Why don't we all who have a significant drop in CTR with YPN send them an email and ask them for the real reason YPN has put filters on the clicks we get on our sites. I mean the filters on the US traffic clicks. I am not talking about the foreign traffic clicks. Those filters as many have noticed do not count our legitimate clicks from (US) traffic that we send to the advertisers. Now the advertisers are making $$$ on our expense. It is not right and it is not fair, no matter if they are in beta or another version. I have already sent them a few emails about the dramatic drop in CTR I have. On the first one the reply I got was: "All clicks are counted for." In the second email they mentioned the "filters" they have put in place. Sorry for ranting in public, but if we all request fair practices towards us the publishers we can get in return what we deserve for our work.
I didn't even know about these "secret" filters for clicks. Is that something that was put on their blog or are you just speculating?
"........... We wanted to let you know that we had an option for filtering invalid clicks ..........we have a system to filter invalid clicks.............." "invalid clikcs"? I don't think they mean invalid clicks are only: - foreign traffic - your own accidental clicks
so far, my testing of ypn filters shows that ypn filters clicks that are; (most) international IP's accidental publisher clicks repeat clicks from same IP repeat clicks from same IP within x days (2 days - still testing this variable) clicks whose IP's are spoofed, cloaked and / or proxied duplicate IP's from clicks on different sites within your network Im sure there are other factors that determine an invalid click but i am unable to test these as they would require click fraud and i am not going to risk my account for these experiments. jmo
My CTR fell 30% from its old level on the 14 nov. Been that way since. Why? i don't know. Maybe is has to do with an update.
I have noticed anything. I was also told to remove one of my ad blocks to be in compliance and I still have not noticed a drop in CTR.
I understand what you are saying, but yahoo is having a hard time keeping advertisers in their content search program (ads served to YPN publishers). Either prices are going to continue to fall, or they have to create a higher conversion for the advertiser. It all begins with the advertiser. They do seem to be filtering out more clicks, but if they didn't, even more advertisers would be dropping out or lowering their bids. It's all relative - advertiser can only pay so much before they hit a point of diminishing returns, and as a publisher, I really don't care if they pay 90 cents a click for 10 clicks, or $1 a click for 9 net clicks (after filtering one out), it's the same net. YPN prices have been dropping and coming closer to adwords for many months, and I expect this to continue until they come close to converging. I don't think many people expected the payouts that YPN was giving when they started, in fact, they even said they were paying a higher "promotional price" to get publishers to signup. I've converted some sites back to adsense because it pays more, and will continue to go with whomever nets me the most.
My YPN RPC is still over 85x more then Adsense. CTR has also not dropped, despite having to remove 1 ad block per YPN's request. I think that many people are just targeting the wrong ads in their niches and not getting any interest. Those are the ones not only ruining it for everyone, but also the ones getting terminated and complaining.
is everyone else's ctr still dropping???? mine went from 10% to .03% and its been like that for like 5 days straight. how u guys doing???
For 5 days I also noticed a decline in CTR. I suspect it has to do with Yahoo filtering double clicks. If someone clicks and ad, goes back, and clicks another ad the second click may be filtered.
this has been true for some time. what is new however is that they seem to be filtering out clicks from repeat visitors. i have noticed that a visitor that clicks today that comes again tomorrow and clicks will not be counted that second day, even if they are clicking on a different page or different site within your network. this, for people who run community type sites, can drastically reduce your overall ctr jmo