rogerd - 6:50 pm on Dec 1, 2006 (gmt 0)

After talking to the YPN people at Pubcon, I decided to give them another chance against Adsense. Unfortunately, I was quickly reminded why I turned them way down, and then off, six months ago. I'd love for them to work, but the click rate and eCPM don't come close to Adsense (not that those numbers are as high as I'd like either). Head to head, though, YPN is running at roughly 20% of Adsense (which itself is currently at the lower end of its range).

Looking at the ads, it's easy to see why. With Google, I'm getting a good mix of very targeted ads. Some are quite likely advertiser selected, but most, I assume, are contextually determined.

Yahoo, meanwhile, has somewhat appropriate ads but they are much more broadly targeted - more of a category match (yes, I have turned that on) or slightly better. Here's a fictional example:

Page Topic: Auto Racing Driver Danica Patrick Changes Teams

Google Ads:
Buy Indy 500 Tickets
Racing Team Jackets

Yahoo Ads:
Buy Car Insurance
Cheap Auto Loans

I just made those up, but they give the flavor of the problem. It seems like there are two main possibilities: (1) Yahoo can't analyze the pages as well as Google or (2) Yahoo knows what's on the page, but doesn't have the advertisers to deliver more specific ads.

Since Yahoo own search engine results aren't entirely random, I have to assume the problem is that they just don't have the quantity of ads and advertisers to match with the page content.

Thoughts? For those of you who are regular YPN users, have you seen any trend in the quality of ads and ad targeting?