Yahoo Contextual Ads Coming Soon

Interesting survey on Yahoo Web Hosting

[growingdigital]

I recently logged into my Yahoo hosting account and took a survey to determine whether or not I was interested in placing contextual ads on my site. They also mentioned a Yahoo search box. It looks like this product is still in the early stages of development for all those interested...

[skipfactor]

I saw some Yahoo Adsense-looking ads on a site. They had an arrow button at the top of the page that collapsed the entire ad 'window', then brought it back when clicked again.

[morpheus83]

Interesting. Targeted text advertising is a very huge market to leave out. I guess by 2nd quarter 05 we will have a lot of new players.

[webmastertexas]

Great! More competition should force Adsense and others to give the publishers a bigger piece of the pie.

[mailtojitendra]

yeah I see a lot of such collapsable ads in Yahoo Geocities, They look Nice and can be minimised vertically. Hope they come out soon with something similar to adsense. A Real Fight Between Two Big Players.

[tomda]

Collapsable adds, such as the one in Geocities, are not what I prefer. you always have to click on the tiny cross to close the window which open automatically...
Hope they will do something better than that!

[morpheus83]

Both Yahoo and MSN will pose a serious threat to adsense.

[bts111]

I hope that it does happen and I am sure that it will.

I just hope that we are not made to only choose one program, according to TOS.

It means more money for all of us : )

[Jon_King]

>>Both Yahoo and MSN will pose a serious threat to adsense.

Maybe so, but it is difficult to whip up on the first-to-market without some real product difference.

I think folks that have low CPC or have been booted out of AdSense will have the same probelems in Y.

I also don't see Y providing an income incentive to switch, they won't be paying a higher click percentage IMHO.

There may be news from PubCon on this. :)

[tomda]

>>Both Yahoo and MSN will pose a serious threat to adsense.

And if they are clever enough, their range of adds should have the same size than G.

So that, webmasters can easily cut and paste without remodeling their layout.

[europeforvisitors]

IMHO, if Yahoo or MSN really wants to compete with Google in the contextual-ad category, it should focus on how to win over advertisers who are leery of Google's potluck approach to "content ads." A little bit of selectivity, combined with better advertiser controls, could easily attract businesses that wouldn't touch Google's content network with the proverbial ten-foot pole.

[morpheus83]

I dont think Yahoo and MSN will have problems getting advertisers to sign up. Both have are veteran players and have immense talent and resources.

[europeforvisitors]

I dont think Yahoo and MSN will have problems getting advertisers to sign up. Both have are veteran players and have immense talent and resources.

Yes, but they have an opportunity to reach mainstream advertisers that Google hasn't been able to reach, if they can offer a level of quality closer to that of traditional media and direct marketing.

[David Bruning]

sounds good, as long as they call the ads:

"Ads by Yaaaaaaaaaaaahooooooooo"

;)

[loanuniverse]

EFV:

I can see the commercials already mocking the quality of the network...... You are right about that being a possible angle.

The downside: If you make high claims of quality, the advertisers will hold you to it.

[elguapo]

Will the big boys want to be actually seen on the websites of the small guys? Or would they want to be seen in a more premium site? Either way, if Y or M would want to compete with Adsense using G's model of utilizing the small guys, I see tighter quality controls - perhaps even tighter than G.

[Clark]

This is good news indeed. For every market there are angles and approaches that would appeal more to one group than another.

[ownerrim]

I wonder if Yahoo's entry would have the effect of driving down bids on both adsense and hoo-sense

[nsqlg]

Y! already have contextual ads technology working using Overtune advertises on free homepages hosted by Geocities.

[Imaster]

Didn't Google have a patent for the contextual advertising technology for webpages and email? If so, would they be able to restrict the entry of Yahoo and MSN in this field?

[rapidcars]

ownerrim makes a very good point. More competition among networks means lower prices for the advertisors. So while we may get a higher cut, our overall revenue could go down drastically since the bids aren't as high because of the competition. Should be interesting to see what happens

[birdstuff]

More competition among networks means lower prices for the advertisors.

This assumes a static pool of advertisers but that pool is actually growing. It will grow even faster if prices drop which will tend to drive prices back up in the end.

I believe that more competition is better for publishers in the long run regardless of any short-term EPC drops.

[Clark]

I guess the truth is that we don't know how it will affect publishers. It might be good, might be bad.

[neo_brown]

How can another option be bad? There may be changes to the value of ads, but there would no doubt be anyway.
The bottom line is if the monopoly is broken Google will not be in nearly so powerful a position as they are now. I mean, in order for me to stop using them (small site) they would have to start paying less than someone like Burst before I could leave them.

[europeforvisitors]

I think birdstuff is correct--and let's not forget that networks will compete for quality publishers in the same way that they compete for advertisers.

[rubenski]

This is exciting. I sure hope I will get an alternative to Adsense in the future. Not that Adsense is bad, on the contrary, but their strict ToS gives me the creeps.

I think the effect on revenues for publishers is really very hard to guess. (1) Ad programs will compete for advertisers and publishers. (2) Publishers will try to find the highest paying program and (3) advertisers will choose the program that gives them the highest ROI. (This looks a bit like the economical equivalent of the 'three body' or 'three particle' problem in physics :P)

I'll just hope for the best :)

[europeforvisitors]

This is exciting. I sure hope I will get an alternative to Adsense in the future. Not that Adsense is bad, on the contrary, but their strict ToS gives me the creeps.

IMHO, AdSense's TOS (and standards in general) aren't strict enough. It's likely that a serious competitor would go for quality rather than quantity. There's got to be a "sweet spot" between the current Overture approach (general-interest megasites with little penetration in high-profit niches) and the Google approach (lots of niche publishers but very little quality control or reassurance for the advertiser).

[novice]

EFV Said

"There's got to be a "sweet spot" between the current Overture approach (general-interest megasites with little penetration in high-profit niches) and the Google approach (lots of niche publishers but very little quality control or reassurance for the advertiser)."

I can't help but think that google already has something like this in the works. They just announced AdWords Professionals maybe soon there will be AdSense Professionals. It can be set up similar to AdWords Professional, but for publisher where they would pay $50 to have there sites reviewed and take an exam to see if they qualify.

The exam could be as simple as questions like, What is your experience in your field?, Where do you get the information on your site from?, Where does your traffic come from? etc..

These types of sites would give advertisers more confidence to run text ads on them.

[loanuniverse]

Novice: I like the idea of an Adsense Professionals.

ASA that is a good idea.

[eddy22]

Excuse me but is this forum a mere speculation of Yahoo Contextual Ads Coming Soon? Any truths to it?

edds