Received email from Yahoo!

Y!Q Challenge

[GerBot]

YPN is finally here.
Well it is Y!Q and it is in Beta but I'm excited!

<Sorry, no email quotes, not ever
See Terms of Service [webmasterworld.com]
and Brett's post [webmasterworld.com]>

[edited by: tedster at 6:24 pm (utc) on May 23, 2005]

[razinkane]

If they raised the prize level to a million, I might consider it, why give up my 8 - 12K a month from AdSense, just to test Y! ad system? The whole idea is just plain stupid!

[Erku]

One of the most ignored but best performed concepts in Economics is Price Elasticity.

I think Yahoo should use this concept to lure the people who already are using Adsense successfully.

Yahoo needs to share good portion of revenues so more people sign up for the service. This means more revenues for yahoo.

[annej]

They need to get more advertizers as well and in more areas.

[Tropical Island]

They need to get more advertizers as well and in more areas.

Therein lies the problem they will face.

[WallyWorld]

Well, I put their Y!Q on a couple places on my main site but after some thought about how Yahoo has jerked me around I decided to remove it and trim other Yahoo services that I was paying through the nose for back to zero.

I'll wait for that Million dollar offer from them along with "razinkane" before giving Yahoo products any further thought.

[razinkane]

All Yahoo had to do was say they were doing a 30/70 split, and they would have seen a lot of webmasters running over to show them the ropes of where to place the ads.

[Erku]

I think you are right. Yahoo telling webmasters the revenue share would put them at an advantageous position over it's main competitors. Becuase it is much better to know what you can expect and therefore project the earnings, than not know it and just be at someone's mercy.

[ownerrim]

A defined revenue split would be fantastic and would cause a lot of people to abandon google. However, a defined split would eliminate smart pricing options and would probably mean that yahoo would have to be a lot more selective regarding who they admit to the program. I'm sure this would leave most adsense publishers out.

[razinkane]

However, a defined split would eliminate smart pricing options and would probably mean that yahoo would have to be a lot more selective regarding who they admit to the program. I'm sure this would leave most adsense publishers out.

I disagree, 1. Smart pricing options is bad for the whole PPC industry - Ooops we're sorry you bid so high for this keyword and it didn't convert for you, here let me give you some of your money back. BAD policy for a pay per click business plan or any business plan. So why offer it? Let the advertisers adjust their bids according to ROI.
2. Yahoo can double or even triple it's search income with a well run publisher network. That ought to make shareholders happy!

[Erku]

I agree with razinkane too.

[ownerrim]

"So why offer it?"

I hate smart pricing with a capital HATE.

But....I think I know why they have determined that they need smart pricing------>because their publisher network is so infested with scraper/crap/sh#t websites.

Advertisers are constantly getting ripped off with useless and/or fraudulent clicks. I just became aware today of a major advertiser pulling out of google adwords completely. But they WILL be keeping their yahoo search ads running.

[fearlessrick]

Transparency, like announcing the spilt ratio, would seem to be the main ticket for Yahoo. As others, I absolutely abhor the Smart Pricing model, which cuts prices to publishers.

AdSense has to do it because they alowed so many scrapers and scammers. It's all about BIG money, lots of sites, etc.

Yahoo should focus on QUALITY. Quality advertisers, quality publishers and the heck with adjustable pricing. Give publishers the lion share, enough color and placement options and away they'll go.

I have a feeling that YPN is coming soon, as Yahoo, on Monday, June 6, eliminated all fees on their auctions. At the bottom of every auction page is a box with "SPONSORED LINKS". They are expanding the reach of their network and obviously testing for content match with auctions, which covers just about everything.

The big question is whether they have enough inventory to spread off their own network and onto individual sites. But I do think we're getting close. They know they need to get this going well before Christmas, so, by the end of August at the latest, I would think.

Bye, bye AdSense and Google stock at $290/share.

[razinkane]

I think it all boils down to the unknowns for publishers as far as AdSense and Y!: 1) How much unused advertiser click budget is left on the table at the end of the month. 2) Which will give publishers the most revenue. 3) Which will give advertisers the higher ROI.

I am sure we'll learn the answers to 2 and 3 here at Webmaster World in the next 6 months. As far as how much unused advertiser click budget is left, Shouldn't that be a published figure? As media companies, they should disclose fulfillment rates by industry.