The biggest problems are the ad companies can do what every they want but a publisher has no option but take it.
Exactly, and that's frustrating because a lot of us run Web sites for a living...and we have to fear that one day we wake up to what this thread starter has now experienced. You can go from being on a pace to make 360k a year to on pace to make 80k a year in one damn night. Or even much less.
Just with the stock market don't palce all your eggs in one basket... Also what i do is i figure if many of my main incomes or top performers went belly up what i would have left and could i live off of it... then i treat the main earners as a bonus to that I treat myself quaterly this works very well sometimes the treat is a vacation for the family or paying more of the home off..
its not traffic it is due to conversion... the website game has gone from traffic to quality traffic...
well just an update.. my march check is for the exact amount I was supposed to be getting and not a single dollar deducted! more ad networks should take yahoo's example and treat publishers with the same respect.
I think many people here are wrong for the attitudes. If your site is making "tip dollars" (equivalent to a few hundred a week, tops), I think YPN and AS is perfect. If your site is generating massive traffic, you should start looking for your own advertisers who pay better (CPM). If your site isn't attractive enough to advertisers to bid on directly, then you should realize that it is also unattractive to those who buy ads through Yahoo and AdWords (myself included). I have seen my ad on some really lame sites, and I wish I had the power to pull the ad from just that site. The traffic they sent was terrible, and I could tell they created the site merely to get a click, not to create an interested shopper for my product(s). If you got pulled and you have high traffic, why do you care? You know which advertisers were being displayed through YPN, contact them directly. Offer an incentive for them to get your quality traffic. If your traffic isn't quality, then why should anyone pay you for it? When my sites drop below 4-5 page views per visit average, I pull my ads. I don't want my advertisers getting bad traffic. When it gets back above it, I know people are interested in the topic and the product, and this means good quality traffic to my advertisers. Sure, I could get pulled, but I am very consistent about looking at what is coming in and from where. MySpace? I've been there. Those kids are useless -- most of them are anti-corporate hippies who have nothing to do but waste their time clicking things. Heck, I've seen a half dozen "click my ads" searches end up at a MySpace address with a link to a Made for YPN or Made for AdSense site. No wonder they're pulling them.
I do agree to a certain extent with this point. The audience at myspace is mostly a 18-12 year old crowd, which is not exactly what all advertisers are looking for (since generally, this age group would not be considered the most wealthy). However, there is an Education and Careers Ad Category, which I would think should convert pretty well for advertisers. A lot of people in these ages are either looking to get into a college, and might be interested, or are looking for jobs and have just gotten out of college. The fact that people are still using the "Click My Ads" tactic is absolutely ridiculous. If we lived in a perfect world, lighting bolts would fall from the sky and fry the webmasters cheating advertisers out of their hard earned cash. There is a lot of potential in any website typically when it comes to advertising, and you are targeting the right group. I do think good conversion is important for advertisers (as I advertise myself), but I also believe that it is not right for Yahoo to ban users for not targeting their ads well, when Yahoo seems to be having plenty of problems targeting relevant ads as well. If anything, I think YPN should be working on ways to analyze and fix these problems instead of taking the easy road of banning its beta testers.
It is taking the easy road when they won't even allow the publisher the chance to work with them and fix the problem on the targeting. I never did find that good of ad targeting selection for my sites.
you know a lot of these made-for-myspace websites are turnkey and get their traffic from posting bulletin's all day long...and requesting friends with an automated bot. It makes sense that yahoo is booting these sites, because of the poorly converting clicks and traffic. Publishers seem to forget, that yahoo is not the one's paying them, but the advertisers. If advertisers aren't happy, then no one is going to be happy, since they are the one's with money. And why would advertiser want to waist 5000 clicks at $5 a pop? I'm sure, once YPN goes out of beta, they will announce that, sites that got booted, can reapply. With those made-for-myspace web sites, it seems like they don't really care. All they are doing is simply creating some pretty crabby content that 1000 other made-for-myspace sites have. They are basically just in it for the money, a get rich quick scheme, and that's why you see them targetting loans and other high paying keywords.
They also always hide the ads with images that look like girls or game icons. It's the only way they actually get any clicks (by decieving). Then they complain when they get banned
Just a quick note here, what you said does NOT apply to the few original older myspace code sites. And indeed, there are tons of turnkey copycats out there ruining the market =/
I also read about a mass exodus of YPN members because of MySpace content on ProBlogger and JenSense. It is interesting because many AdSense users have commented on how much better the YPN income is on MySpace sites than using AdSense. I wonder what the CTR's are for MySpace sites.
A new form of social network advertising has arrived.. and it's called BuyMyProfile.com. Spread the word!!!
Ok here is the deal... I don't understand this... They talk about "quality traffic", well it's the INTERNET... We as publishers don't have the control who visits our sites, nor do we have the control on who clicks the ads... I don't know about the TOS for the advertisers, but it should state that there is no gaurantee that the conversion rate is going to be good. Yes they pay Yahoo! but there is no gaurantee on anything including life. We as publishers have no control over what ads are displayed, other than ad targeting.. And that is no gaurantee that the ads shown will have any relevance over what is in relevance on our site.
True. But YPN is in beta, and I think we can all agree that the folks @ YPN are trying their best to do things the right way. They are up against the well established AS, and MSN's version will probably debut sometime this year. The YPN folks--I think--want to show advertisers that they will do whatever they can to get the best possible traffic from publisher websites. It's what I would do if I were in charge @ YPN.. As always, IMO. AmCy