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Any control over the new Yahoo Publisher Network?

Or are we looking at another AdSense type situation?

         

limitup

4:45 am on Oct 3, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Once the Yahoo Publisher Network is out of beta, I assume that when you enable your Overture ads to show on the content network they will start showing your ads all over the YPN as well, just like AdSense...

I haven't used Overture in awhile but I'm looking to ramp up my PPC advertising so I'm thinking of giving them another try. Can anyone tell me if they currently allow you to opt out of specific "content sites", and/or will they allow you to exclude specific YPN sites the way Google lets you exclude content sites you don't want your ads on? Or is it an all or nothing kind of thing? And if I remember correctly Overture currently provides conversion reporting for their content network, but not on a per-site basis right?

JohnCanyon

5:43 am on Oct 3, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I would avoid their publisher network like the plague, their "Partner" network is already pathetic enough. In fact.. their partners account for roughly 70% of our overture traffic and 0% of our ROI, pretty said to say the least.

If they introduce their "publisher" network without the ability to target geo-locations we will definitely pull our ads from their network.

J

limitup

6:47 am on Oct 3, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Geo-targeting is nice for those that need it, but for many with a web-based or nationwide product/service it is useless. What we really want is the ability to block/exclude specific sites the way Google allows. This way you can block those that are underperforming.

JohnCanyon

7:23 pm on Oct 3, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Sorry, I should have elobrated further. Their partner network accounts for 70% of the traffic we receive from them, 95% of that traffic is from places like India, Thailand etc.

Since our company does not do business outside the USA and Canada this is obviously not worthwhile for us. Fairly shocking that we are not able to limit where our ads appear this day and age.

J

Tropical Island

8:53 pm on Oct 3, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Fairly shocking that we are not able to limit where our ads appear this day and age.

That is the one big advantage of AdWords.

You can choose languages and countries where your ads appear.

It makes the targeting so much better.

Their system is a little more complicated than O/Y's however once you have it figured out and you have a little CTR history to work with it is 1000% better.

There is no reason for them not being able to stop US ads appearing in India - Yahoo has used this geotargeting for ads for years.

JohnCanyon

9:49 pm on Oct 3, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



We just ran more analysis from last months numbers. We received 89% junk traffic from O/Y, this constitutes foreign traffic that comes in through mispelled domain names such as #*$! dot com. Of this 89% of traffic ( roughly 21,000 visits ) we had a conversion of 0%. Approximately 11% of the traffic we received from their system came from "well known partners" ei. Yahoo, Altavista of which 99% of the traffic was from the USA.

So apparently it looks like its their "partners" who are totally unable to geo-target. Now obviously what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Y has simply turned a blind eye to this issue.

When I confronted my rep about this, he simply told me that there is no way for them to stop the partners from displaying our ads ourside the USA, and that there is no way to request NOT to show on their "partners" pages. Thus this results in a massive expense, for example $6,000 spend, 89% junk traffic = $5340, yahoo traffic $660.

Its obvious to see why they "CANNOT" afford to allow you to turn off the partner ads.

J

limitup

10:02 pm on Oct 3, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Great info. I'm sure the market will demand a solution to this in one way or another, it's just a matter of time. If Y doesn't listen, they will only be left with a small handful of clueless advertisers. Or are there more clueless advertisers than I imagine? LOL

Tropical Island

11:13 pm on Oct 3, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



If you think it's bad now wait until they lose MSN.

Then you will find that scrapper.com is now a major partner.

The whole thing is spinning into oblivion.

Where they are going to find enough advetisers with deep pockets who are prepared to go on their content network worldwide is beyond me.

No targeting, limited negative terms and unworkable interface - how long is left?

shorebreak

9:12 am on Oct 28, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Limitup, there *are* more clueless advertisers than you can imagine...

NetPro

9:10 pm on Oct 31, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Just to add to this discussion.

I recently scanned through my third party tracking to check out some of the IPs coming from Yahoo Search, not Content, but the Search Network.

I found IPs from India from some of the search partners <snip> and even found one from Italy that came right from Yahoo.com!

For the record, I have a US/Canada account and don't expect to see any foreign traffic at all. How do they get away with this?

I would advise everyone to check their stats because it seems to me Yahoo's traffic is getting worse and worse.

[edited by: werty at 9:35 pm (utc) on Oct. 31, 2005]
[edit reason] Removed Specific URL [/edit]

shorebreak

2:57 pm on Nov 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



NetPro, while I agree that the general quality of Yahoo search traffic is declining slightly relative to Google, it *is* reasonable to expect that a certain percentage of international users are going to use Yahoo.com rather than Yahoo.it or Yahoo.fr. In the same way we have novice internet users here in the States and who search for 'Yahoo.com' in the Google search box, overseas not everyone knows to visit country specific domains.

Tropical Island

4:51 pm on Nov 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I have been a GoTo/Over/Yahoo advertiser from the beginning and even when I used to go to Yahoo.com I could not see my ads from here in Venezuela. I had to use a US proxy.
That is not the case today.

I don't know at what point the change occurred however in the past if you had an Over search account you would only get Yahoo US isps showing ads.

That change is part of the subtle way that Yahoo has been changing. I geolocate where my ads will appear with AW - I don't want to be paying for clicks from countries I will not do business with.

NetPro

7:41 pm on Nov 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Shorebreak

I have a US/Canada account and regardless of what country the user comes from, if they are outside of the US and Canada, they should not see my ads, regardless of what version of the SE they use.

If you're familiar with Google Adwords, you should know that a searcher from the UK who uses google.com will only see ads from advertisers targeting the UK. They will not see ads from advertisers that target the US.

Yahoo should work exactly the same to provide quality traffic. As said above, it would appear some changes have been made to the way Yahoo targets ads.