Does YPN have an inventory shortage?

[farmboy]

On one of my sites, I have a list of "steps" required to complete a certain business task. Because of the number of steps, I broke the list up into two pages.

The first page displays the first half of the steps and the second page displays the second half of the steps.

The layout of the two pages is identical. Page 1 has an AdSense display and page 2 a YPN display, both of the same size and in the same location on the pages.

AdSense always seems to have a full inventory (4) of targeted ads to show and it's not always the same ads. YPN always shows just one ad in the entire spot and it's always the same ad.

Do they have an inventory problem?

FarmBoy

[mvander]

I think YPN has always had an inventory issue. That is partly why their targeting is off - because they don't have the very specific advertisers like Adsense does. I could put up a page about an aqua-colored-reading-helmets-for-cats and I think Adsense probably has an advertiser for that.

YPN has the chicken before egg, egg before chicken problem.

They aren't going to get the advertisers until they have a good publisher base - but they won't get a good publisher base without advertisers.

For me right now I'm sticking with YPN for better or worse because we need to have another ad program to compete with G.

[dbcoders]

Well if they would ever get out of "beta test" things may improve.

[wyweb]

They can't get out of beta until things improve. Adding thousands and thousands more publishers to an already weak ad inventory is not likely to improve things.

[ann]

Actually nothing is gonna improve for either Google or Yahoo until they learn to show ads that by pass the built in Micro$ IE dire warnings about malware and virus that is nothing more than a scare tactic to under mine both Google and Yahoo.

Once the Giants are in trouble Micro$ will come out with a set of ads that bypass all IE's dire warnings and they win, hands down!

With hungry publishers waiting in the wings how long before they can have their pick of the web publishing sites?

Ann

[Edge]

Does YPN have an inventory shortage?

I have had an inventory shortage with both Adsense and YPN forever. I am niche and serve many-many ads. YPN targeting does not help either.

[inbound]

Does YPN have an inventory problem?...

As a publisher with a full Yahoo XML feed I can say with certainty that they have an inventory problem that is exacerbated by a poor matching algorithm.

We used to have the feed set to advanced (broad) match and it was terrible as a 2 word term would never work well (they would deliver ads for just 1 of the 2 words) and then we changed to exact match and they just don't have the inventory.

We're not talking about them having to match content here, we actually get to request the search term that they send ads back for. They have a serious problem that I know they are working on, the problem is that no-one wants to work for Yahoo, Google is the place to be (or even MS for some people). Yahoo is behind in terms of market position, perception and pay, it's not going to be easy to bring the talent in to fix the problem.

[cfx211]

I think YPN has always had an inventory issue. That is partly why their targeting is off - because they don't have the very specific advertisers like Adsense does. I could put up a page about an aqua-colored-reading-helmets-for-cats and I think Adsense probably has an advertiser for that.

I seek a direct advertising relationship with you for this page. Adsense has been catering to all the big players in the cat reading helmet market lately and leaving little guys like me out in the cold. We have the only aqua colored cat reading helmets, and have been recognized by Cat Reader's Digest for three years running. Please contact me regarding direct banner placement or link exchange ;)

[ann]

Yahoo still has a significant number of my page views and I have been noticing that they are not clicked much and they tend to show the same ads 2 to 3 times on the same page...Yes, they must be low on advertisers.....!

Ann

[Skeptic]

YPN's algorithm seems to lack the ability to think "sideways" yet.

I run a majority of "travel" related sites. After I saw YPN repeating the same ads, I added some extra text for them to crawl (typically more ALT text added to other affiliate ads already on the page).

That did the trick - YPN is now showing a variety of ads for me: Luggage, cameras, gps navigation devices, etc.

[mvander]

I have been noticing that they are not clicked much

Yes that's true, I find the same result. But with certain areas, I do generate more EPC from Yahoo than Google, so the lower CTR equals out or sometimes shifts it toward Yahoo over Google. Just depends on the type of ads.