I was terminated today as well. I was not ad targeting. I was changing content regularly to try and get more relevant ads, I have spoken with YPN on several occasions and back in Feb. I was asked to remove 2 high traffic sites due to low conversion. I have been with YPN since they opened. At any rate I know of about 10 other webmasters who have also been banned for low conversions over the past couple of days including some pretty big publishers. I also geo target and filter. Hopefully the 5 figures they owe me for March will be paid in about 90 days. It's odd that after all of this time they still couldn't get decent ads to show on my sites. Big surprise they weren't converting and my CTR was low.
My friend also got banned, he got an email about "excessive ads " that he didn't notice, 3 days lateer banned for "bad quality traffic" i dont know if he could've avoided this, or if he would've gotten banned anyways. Anyone?
doesnt matter. banned is banned. but ignoring an email from ypn telling you to do something is a guaranteed termination. if he didnt get a compliance manager warning, he may be able to state such and get his account back. more than likely, they terminated for low quality traffic and wont reverse their decision. jmo
Of course it was right before pay day. They want to pocket the money they made from you first. Maybe they'll give the money back to their advertisers...yeah, I'm sure.
Man, I am scared sh!tless right now. Luckily my account has not been terminated yet, but they way this is going, I am probably next. I wonder if they are just banning certain type of sites, example, do most of you people who got banned run arcade sites? blog sites? video entertainment sites? forums? Maybe they are looking for certain type of sites with dedicated fan base? I am just trying to get in their heads and see how they see the world.
D-Block, I'd say you are OK for the meantime. I've been with YPN since the beginning and they always seem to do terminations at specified intervals, rather than one-by-one at random. It's probably easier and much more organized for them to do it that way, one fell swoop and then back to business. Since you survived last Friday I'd say you're good until the next round of scrutiny at the very least. To answer your question, my sites fall into the following categories: -arcade -myspace related -entertainment -blogs I'm sure many people will look at this list and say "oh no wonder, those sites have a historically crappy visitor base that doesn't buy anything or click ads" (well, except maybe blogs). I've been around for a long time and yes, these genres of sites do have some common buying and ad clicking habits amongst them, often on the unfavorable side. These aren't the types of sites you're going to find Porsche buyers on, but they are a sizable market and do spend money and do click ads, which makes them worth serving in my opinion. In addition, my sites were developed with the utmost professionalism and design, were all well established with high PR, great traffic, and painstakingly monitored to always fall into compliance with Yahoo current TOS. No cheesy throw-up-some-crappy-site-and-slap-ads-on-it going on in my portfolio, that's for sure. I did my best and unfortunately in Yahoo's eyes it wasn't good enough for their advertisers I guess. A tough pill to swallow, but it is what it is. If more of the people who were terminated start rattling off their web site portfolios I think you'll find that they are very similar to mine. Yahoo bans sites for all sorts of reasons/violations of course, often independent of the site content/visitor base itself (like having 10 ad units on a page for example). But, sites like mine seem to be at higher risk for grabbing their attention and getting labeled as "poor converting" traffic. Also, I don't know what your earnings are, but accounts that earn substantial money seem to be on Yahoo's radar most of all - makes sense. Many of the people who were banned like me seem to all have high earnings in common too. If you earn low to moderate revenues, chances are you're much more likely to fly below Yahoo's radar and survive, at least for a while. My .02.
Hmmm, I see. I use Yahoo on just one site. It is rather large so income comes is in the x,xxx range. Losing this would be a big blow to my income, a blow that I can't really afford at this time. So in prepration for being banned within the next few months, I think it is time I step away from PPC programs, I really need to start trying CPA. CPA(Cost Per Action) seem to be much safer, I will try my best in the next few months to learn the in and outs of such programs because I am tired of waking up each morning wondering if I was randomly banned for something that is out of my control. Really sorry to hear your loss me2006 and everyone else. I don't know how you guys handle it but I envy you guys. I couldn't' afford such a big blow to my income, I got too many things to pay for, like my new loan for a car. Anyway, it's time to try CPA so by the time Yahoo bans me, my CPA revenue will cover all the loss.
Well even I didn't get a single warning from them before termination. Also income from YPN was in $xxx - $xxxx for me and ave ctr was pathetic 0.1%, I geo-targted ads but still i was picked. I would say they are just terminating those who were there with then for quite a while..may be they are making a way for new publishers to join them......whatever
YPN is pathetic, that's all there is to it. You guys who got banned for poor conversion are in good company. YPN contacted the well known Shoemoney about his poor converting traffic. Shoemoney had some comments about it in his presentation at Search Engine Strategies conference. The video of Shoemoney's presentation is amusing where he points out the obvious that serving diesel ads on a ringtone site is going to result in poor conversion. Yahoo was supposed to be at that conference but didn't show. Probably too embarassed about how pathetic they are to be seen in public.
No warning. Banned after 1.5 years of compliance. $1,000.00 removed so far with the audit. ... Their reasoning. I had geotargetting set to show other networks to all international users.
Wow, just when I thought I made it through, Just got the termination email. I wish they would give out warnings. Lost a few thousands dollars. Sigh. Now I really gotta try some CPA ads. I don't know how you guys feel but, F**CK Yahoo.
I just got the axe too. I ran YPN on one site, and it was performing great. I made about $30k in 3 months at the end of 2006 on just that one site. Then YPN's targetting went to crap and the ads were no longer relevant, so I replaced with adsense. Ironically, I just set up YPN ads on the site again last night as a test to see if the targetting issue has gotten any better. Oh well... it was nice while it lasted.
I got the termination email today as well, blogged about my rant too (plug: www.a2-blog.com) I've been with them since Feb of 2006, I think this is straight up absurd... It was also interesting to see that for the most part they banned people who had been with them for over a year and awaiting checks larger than $2,000....
I really feel for a lot of people that got terminated. I had used YPN with a partner once and when we split up I had to go back to adsense and boy is that hard. Not to be on the selfish side, but hopefully this means they will be opening up for people like me who have been waiting to get accepted. Or like jeremy pointed out they might be ending the program all together. Who knows. -Andrew
Hahaha, I sent them an "appeal" but wasn't expecting much so I included this paragraph at the end: "I would like to apologize for not being able to generate conversions for advertisements like “Florida Attorneysâ€. I apologize for thinking that YPN was a CPC Network rather than the CPA network that it apparently is. I also apologize for the YPN ads on my page showing irrelevant things such as Vonage ads and other unrelated things to the content of my website. I apologize that the Publisher homepage lies when it says that YPN will show ads that are “relevant to the content of your site and earn money from qualified clicks.â€"
The kind that are going to milk their Brand Identity into oblivion because they have user "mindshare" and are making money in spite of themselves, for now it doesn't matter. John Q. Public has no idea what is going on behind the scenes so they keep using Yahoo. It's the mass exodous of advertising dollars that will sink the ship.
At least Google is listening to their users and generating ideas with webmasters and frequenting these forums to interact with us through regular communication. Yahoo does not listen or seem not to listen to anyone.