Yahoo - Smartpricing Is here.

Errrr quality based pricing that is...

[Jafo]

Got an email as I am sure most of you have by now.

[reuters.com...]

Yahoo Inc. is introducing a new pricing feature for customers of its recently upgraded Web search advertising system that allows them to pay for online ads based on the quality of each site's audience.

The new pricing, one of the new features enabled by Yahoo's Panama pay-per-click advertising system, assesses the quality of a site publisher's traffic based on its capacity to attract customers highly valued by advertisers, Yahoo said on Monday.

So much for YPN paying out so much better than Adsense.. All of that is over..

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 2:33 am (utc) on June 5, 2007]
[edit reason] added link. switched quote (can't do email in forums) [/edit]

[ember]

YPN is losing publishers as it is because they can't target their ads. Do they really think that paying publishers less is going to make them stay? And whose fault is it if users are clicking on ads that do not meet their needs when YPN is the one who is feeding those irrelevant ads?

[Erku]

I think YPN first needs more the advertisers than the publishers. That's why they are doing this, to keep the comfort level of advertisers. They can run ads in their search engine too.

[weeks]

Erku is correct. My analysis of Google's annual reports and especially their SEC filing for their IPO revealed that little of their traffic comes from other websites.

Indeed, one of my associates is fond of saying that the money G pays to publishers is more for advertising G than it is for bringing clicks to their advertisers.

Go into Yahoo search and look at the ads in any category which you are even slightly familiar with and compare the ads to what you find at Google. Unless it's a very, very competitive area, the ads are of lower quality. And, in the areas which I am most familiar, less in number.

[kkobashi]

Last year Will Johnson, the then VP of YPN (who later quit) said that quality was a driving theme. He hinted that quality websites and quality advertisers could do business together creating a quality advertising network. I stuck to that them for over 19 months now as a beta publisher.

Now, smart pricing comes in for publishers that were already pre-screened and deemed quality publishers.

So what's the incentive for publishers to continue using YPN? Why would I want to put ads on my site that are mistargeted AND receive less revenue than before?

If today is any indication, smart pricing has hurt my earnings by almost 60%. Frankly, I'm about to head to Adsense if this continues.

THIS IS NOT GOOD.

[shallow]

<<YPN is losing publishers as it is because they can't target their ads.

This is the understatement of the year...maybe a couple of years.

I've had to remove a lot of their ads from my site because they are so poorly targeted. Additionally, there is so little variety and they keep repeating the same ones over and over and over again.

Oh, and don't you love their publisher polls! They want "free" information about how one's site is doing. They should really be asking questions about how they are doing, and how they can improve their service.

I can't see how things can get much worse but, if they do, I'll be dropping YPN.

[TammyJo]

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System: The following 5 messages were spliced on to this thread from: http://www.webmasterworld.com/yahoo_publisher_network/3358607.htm [webmasterworld.com] by tedster - 4:11 am on June 5, 2007 (EST -4)

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Quality-based pricing will give us the ability to price traffic commensurate with the value that advertisers receive from each traffic source. We recognize that this approach may have an impact on how you operate your business, and as a valued Yahoo! publisher we wanted to let you know about this new feature, as you may notice fluctuations in your Yahoo! Publisher Network earnings.

Sounds like a good program...if you are a good site. Looking forward to see the impact:)

[edited by: TammyJo at 1:34 am (utc) on June 5, 2007]

[rehabguy]

This should be interesting, considering Yahoo can't tell real estate from plastic surgery right now (targeting issues) - I don't really see how they plan to judge the value of a web site!

[ember]

We have quality sites with AdSense and they chopped our earnings to practically nothing, so I imagine YPN will do the same.

[TammyJo]

They seem to do pretty well on the search engine ads, I was hoping the targeting would tranlate over to us with this new initiative...like an added perk.

Really though, two new "upgrades" (to me) means they are working on things!

It may be wishful thinking, but I prefer to be optimistic, change is good, yet only time will tell:)

[Paris]

Ember, don't take it personally. A quality website -- and quality traffic -- are not the same thing.

[Jafo]

I agree with some here, they should have worked on relevancy long before smart pricing.

[agile]

This is a step in the right direction. However, I would argue that they need to take it a step further and give advertisers more control over where ads are listed. Google gives advertisers much more control. You can even specify at the campaign level whether to run ads only for searches initiated at Google.com. If I could do the same at Yahoo, I would spend more advertising with them. In my experience, visitors that come from searches at the major engines view significantly more pages than those that come from partner sites.

[TammyJo]

I just read the option for the advertisers and the siginifigance for the publisher.

Seems I may be mistaken.

-They were letting publishers know their revenues may be changing.
-They are telling advertisers to expect to pay less per click.

-This only means it will NOT be getting better for the publisher.

All I know, which ever company pays more for our quality traffic, will get our business. :)

Hopefully this works out for both parties.

[sailorjwd]

As said above, they can't possibly get quality referrals on the content network until the targeting improves.

I bet the guy advertising awnings on my software site doesn't get a single sale.

If this was April 1st then i'd be laughing - it isn't so I'm crying.

Can anyone at Y! read?

[ember]

It's easier to blame and punish us publishers than it is for YPN to take responsibility for and fix their lousy targeting.

[bennyp]

I can tell Yahoo! right now that my quality of traffic for their ads will suck. My readers are interested in ads that have something to do with the subject. Political readers aren't interested in seeing ads for Vonage and mortgages.

[kkobashi]

For the last two days since Smart Pricing announcement, the quality of my traffic hasn't changed. Its all from natural organic search. The last two days ad impressions have increased 50%, yet YPN is paying me 50-60% less. I take a look at the ads and they are no different than they were last month. In addition, every category with the exception of ad impressions has fallen 50% or more.

Something is very wrong with that picture.

As far as I can see, there is no reason to be with YPN if this trend continues. They've lost whatever advantage they had from a publisher's point of view.

Quality is only as good as the quality that is delivered throughout the network. By lowering the standards to increase advertiser interest, YPN has effectively hurt the very reason why publishers would want to be in the program.

Sorry, this is just a very poor marketing effort from one of the world's top Internet companies. After 20 months, you would think this mess would be solved by now. Instead, they continue to struggle and lower their own bar.

[batcavenet]

My impressions counted actually went up in the last week, as well as my revenue. Not as good as it was before but definately doing better this month.

[Fish_Texas]

Smart Pricing? How about Smart Targeting...

I stuck with it from the start myself...Now they're paying 1/2 price for cr*p ads.
Don't make good business sense to me to stick around. Duh!

I've already gone home to G.
CTR way up...Times 10...happy visitors.
PPC up from before. Cashing good checks.
No worry about targeting. "Right On The Money"
Sleeping like a baby and going fishing...
Can't get any better.
Fish Texas