Move Over AdSense!
Yahoo Publishing Network
It's here.
AdSense lovers and former AdSense lovers alike have been waiting
for an alternative to the grand daddy of pay per click
advertising, and now they have it.
Rolled out by Yahoo, the program is titled the Yahoo Publisher
Network.
Right now the program is still in "Beta" or the last software
testing phase before a production rollout.
While it is still early, YPN is getting high scores in most
categories.
Members of the program have been reporting via message boards
that Yahoo seems to be going above and beyond in their efforts
to respond to and work with publishers. In fact, Yahoo has been
cold calling members just to get an idea of how they feel about
the program. Very impressive.
The user interface or control panel is simple and somewhat
similar to AdSense. It offers channels (called tracking
categories), numerous performance reports, and payment history.
Another neat feature is that from the control panel, publishers
can transfer funds from their YPN account to their Yahoo Search
Marketing account.
As far as designing ads, users have full control over ad design
and layouts. However, there are only ten ad types and nothing
similar to AdSense link units as of now.
Now, the good stuff.
As far as earnings, most webmasters are reporting high earnings
per click, in some cases four and five times more than that of
AdSense. The earnings have caused quite the buzz within
webmaster circles, but some speculate that Yahoo intentionally
but temporarily launched the program with high earnings to draw
from the AdSense publisher base. Time will tell, but earnings
are definitely high.
High EPC is a perfect segue to the bad news: Targeting.
According to many publishers in the program, ad targeting, the
program's ability to place ads relevant to your page, is
challenged to put it mildly. The reason that targeting is so
important is because targeting is the number one factor in how
many site visitors click the ads also known as the clickthrough
rate.
Sites that have been getting relevant ads are reporting
tremendous earnings with YPN. Those without good targeting are
getting less, but, interestingly, many are keeping YPN ads on
the pages claiming that the higher EPC is compensating for the
low CTR. On our site http://www.NJLawman.com, we
have found this to be true.
Every site will be different. Testing, testing, and more testing
will be the determining factor for your site, but we highly
recommend that you sign up with YPN and give it a try.
AdSense is a trusted friend, but it's kind of nice to now have a
choice.
Good luck, and good earnings!