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Has anyone else contacted YPN, or are we just sitting here whining? We need them to know about the problem.
Total Daily Revenue From Contextual Advertising Program:
I figured it must have been you sailor....
Both YPN and G SUCK today! - about 20% earnings total.
At least its a 3 day weekend...
One site is reporting that a 0.00% CTR and 0.22 CPM were the cause of the problem for Thursday. The site receives more than 20,000 page visits and over 3,000 uniques daily.
These are the same numbers now as my low paying crapola banner ads!
ugly .. just plain ugly!
I am going to have a meeting with my partner Sunday and we will make a decision as to whether to abandon YPN or not.
It was a good ride while it lasted.
Holy cow, almost in panic mode.
I couldn't handle the less than 35 cent CPM for four days.
This makes NO sense at all. My traffic levels are up 30%, ad impressions up 30%, clicks up 25% and YPN is paying me out less?
Statistically this doesn't add up. This is bullsh*t.
nazis at google.
That's pretty unnecessary and unjustified.
Just wanted to jump in here and let you know that we've been experiencing some unexpected system glitches over the past few days and are working to get things back up and running as quickly as possible. Once the issues are resolved, your account performance should return to normal.
Will keep you posted as I learn more. Thanks for bearing with us.
YahooSarah
Glad to know that the fault wasn't with my site and that earnings should recover soon.
Once again, thank you.
But I would feel it would be better to get an official company statement posted on the YPN website. There are thousands of publishers and advertisers who don't come here to be in the loop. If YPN wants to keep their business partners, don't you think the company should show proper business etiquette by keeping them informed via email or on the website? This is not the place to do that. Besides, we don't know who you are and are making a big assumption here.
From standpoint, ads continue to get served on my site and they don't look any different than normal. Just what is the problem here that is causing a drop off in 80% in earnings the last three days? I mean c'mon, my traffic is up 30% this month. Statistics the last 6 months say, you should be paying me out more not less.
Why should publishers eat these days on the account of YPN's failure here? We have a choice to move our ads to Google or another PPC provider. What's with the withholding of information like this? It makes your company look bad.
Publishers should be given a payment guarantee in the event that the advertiser is getting his ads placed on our sites, and you the ad broker, are failing on your end. As long as the ad can be clicked and the visitor taken to the appropriate site, this is your fault, not ours.
I think I'll wait a couple days before unpacking though.
your account performance should return to normal
Meaning what? We will be credited with the lost earnings over the last few days, or not?
The ads have been on target and nothing seems unordinary, so the "glitches" must be in reporting...
If "return to normal" means forgeting about the last few days, and today's losses, and moving on, then this is worse than a glitch in my opinion. As for now, all my ads are being switched back to AdSense, until the "glitch" is fixed.
I received more information this morning, so I hope I can provide a bit more clarity now. Last Friday we launched some new code into production. Several complications occurred during the launch, and as a result overall system performance was impaired. We've stabilized the situation now and expect to continue to make improvements over the next few days.
On behalf of the entire YPN beta team, I apologize for the inconvenience. Please continue to let me know how your sites are performing -- your feedback is really valuable to us as we continue to refine our beta program and work through our growing pains.
YahooSarah
I really love that you guys listened and put the message within the YPN Messages on the "My Publishing Center".
Thanks for listening and helping us out by telling us the situation. It is much appreciated.
So far it seems to be updating much quicker than the past few days, good news. As for the earnings, it's still too early to tell.
I'll leave a message later today about how the earnings are performing.
This is a reporting "glitch" and something has been changed to produce even less earnings for us publishers. This is the fourth consecutive day for me.
All ads on my site continue to be served, and are of the same quality and type. This long weekend continues to see a surge in traffic for my site and YPN is paying out severely less. 80% less. Two quarters of statistics shows that YPNs recent changes are conflicting.
I can't buy into any of this, beta or not. Today is not any better than the previous. I've switched all YPN ads to Google.
Join me and I'm sure the "glitches" will go away. This is your only way to keep the program honest moving forward. YPN will have to earn my and your loyalty.
If you are uncomfortable being a beta tester and subjecting your site to revenue risks, don't participate.
