Google ok with your Yahoo ads being displayed on Google

The quality is gone

[TerriGW]

I have discovered an issue where my Yahoo ads (along with my competitors) are being grouped onto a website that only displays Yahoo ads as their content. This site in turn advertises on Google and competes with us. So basically, our Google ads show, and if someone clicks the "ad only site", there is our ad again, except the Yahoo Search ad. What does Google (finally) say? -- We do not object to promotion of Yahoo ads on Google.

WHAT? Am I crazy or does this sound absurd? Of course I realize it is the $$$ driving them to accept this, but how is this a good experience for the user? Let's see... trusting user searches for "widgets", and there are legitimate ads for widgets, and they check out the ones of interest. But there are also floods of ads that promote sites that only display Yahoo ads for the content, but are misleading. Trusting user clicks the ad and wonders -- why am I seeing all these ads again? (Many Google advertisers use the same ad copy for Yahoo... we change it just a bit because of this so we know when we see our listing on a junk site immediately where it is coming from without digging into the logs.) So we turn off our ads on Yahoo because of this. Otherwise we are basically double-serving our ads on Google but it is not US doing it. Perhaps it is Google's intention to let its advertisers get fed up with Yahoo and quit advertising with them because of this. It would seem like far better business ethic to kill the "Yahoo ads only" sites from competing with legitimate content.

Any thoughts? Any one else noticing this?

[Quadrille]

So long as Yahoo! pay for the ads, I don't see a problem; Google would be crazy to turn them away, and adsense publishers wouldn't thank them, either.

It's only a problem, surely, for people displaying both companies ads on the same page ... which is against their TOS, anyway.

[beren]

^ I don't think you understood TerriGW's post. The sites are not showing both Google and Yahoo ads, just Yahoo ads and only Yahoo ads (no other substantial content). To get people to visit the site, they are advertising on Google. Yahoo! isn't paying for the ads directly; Yahoo affiliates are.

This bothers me and many people. I complained to Google over a year ago, and they said they do permit this. It's really Yahoo! we should be mad at. They have some very low quality affiliates and allow them to show pages of just Yahoo search ads. Advertisers can opt out of content match, but that doesn't stop their ads from showing on these sites.

[poster_boy]

For me, the only remedy to date has been to delete the keywords these sites have chosen to target from both engines. An awful solution... but I have found no other options.

The T&C's banning sites with no content should be enforced - regardless of the engine behind the ads.

[Quadrille]

This bothers me and many people. I complained to Google over a year ago, and they said they do permit this. It's really Yahoo! we should be mad at.

Exactly; in no respect is this a Google problem.

In fact, advertisers should probably cut out the middle man and go with Google - they are effectively doing that, and paying a commission to Yahoo.

Kudos to Google, for getting a recommendation from Yahoo!

The T&C's banning sites with no content should be enforced - regardless of the engine behind the ads.

They are getting better - but only when such sites are reported. They don't go looking.