess they detected that I login to my account from the same IP people used to connect to the Internet and click on the AdSense words.

On top of that, s.o. clicked 600 times on the ads which is what I think really did it for my account.

I have no hope they will reinstate my account. Reading blogs, it seems that Google are indeed ARROGANT.

For my case, how simple would it be for them not to pay for clicks made from an IP address used to login to an account with them? Pretty simple, eh?

Also, why simply not count the clicks made in exsess from that one IP that clicked 600 times? I know they did not count them as the balance that days was $8.

The way they declare a publisher fraud and just cut off their account is the unreal...

Cheers,
P.

Overture's now called Yahoo. They're re-branding all of current services under Overture to "Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions" so it's good not to see them as separate entities.

Also, although AdSense tends to have higher clickthrough rates, Yahoo's content matching does have better reporting capabalities. Gotta give it to them for being ahead of the competition on that point.

I guess my confusion with this post is the big differentiation being made between content matching and contextual advertising? Yahoo's content matching IS contextual; it's keyword driven as well as content driven (text relevant to the original search term is found in the text).

Hmmm,yahoo to do contextual huh,could prove to be interesting.

Another one?

http://wdr1.com/blog/

so it's valid.

Christoph, I had problem with google adsense too ....for few days someone used bot and clicked many times on my ads and they closed my account with reason "bad clicks" I asked for report but the answer was "in trying to protect our advertisers we can't share such details to our publishers...."
And from that day I can't apply for google adsense never more ... and this only because someone made that against me :( I tried to apply with another sites for google adsense program but no result ... when someone go in the blacklist can't apply more .....

I hope yahoo will be good for publishers ....

I didn't even have to do anything and those ads are blocked. Go go aggressive Adblock definitions!

I tried AdWords a few months before but in my report was displayed a few clicks but no money :o) Has anyone this experience?

Hey there,

Nice scoop. I've been hoping that Yahoo will come up with something of this sort for quite some time now. Google does need some good competition, and fast, to make things more exciting in this arena and to let us publishers have some good options as well.

still not released? anyone know when Yahoo is going to be open?...wondering if they are waiting for MSN to show their stuff?

Having 3 major 'players' in this arena would be a grand thing for online publishers. Here's hoping Yahoo! and MSN can get their products released sooner, rather than later. :-)

Google cancelled our AdSense account as well. Bogus if you ask me. What is to stop a competitor from clicking like mad on your site and getting your account canned! Any update as to when Yahoo will be coming out?

Adsense has gone into the shitter over the past year. With all other variables remaining the same basically, our per-click revenue has gone from a $1 on average to less than a dime. Indeed many times I'll see stats like: 3 clicks, $.09 total revenue.

It's not even worth the bother running adsense anymore. We are looking at alternatives.

My google adsense disabled, now a bidvertiser.. i hate it, not calculating clicks... i hope for yahoo...
Does anyone knows about msn ads ???

YPN or Yahoo Publisher Network (beta)is out and I was invited to join. To help webmasters I created a ypn forum YPNhut.

It is going to be good to see. With MSN also coming out with their vesion, the competition should be better for all of us!

Damn. This is like a year ago and there's still nothing right? That's more than a little slack. Haha.

Google, the self appointed Internet information disseminator and filterer adds a new benchmark to its greedy business model. Google keeps yelling about giving their advertisers and ofcourse "themselves" the ultimate selling experience at the cost of publishers. However, they have now gone a step further in making their "search user" a victim of their advertising greed.

The new light background color of the Google ads which have replaced the green background ads are now making unsuspecting users click on them thinking they are top results produced by the "Saintly Google". Nice ! Have a look at the faint color on the top right corner mentioning the "sponsored ads". Wow... while publishers now have to sport the huge "Ads by Google" logo on their sites, the common user doesn't see Google proclaim the same in large bold text. Why? Simply because the Big G wants to make the most of their own direct revenue at the users cost.

So now, the common user who made Google popular is being used as a pawn to increase advertising revenue. Even the top 10 results for a keyword like "mortgage" are actually high paying Google adwords advertiser. Sweet!

This, in my opinion is the biggest click fraud by Google. Google is making a fool out of both publishers and users.

Why should users be subject to ads with the light background? Why has the green background color been replaced? Its time to stop the masquerade.

Eagerly awaiting YPN.