A Friend of mine showed me this feature on overture.com where you can actually view current bids on specific keywords etc. Do you think YPN publishers should use tihs feature to view bids on what they are targeting? Or is this there for advertisers to see what the bid on THEIR keywords is at?
it's for the advertisers but there's nothing that says you can't use it to pick out which niches to work in.
they still may serve a purpose though... they'll correlate. pokemon won't be high on the bid tool, and it won't be high for earnings per click. just like it'd be the exact opposite with auto insurance or something.
i have seen where the bid tool's top bid for a kw is lower than the actual rpc i receive for that kw. its definately a good tool to gauge a niche but by no means reflects how that niche will pay on the content network.
The overture tool shows bids for yahoo search and content match. Many of the highest paying advertisers that show do not participate in content match - which are the ads that show on publishers running YPN. If the top 5 show $3 to $1.50 and number 6 shows 30 cents, only number 6 might be participating in content match so ads 1-5 will never show on your site. That means the bids are really starting at 30 cents and the higher amounts have no affect as far as the publisher is concerned. A large percentage of major advertisers no longer participate in "content match".