I never seen anything like it, as soon as I started filtering and targeting, my YPN CPM and earnings have plummeted. Of course YPN knows the only reason we would use targeting and filtering is to make more money....... so do they reduce CPM and/or EPC when we do this, to save the advertisers money ? Anyone else notice this ?
I think you simply guessed wrong about your target auditory interests. Y! does not give too much flexibility in choosing the main theme of your site. Plus your site may be about multiple things at once, and by tying it to a single theme you can loose relevancy rather than improve it. I found it much better performing if left to run on auto-pilot.
There was no wrong guessing, and this is for numerous sites with different content and subjects for each. Ad relevancy has increased a lot, and the same amount or more clicks per ads are coming in, and increasing since targeting, BUT the EPC has dropped a lot once I started targeting and blocking RON ads.
Well, I'm sorry I missed the part about blocking. This is the key. Vonage pays much more than most advertisers, therefore by filtering it out you loose expensive clicks, and you cannot make up for the lost revenue even with increased CTR due to better relevance. Just as simple as that. I also played with filtering, but found it not worth the trouble. Have to admit, better relevant ads look more professional on one's site, but dropped revenue kind of defeats the purpose of such optimization, so I simply quit touching ANY account settings.
This tells you about the crappy quality of YPN (default ads pay more than targeted and, of course, a very low CTR). I think it will take them another 3 years before they start tackling advanced concepts such as smart pricing.
The same thing happened to me. I use filtering and blocking extensively, and the earnings are nowhere near where they were in the beginning. The CTR has gone up, the ads are more relevant, but the earnings have fallen like a rock. I am going to clear all settings and see what happens.
I quit filtering the RON ads, vonage, mortgage etc.... and right away EPC went back up. kscaldef you were 100% right, filtering make's revenue drop. The ads that appear in the place of the ones YPN shows naturaly are horrible, worth almost nothing per click, seems the RON ads YPN displays normaly, are the best. I am now filtering 0 ads
kscaldef is right. I removed all URLs from filtering, and now I am getting some big clicks. Do you want better targeting, at 20 cents per click, or RON ads at $8 per click. Your CTR would have to be WAY higher, to compensate for the low EPC. I think that my problem has been trying to think that YPN should be just like Adsense. It's different. WAY different. Adsense does not have any RON ads. Adsense works best when very targeted ads are served. YPN works best by allowing RON ads. They may look put of place on your site, but they pay so much more. Don't use targeting, and don't block ads. Things could change, but that's the way I see it right now.
What type of sites do you have? It may be different depending on the site type. Filtering seems to work well for me.
That would be "out of place" above, not "put of place". The site I am referring to has many diverse subject pages.
I agree, this is about making money not better CTR. We know how adsence works vs. Y! They are not the same program and different disciplines apply. Ideally we would like great CTR based on relevance (like Adsence had) with the Y! based payment structure. In time, I think it will get there.
The rate of pay is determined by the advertiser, not yahoo. If a RON advertiser is willing to pay more than advertisers in your sector, how is that yahoo's fault? It's a bidding process, not pricing that yahoo sets. It's all about picking the right sector. I have sites that AVERAGE over $15 a click and ones that average under $1. Both sites have relevant ads, but different sectors. I have sites that yahoo can't serve relevant ads, so I run adsense. I block all non-relevant ads because even though they pay much more, no one clicks them. If non-relevant ads are getting clicked on your site, then I would certainly leave them up. Google runs their adwords program in a similar way. If an advertiser is willing to pay $10 an ad, they don't rank above a $5 ad if no one is clicking their ad. It's much better to get 50% of something than 100% of nothing