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Yahoo Publisher Network: Another Way to Have Your Website Earn Its Keep
By Merle http://MCPromotionsPress.com  (c) 2005

Have you ever wished for someone to come along and compete with
"Google's Adsense Program"? With the launch of "Yahoo's Publisher
Network"(YPN) you could say that some wishes really do come true.

If you're not familiar with Adsense or YPN, both programs allow
you to add specialized coding to your website pages and then
display text-based ads which are related to the content on the
page. For example, if you have a sports related website theme,
then ads would be shown for sporting goods and services.

Google had this market cornered for a long time, but with YPN
there's now some "friendly competition" -- which is a good thing
for everyone involved.

Yahoo's Publisher Network (YPN) is currently in beta and only
available to publishers in the United States. You can apply for
the program at http://publisher.yahoo.com. Word on the "Internet
Street" is that Yahoo hopes to be out of beta by the end of the
year and has plans for offering additional services as well.

Once accepted into the program (which they're calling "Content
Match"), you'll need to log into the YPN control panel to select
your ad formats and colors. There are 10 different ad unit sizes
to choose from. For example: Square 250X250, Large Rectangle
336X280, Small Rectangle 180X150, Banner 468X60, and so on. Most
of the sizes offered are similar to those you'll find on Google's
Adsense.

Customized color schemes can be created for your ad layout, or
you can go with any of the standard ad colors. You can set
background color, text and link colors.

YPN offers full reporting and tracking capabilities. You can
track up to 50 channels to find out which pages and ads are
your top performers.

Once the code is in place on your pages, Yahoo will crawl your
site's content to insure that relevant ads appear. If no targeted
ads are available, public service ads will be shown.

YPN gives you a bit of control over competitors' ads showing up
on your site, with the option of blocking up to 200 of them.

In their efforts to differentiate themselves from Adsense, YPN
is also offering something called "Ad Targeting." This allows
you to choose up to two ad categories for your entire site, or
just for specific pages. This is done in order to target your
visitors with ads based on their specific interests. This in no
way guarantees that only ads from those categories will be shown;
it just gives Yahoo a better idea of what types of ads you'd
like to see appear on your site.

You can choose up to two categories per targeted URL, to a
maximum of 50. If you don't see a category that fits your pages,
you can always suggest it be added. There are currently 20
categories to choose from. For example "automotive, B2B,
computing," with 109 sub categories.

If you've been showing Google ads on your site for some time now
and are thinking about adding YPN's to increase your revenue,
keep in mind it is against Yahoo's terms of service to display
any other contextual ads on the same pages as theirs. So if you
want to run both programs on your site you'll have to put one on
each page, or get your hands on a rotation script that will
rotate both ad types, one at a time, on all pages of your site.
One such script can be found at Shoemoney
(http://tinyurl.com/bg3kf)

Another really nice feature that Google is lacking is Yahoo's
"Balance Transfer Option." If you also use Yahoo's Search
Marketing Program for your pay-per-click advertising and you
use the same user name and password for both, you can transfer
money from your publisher network account at YPN to your
sponsored search account. There are no minimum amounts for
transfers and you'll need to manually make the request in order
to move the funds, but this is a handy feature.

When it comes to payday and any earnings you may have coming to
you, there is a minimum payout of $100.00 before Yahoo will cut
you a check. Checks are sent 45 days after the close of the
calendar month. For example, any earnings made in September will
be paid to you by November 15th. I'd like to see them shorten up
the pay cycles in the future, as most small entrepreneurs
generally need cash sooner rather then later.

It's going to be interesting to watch this new race heat up
between Google and Yahoo. Competition is always a good motivator
and who knows, it may encourage Google to offer new features as
well knowing they don't have the corner on the contextual market.

Keep your eyes peeled for future changes and enhancements and
may the best man win!

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