On one of my tech sites, I have a software page with many references to "foo" this or "foo" that. (This is a user-contributed page, and I am not free to edit out all the "foo".) I have set the YPN Ad Targeting for this page to "Computing / Computer Hardware". (This was set weeks ago, so there has been plenty of time for the YPN bot to visit and/or for this special Ad Targeting to take effect.)
So what ads do I see on this page?
"[...] Foos" [a movie actor, apparently]
"Find [...] Foos" [who?]
"Dr. [...] Foo - MD Report"
"Find Books by Foos [...]" [a well-known author, apparently]
As I understand it, Ad Targeting is supposed to override the usual context matching algorithm and coerce ads to fit a category of our own choosing. This "foo" page is a classic case demonstrating the need for Ad Targeting. Yet clearly, on this page, the Ad Targeting override is useless.
I see this on many other pages on this site--a tech site, where I have specified computing-related Ad Targeting universally. Yet I still see all sorts of off-topic ads that have nothing to do with computing or technology. (Removing Ad Targeting and letting the default context matching apply doesn't help the situation: the ads are equally off-topic and irrelevant to the topic of computing technology.)
What gives, YPN? Implemented correctly, the Ad Targeting feature should be a competitive advantage you have over Adsense. But it appears to be quite broken.
Is YPN publisher-specified Ad Targeting just a sham?
