YPN Experiment Revealed

ok, i ran an experiment and wanted to get some of your opinions in the matter.

i have geo targetted a page to show US only traffic. i have my trackers in place to track everything. i also only let a small portion of traffic into the page to keep a smaller control.

1 page - 4 US clicks from 4 different IP addresses which resolve in 4 different US states clicking 4 different advertisers.

Page closed.

Results - YPN report shows that only 2 clicks were valid, throwing out 50 % of my valid clicks for that channel. I have been seeing these results on all of my pages, but this was a controlled experiement. Also, I checked these 4 ip addresses to see if they by chance had clicked on any other ads in my network of sites, giving a reason why they might not have been counted. the 4 clicks were unique and only clicked 1 ad in my entire site for the day.

Now, after comparing with the rest of my channels, i am seeing these results everywhere, which easily explains why my revenue has dropped so significantly To note, this all really started after the update on the 19th. since then, I have seen higher "audits" on my clicks than can be explained.

If anyone has ideas, suggestions, comments or anything that could be helpful, it will be greatly appreciated. I would also suggest, those that are capable and suffering from sudden loss of revenues, to also run a similar experiment and report back. My opinion is that there is a glitch in the ypn system and we are not being paid for all valid clicks.

 

wow, that is stunning. what geo targeting database are you using, because those databases cannot be 100% accurate..

 

the geotargetting database is 98% accurate i believe (paid version). the actual ips of clicks were compared to a few whois ip databases, like dnsstuff.com and they all came up US from 4 different states.

 

eek bro,
arent you not alloud to track who clicks your ads?

 

allowed or not, i dont know but, the results are the same. if its happening to me, its happening to others.

 

Does YPN have any backlisted IP's, which they invalidate the clicks originating from those IP's. Hope this issue gets resolved.

 

It might be blacklisted IP's, or people who are accessing your sites with a proxy. Although the proxy server might be in US, Yahoo might just blacklist all of the IPs that are on proxy servers.

Also find out how military is tracked. If your tracking US soldiers in Iraq, or Germany, or South Korea as US IP's, and YPN is tracking them as non US IP's that can be problem.

Another point of error is AOL users. Users of AOL in Brazil and mos tof Europe might get tracked as US because AOL uses US proxies.

 

How are you tracking the clicks? it could be that your methods are showing things as click when they are not really click. For example, maybe someone actually clicked the "Ads by Yahoo" link, which you count as a click, and Yahoo didn't. Someone could also click on the ad, but then hit the "Stop" button right away, also making the click invalid.

 

thanks for the input, but no, theres nothing like that going on. i know the ip address of who clicked, the actual advertiser they clicked and when they clicked. i have repeated the experiment with similar results over multiple channels now on different sites. 100% US clicks from unique IPs - these IPs are not "repeat" clicks, duplicate clicks, or clicks from proxy IP's and i verified that i have not received a click from these IP's in the last 3 days. when tracing the IP back to the source, the owners are ISP's like Comcast, Bellsouth and Adelphia, a couple edu's, etc. I have used multiple sources to trace the IP back to the source to verify.

The latest experiments show that 25 - 50% of my clicks (on a small scale) are not being credited for whatever reason. I also tested on a larger scale pool of clicks with the same results. Unique US IP's clicking valid ads. Im not getting paid for them.

I can understand removing the International Clicks, but the US is what they want, the US is what i am giving them and I am not getting credit for them.

Now, considering my traffic levels, ctr's and my RPC are all NORMAL, but my revenue is down by 50 - 70% (like so many other people on the boards), something funky is going on. All that i can say is that if its happening to me, its happening to others. Also, to note, these issues started after the update on the 19th of last month. Immediately after the update there was a 50% drop in revenue, though my ctr and RPC remained steadily average. Also, if i take the "valid" clicks i know i got and multiply that by my average RPC, my would be revenue is back to normal levels. So now i know why my revenue dropped so drastically.

As for blacklisted IP's, i can accept that on a small once in awhile scale. while my experiments have been limited to smaller pools of clicks, on my mass scale, i am not talking about 10 clicks. I get thousands of clicks per day and i cannot believe that thousands of blacklisted US IPs are being audited out each day or that 50% of my visitors are blacklisted.

