That Yahoo would have their targeting on tract or even close. Shouldn't be to hard should it? Looks like most are getting this "Lift Truck Parts & Service" and I'm getting "Hot Pittsburgh Singles" (Geo ad I guess as I live near Pittsburgh) I know it's beta and I've been running Yahoo Publisher for over a year but my site is looking spammy cause all of these trash ads. Might pull the ads for a month or then try again. Greg
I couldn't agree more. I am currently debating if I should remove them completely, reduce exposure, remove them from some sites or create my own affiliate ads that look somewhat similar. I have changed position on some pages already (putting YPN below the fold) because I am disgusted by the ads shown. 90% refinance and mortgage and the other 10% is stuff like "Gay rehab" ... WTF? I have seen relevant ads, but they usually disappear after a short while and are replaced with crap. No wonder my CTR is around 0.1%.
Luckily I have several good affiliates that pay decent money so I don't mind taking yahoo off line for awhile. I don't mind beta testing but it's not to much to ask for relevant ads. What are people thinking of my site when they visit? Trash?
Well I took all the yahoo ads down for my three sites. I might say that my big forum runs faster. I'll wait things out for a spell or I just might give them a call to see what they say. Greg
Rather than it being a targeting issue per se, it may be that Yahoo simply doesn't have enough inventory of ads that match your content, so they are giving you whatever the heck ads they do have. It may be a hint that YPN's service to the advertisers is equally as bad as their service to the publishers, resulting in low inventories of ads (low advertiser activity).
I checked and they have plenty of metal detector dealers using their service. At times it would be nicely targeted but the last month or so it went to pot. I put adsense on one site and it's like night & day.
LOL...it's obviously hard for them. They can't even get their SERPs to be relevant. That's why Google is way ahead of them in terms of relevant SERPs and ad syndication.
Hm. I got Metal Detectors, Gay Rehabilitation, Refinance, Hunting Rifles ... I can't put adsense on this site, since it will lead to smartpricing and tank my adsense earnings (funny but two sites running adsense make less than just one of them alone) So I will eventually built my own text ads or just ditch text ads alltogether.
Sadly, I can make 10 times as much with irrelevant YPN ads as I can with relevant adsense ads on one of my sites. So frustrating.
I'm on the same boat. with G took 30 cliks for a dollar! 3 click on YPN make 2 bucks... It's just a matter of understanding what's the relation with a spaghetti recipe and an ads about Erectyle Dysfunction Pump....
I think there are two ways to approach this issue: 1) The launch of Panama will take awhile for all of Yahoo's advertisers to convert and use the new system. Therefore ad inventory and thus targeting is currently not as good. or 2) There are a bunch of sites (mine included) which were using the channel targeting feature to display higher paying ads that weren't necessarily matched well to our target audience. I'm not sure which it is...I've switched categories with some success, the rates aren't nearly as good as in the past but they are still far better than adsense or any cpm network. The ads are still off at times, but not horrible. I've been trying RMX Direct's new system and after a bunch of tweaking, I think it might work well in conjunction with YPN... it's a neat system, but seems they might have some issues with on time payments... anyways, I miss the $XXXX days of YPN, but am at least happy to get in th emid $XXX now...hopefully with some more tweaking I can get it even higher..
I have ad targeting on several pages but it looks like geo-ads have priority. So I get few targeted ads (e.g mass merchants -> food) and a lot of "AUDI cars", "Ford delear" or "meet singles in San Diego" and of course all kind of "miracle diets program" I guesss "diet" is the most related ad I can get on a cooking site LOL!
I just opened your site and looked at the 160 vertical banner. I saw 5 ads: - KFC Dinner Meals - Sacramento Toyota - Make carb chicken recipe - Need a license bond? - Bay Area Packing Peanuts I see two targeted ads in there (1 and 3). I'd say thats not too bad. I usually don't even get this far. Upon viewing a recipe, I see two ad units and only one targeted ad between the two. (Thats pretty bad). I am still trying to find out if its their targeting engine or the lack of advertisers (I am trying to find a site that has untargeted ads that would be perfect for my niche). I think its a mix of both "Packing Peanuts" is an ad for a packaging company, but because of the word peanuts it shows up on your site. I can see the same. If I talk about the optics of a camera, I see ads related to hunting rifle telescopes. Basically their engine cannot grasp the meaning of a word in a context. They only seem to understand single words.
I totally agree. I've tried many, many times to work with YPN and hope they could eventually get their ads to be more relevant, but after two years and many emails and survey responses, they are no better now than before. They blow a lot of smoke but can't deliver relevant ads that get clicks.
i have little problems getting relevant ads across my portfolio of sites. its not always easy to get them, sometimes they dont exist for a niche, sometimes the contextual engine cant figure out a page, but if there are ads for a kw phrase that are part of the content network, then you can get them to show. if you cant, it may be the content (or other on page factors) thats messing you up. ypn's crawler is amazingly terrible, but not impossible to work with. it also helps to test everything all the time to get as much understanding of what your working with as possible. if you are flying in the dark you are going to crash. also, i believe it was mjewel who mentioned a few times something regarding stop words preventing / hindering targetting. im sure you can search it out and he doesnt have to post it again. remember, ypns crawler is reading the content of a page to come up with a contextual match. if you confuse it, misdirect it or hinder it, your going to get junk ads, ron ads or ads that have nothing to do with your site. jmo