Yahoo ads vs. Google adsense: there are differences in the 10% range in what they pay. I’ve been running Google adsense and Yahoo’s Publisher network ads in an A-B test for over a month now. I had a script randomly serve either a Yahoo or a Google ad in the same place. The ads looked almost exactly identical (in color and layout) too. The end result is that Yahoo (right now, for my site) is paying 10% more than Google ads. Each ad network got 9000 page impressions per day, for over a month. That should be enough to be statistically relevant. But then the stats start to diverge in interesting ways. Google’s ads got an average of a 2.3% clickthrough rate per day. Yahoo only got an average of 1.3%. BUT: the average daily revenue per day from Yahoo is 10% higher than the average daily revenue from Google. In other words: Yahoo seems to serve (for my site) higher paying ads than Google. So even though the Yahoo ads get less clickthrough, the end result is that Yahoo pays 10% more. Of course, these numbers will probably differ for your website. The 10% difference is statistically valid for my website, but you can not extrapolate that to other websites. The content will be different, so the ad inventory that each service has will probably be different as well. Your final conclusion should be that Yahoo and Google pay pretty much the same, although there may be small difference (5, 10, perhaps up to 20%) in what they pay for specific websites. The only way to know for your website, is to run them both, next to each other, for a month or so, and see which one pays more for your website. If you are making 100$/day or more, 10% can end up being quite a bit of money and doing these tests and optimizing may be worth it. If you make less, don’t bother, just use one of the two for now. And of course, you should repeat the test a few times a year. These things always change.
I would be more interested to see this test performed over a variety of pages covering a variety of different niches before making any conclusions for this. Just because it was different on one page does not necessarily mean that Yahoo! Ads are better. Interesting experiment nonetheless!
Hmm, yeah that was interesting actually. I wish I was getting 9000 pageviews a day. Actually speaking of which, my urchin says I'm getting about 4000 pageviews/day, but then my google adsense shows only about 1800 pageviews/day. Any ideas why that would be? Okay, back to the topic at hand, would you be able to provide your script for others to use? Perhaps a few of us can run these tests and see what happens, pooling our results, et al. If so, send me an email (it's in my profile I think). Thanks.
I think he understands that - he was just making an off topic comment concerning a discrepancy in pageview count between urchin stats counting and AdSense.
Google generates better keywords so the users click more on google ads then yahoo ads, and a great plus for google adsense it they know we are all people! They know accidents happen so don't warn for each accidental click meanwhile yahoo warns your account for the smallest mistake!
Yeah, it was just an off topic sidenote... but anyway. I didn't know Yahoo was so strict about that. I've definitely screwed up a couple times with google and they were pretty good about it. I think I'm gonna wander over to Yahoo and check out Overture a little more though.
You are forgetting that Yahoo is fairly new. I have a mortgage site that used to average around $4 a click with Google. Now it averages about $0.50 a click. This is because as time goes on more and more big spenders opt out of the content placement. Many advertisiers will still be testing the water on Yahoo but I think its a pretty safe bet that over time the same will happen and that your Yahoo payments per click will fall to be inline with Google. Given the fact that your CTR with Yahoo is lower then I think your earnings will be lower in the long run too. It would be better to compare the two when yahoo is (say) 18 months old.
your mortgage site is also being affected by rising interest rates and the downturn in the housing market, so it's not an accurate predictor of other sectors. the way to do it is to run both adsense and ypn, because for one thing, it reduces ad blindness... i currently run ypn on the worst-performing pages, because it raises the overall ctr for adsense, which will hopefully pay more in the long run. ypn also allows you to choose the advertising channel you want to run, which has turned out to be very interesting.
It's just many hrs now after new day , GA gave me $0.8 lol (CTR About 5%) I must be try YPN If I live in US.
It's been known for a while now that Yahoo is paying more per click, but has much fewer relevant ads than Adsense. The reasons are simple: Yahoo is new, and advertisers are hesitant to move away from Adsense; plus, because Yahoo is new, they are paying out higher than Adsense. Some have even spectulated that Yahoo is paying almost 100% out to publishers during its beta stages, in hoping of spreading word about its generous nature and in effect cutting into Adsense's publisher dominance. This accounts for the higher click rate with Adsense, but higher pay with YPN.
I see very similar CTR in the sports industry with YPN paying just a fraction more than Google. I hear the difference is larger in other industries. For example I hear that with health related ads YPN pays out much more than Adsense per click. I have no way of confirming that though.
If you daily average is 10% more than google than yahoo is paying more than 10% higer as your CTR is 1% less. Example G 1000 imp 2.3% CTR = 23 clicks payout 23 = 1 per click Y 1000 imp 1.3% CTR= 13 Clicks Payout 23+10%= 25.3 = 1.95 per click so Yahoo is paying out almost two times as much in example shown.... and would be willing to say that is more accurate reflection then your 10% of daily rev...
I've giving YPN another try on one of my web sites. I'm using site targeting this time to try to get a bit of an extra edge.
The health industry? I was actually site targetting that on a cursors site. CTR sucked, but ending day earnings were equal that of adsense. But to equal that day ending earnings I had to give google 14x-18x the amount of clicks. So that means, ypn is paying some very high price clicks.
It has been a very small test so far, but YPN is beating AdSense for me for the first time ever. For me, this justifies further testing.
Wow, that convinces me to try yahoo publisher on one of my websites and see if it works around like this. Some people say only a few themes works good with yahoo, not true I guess...right ?