Anybody else have this problem? ... I get a lot of ads that actually should be local ads. They say things like "Buy XXXX in Dallas" ... but I ain't in Dallas! I guess Yahoo has no localization system, so these companies just buy everything and then put that qualifier on them. Of course if you aren't in Dallas, you aren't going to click it. This morning I looked at my ads and ALL the ads on the page had a local qualifier on them.
Yeah, but my ads are from all over the place, so it's not like the net actually thinks I'm in Dallas. I'll have one ad for Dallas, one for Atlanta, one for Seattle, etc.
I get ads for "Dallas Television Shows" which doesn't make sense since most TV shows are nationwide... Maybe people will be more likely to click on those because of the fact that TV shows generally aren't geo-targetted and they think something odd must be going on. I thought that there was a certain TV show called the Dallas Television show or something for a while. EDIT: I'm in Washington, DC at University so my IP is definitely easy to locate.
These regional ads are killing me. My CTR has dropped like a rock over the last week or so since Yahoo has been placing these ads from Dallas, Florida, Kansas, and Oklahoma -- which have no relation whatsoever to my site, IP address, or anything else. I now have only a single page on my site (200+ pages on Google Adsense) with YPN. Now, it's likely to go back to Google too if YPN won't fix this mess (I've send them emails).
Yahoo YPN called me today in response to my emails and seemed genuinely interested in resolving the problem with localized ads. The guy actually took a look at the page (my only remaining page on YPN) and acknowledged that there was a problem. He said that he would stay in contact with me as they tried to fix it. He also said that Yahoo recognized that they had general problems with ad relevancy, but would be working on those problems.
There are publishers who run general ads that have regional names, i.e. Dallas Blue Widgets will show no matter where you are located since they are not locally targeted ads. The only thing you can do is block the ad from showing at all.
That's NOT what these ads are. These are locally targeted ads for various cities and states across the country that have no reason to be displayed. In my case, these are ads for car dealers.
I know what you are talking about - I've been getting those ads since I started with YPN last year. Dallas, New York, Chicago, as well as smaller cities. The Yahoo rep told they were similar to RON ads, where they run no matter what your IP is. It didn't make sense to me that someone would want an ad for a business in Dallas to run for someone in California, but they said its cheaper and they either figure someone won't click on a non-local ad, or the advertiser had set the campaign up wrong. I see this on about 25 sites that I am running YPN on. I check to see what the advertiser is paying for the ad and make a determination of whether or not to block them. Some of those regional ads have $20 bids, so even a low CTR makes it worth while to let them run - at least for me.
Yahoo needs to jack their payouts back up until they can get this kind of stuff fixed. If I have one more day like I"m having today, I will have to turn my last decent earning YPN site back over to Google. Maybe they don't get - some of us are LOSING MONEY. ... They need to understand, it's ALWAYS going to be not simply "what have you done for me lately?" but "what are you doing for me RIGHT NOW?"