Again, anyone who knows what im talking about with any advice would be greatly appreciated. Im pulling my hair out trying to figure this out but i wont be sending my traffic to ypn if ypn isnt going to pay me what im earning.

thanks in advance.

 

I'm still not sure of why you are so certain of your click tracking techniques. All of the click tracking software I have seen basically "guesses" that a click has been made. For Explorer, it checks to see if a click was made in the iframe that contains the ad. For Firefox, its even worse, when someone leaves your site the tracking software see where the cursor is. If you know of another technique, I'd love to hear about it. There is no guarantee that an actual ad was click and the page was served properly, unless of course you are click yourself. And in that case you shouldn't be complaining about Yahoo cheating you

 

Ive never cheated yahoo or google or anyone. its not worth clicking an ad and getting banned. I'm pretty sure my tracking software is accurate since its near dead on with google and has always been near dead on with yahoo and so many other people use it. i havnt heard anyone complain.

as for complaining, im not. i get it. its beta. im just sharing the results of my experiment hoping to get some info from someone else in the same boat.

thanks though for taking the time to think about it and offer your opinions.

 

Maybe they are "blacklisting" IP addresses who click on more than the average number of ads now, or something equally as ridiculous.

 

First of all there is no software that can track all the clicks, the scripts that are available in market does not give a exact number of clicks. As you say you are loosing hundreds or thousands of clicks then there might be a problen with YPN. YPN also doesn't reveal how they validate the clicks. So we can't question that and we have to live with it.

 

that would mean that the tracker is "making" up clicks. i doubt that is the case as it has been pretty accurate for months. if anything it would show less clicks than actually received. but, i accept the possibility that something is inaccurate. perhaps after the update on the 19th, something got changed and the tracker doesnt track properly.

I thought ypn did slightly reveal how they validate clicks; no repeated clicks, no international, only US, dont click your own ads, please make it "quality" "convertable" traffic or else we'll terminate you, etc. (obviously i understand that their true validation process is uknown to us)

and of course we can question it. that is the whole point. why is the greatest question we can ask. and we dont have to live with it. we have the choice to use another system. we have the choice to not give ypn the traffic.

again, im not complaining, i get it, its beta. until recently, i have been very happy with ypn. im just pointing out my observations and i really appreciate your thoughts and opinions.

 

Well, I don't think Yahoo is purposely cheating anyone. Think about whats at stake for them. If word spreads, they are finished. That doesn't mean that their scripts are working flawlessly either and quite frankly I have similar suspicions with YPN.
That said, I don't trust/like Adsense either. Mostly because of lousy click values. So what you really should be asking yourself is this:
Even if you feel YPN is cheating you, does it yield a better return than other ad networks. If it does, keep it.

Here is another thought. I am not sure it applies to you:
I have been in the online advertising game for a short time only, but I feel that every customer who clicks an ad is a customer that gets out of my site. Most people built their sites to put ads on and they couldn't care less, but I built my sites primarily for fun and to show off my talent as a photographer. So while ads are a good escape route if people want to leave anyways, I don't want the ads to convince them to leave if they would stay otherwise.
In that respect I feel that less clicks on YPN with higher paying ads works better for me. I am working on my store and once its set up, I am thinking of reducing ad coverage (at least remove all competitors offering similar products).
Why should I even give any clicks to google if 2 cents can loose me a potential paying customer - admittedly most people come to browse, but I get a pretty decent traffic and there are always people wanting to buy prints.

 

andre: there is a fine line between a potential customer and a visitor who is "looking" for a way out of your site. It can be argued that if a user clicks an ad, it MAY mean that they're not interested in your site and are looking around for a way out.

It's very subjective though and there are many factors but it is something to think about.

 

I agree with you Tom. But just on the chance of them being interested in more, I'd rather not give them away for a couple of cents.

 

i have read this thread a few times, and even though i know clicktracking cannot be 100% accurate i am stunned

 

He probably just had his friends clicking it but he doesn't want to admit that cause then he will get banned.

 

lol @ your theory dave,