Does it suck that there's an error? No doubt. Should Yahoo make it up to us if the advertisers were still paying the same amount in that time period? Certainly. But really, let's all calm down and see what goes on from this point forward before we all pull up our stakes and leave the camp site.
So far Yahoo has been very, very good to me and a few days problems won't change my perspective of them.
Sarah, I'd love clarification on the following things:
1) Were the advertisers still paying the same amount during the past few days?
2) What happened to the 'missing' revenue during the time period in question? Was it traceable and will our accounts be credited, if so?
3) Once stabilized, will earnings return to where they were prior to Friday?
4) What is a good ETA for when things will stabilize completely?
5) Has Yahoo changed it's payout structure in any way whatsoever?
Thanks a lot for your responses so far!
The message states that the complication/code changes happened on Friday. What happened on that Tuesday?
My earnings saw two huge drops over the past week, one on Tuesday and another on Friday.
Was there an earlier change on Tuesday as well?
For Saturday I had 25% fewer clicks reported through Yahoo then what I had in my tracking program. For Friday it as 28% fewer clicks. This is with 100+ clicks. It should also be noted that I don't have this tracking program on all of my pages so not all clicks were reported so the percentages of clicks not reported in Yahoo is even larger.
I am also having the same problem as others where my traffic increased but the number of clicks decreased. One example is my traffic increased 100% (25,000+ views) but the number of clicks decreased 30%.
Like I was saying before I don't know if these clicks are being filtered or if they are just being lost by Yahoo. Unfortunately I don't have any data prior to the reporting problem with Yahoo to compare to.
Personally I have pulled my ads from Yahoo for the time being. I might put them back on towards the end of the week to see if the revenues come back, but right now I don't have alot of trust with the Yahoo network. I really hope these problems get fixed since Yahoo was doing much better for my sites then Adsense.
You know, in every beta program I have been in, there has always been properly conducted communication in a public forum that sits on the company's site. What's with all this secrecy of OvertureRep showing up on a website that has nothing to do with YPN. That right there says a lot no matter how you spin it.
Why doesn't YPN put its best foot forward and be held accountable in this case by showing publishers they screwed up and pay us what we deserve. Deflecting the issue and not wanting to go on public record formally leaves sour grapes in our mouths.
What changed out of this? That just because a supposed OvertureRep arrived to acknowledge they had problems we are to feel better?
The OvertureRep arrived three days after the fact while we publishers were here complaining. I did business for YPN during that time. Business is business. I'm not a fool, are you?
Pay me!
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that deliberate vitriol is probably the worst way to get these companies to listen to our feedback. Should we rant and rave like spoiled kids until they decide to withdraw help from this forum, or treat them like partners and give them at least some respect in letting them answer before we behead them? I'm not saying you have no gripe. I do too: I'm out a LOT since Friday. But I also recognize that without YPN in the first place, I would not have ever expected to earn what I now do, in just a couple of days.
Just please think about which mode will be more beneficial for getting the most out of this interactive relationship. I'm also going to assume that WebmasterWorld likes that fact that Yahoo and Google and MSN have representatives who post here and would like you to treat them with respect as well, but that's just an assumption.
When the system goes down, do they even have the courtesy to let us know? No. When you call them, do you get questions deflected back to you like a politician trying to cover his arse?
You forget who holds the cards in the contractual agreement between you and the PPC provider. When you cannot see the bid and ask price for the ads, and do not have any leverage to say what is a fair percentage of the cut, I'm sorry to say there is room for manipulation.
Trust is very important in a PPC arrangement. With YPN not communicating with its customers in a proper fashion, they are setting themselves up for scrutiny. And I will use the fact this is beta, a period where user feedback is important.
So don't speak for them. Let them speak for themselves.
Just want to clarify a couple of things here. First and foremost, please know that this is absolutely not a result of a change in payout structure. Advertisers did not pay the same amount as usual per click -- the code launch I mentioned earlier today affected advertiser CPCs, so the earnings you've seen are based on what advertisers were actually charged by Yahoo!.
Many of you have already seen improvements today, and should continue to see more improvements over the next 1-2 days. We expect the systems to be fully stabilized and upgraded by Wednesday.
Hope this is helpful - thanks again for your patience.
YahooSarah
