Another One Bites the Dust

June 16th, 2006 by Chris

You can add my name to the list of people who have been kicked out of YPN for not doing their own geotargetting. As a whole this policy has made Yahoo and YPN look amateurish in front of pretty much the entire webmaster community. They are unwilling to simply filter out international traffic or show international traffic PSA ads and instead expect their publishers to do so or risk being kicked out as I have been.

We’re not talking about some Mom & Pop ad network, we’re talking about Yahoo, you’d think they could get their act together on this one. But instead they are generating oodles of bad press and bad public opinion in the webmaster community and they’re missing out on the revenue they could be gaining from the US traffic of the publishers they have kicked out.

Now personally, the traffic I was sending was about 80/20 US/International, and I knew that they could kick me out for it, but after many months (I got in early), they didn’t and I figured I was safe. Oh well, more traffic for Google.

Jun 16 2006 11:23 PT

Hello Chris,

Thank you for your participation in the Yahoo! Publisher Network Beta program. As part of our efforts to ensure high-quality traffic for advertisers on the Yahoo! Publisher Network, we continuously monitor publisher attributes such as:

1. Sources of their traffic, including its geographical distribution.

2. Suspicious click activity.

3. Advertiser conversion rates.

4. Overall quality of leads generated on your site.

Unfortunately, due to poor traffic quality, we have terminated your Yahoo! Publisher Network account ID 7928413270. In accordance with Sections 6(a) and 6(b) of the Yahoo! Publisher Network terms and conditions, we will not include clicks from non-U.S. users or otherwise invalid clicks in your payment. We have refunded amounts generated from the non-U.S. users and otherwise invalid clicks to our advertisers and will pay any remaining amount owed to you in accord with the Terms and Conditions.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Sincerely,

David Andrews
Relevance Analyst
Yahoo! Search Marketing
74 N. Pasadena Avenue, 3rd Floor
Pasadena, CA 91103 USA

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Posted in: Ad Networks »  by: Chris

10 Responses to “Another One Bites the Dust”

  1. Westech  Says:
    June 16th, 2006 at 5:18 pm

    I won’t bore everyone here with the details of my ordeal with YPN, but anyone interested can read my old thread here: http://www.websitepublisher.net/forums/showthread.php?t=4515

    I’m completely underwhelmed with Yahoo’s venture into contextual advertising. So far, I don’t think Google has much to worry about…

  2. Andrew Johnson  Says:
    June 16th, 2006 at 7:23 pm

    Its just sloppy on their part, but they still are acting more professional than Chitica, who have absolutely no credibility in my opinion.

  3. icebane  Says:
    June 16th, 2006 at 10:18 pm

    Absolutely depressing. We webmasters need competition with Google, and Yahoo isn’t doing it. I continue to be speechless at the errors Yahoo has made recently.

  4. SomeGuy  Says:
    June 17th, 2006 at 4:19 am

    I don’t understand it.

    This program seems to target medium and small publishers. But it’s hard for medium and small publishers to devote the necessary resources for effective geotargeting, while it would be a snap for Yahoo.

    And this has been on their radar for quite some time. Why can’t they follow the logical step and implement it themselves?

  5. feralcat  Says:
    June 20th, 2006 at 3:16 pm

    Doesn’t Yahoo realize that it’s the *World* Wide Web!

  6. » Send international traffic to Yahoo Publisher Network and get kicked out - Web Publishing Blog  Says:
    June 21st, 2006 at 3:47 pm

    [...] Are you geotargetting Yahoo’s PPC ads to the US? If not, you might think about doing so. Several publishers have been kicked out of the program recently for sending international traffic to Yahoo. Most recently, Chris from WebsitePublisher.net blogged about getting the boot. Some publishers have gotten kicked out despite having reps specifically telling them they would not be! [...]

  7. Website Publisher Blog » Website Promotion, Generating Revenue, Website Management  Says:
    June 24th, 2006 at 7:40 am

    [...] Apparently they didn’t get the memo that I was kicked out of their network. [...]

  8. Ken Barbalace  Says:
    July 11th, 2006 at 7:39 pm

    For all the grousing I’ve been seeing about AdSense lately, it would appear it still is our best option. Yahoo certainly isn’t able to get its act in gear. This feels really weird to say, but Microsoft may be our best hope of bringing real competition to PPC advertising. Who would think we would look forward to Microsoft entering some market.

  9. chainsaw  Says:
    September 20th, 2006 at 12:40 pm

    My website(linked from my name). Had the exact same thing happen. Wish I would have foreseen that one because Adsense doesn’t want to give me an account. Pretty damn disappointing, these guys are missing out on a lot of money because of their lack of accurate spam filters.

  10. C  Says:
    January 28th, 2007 at 4:49 pm

    We had the same experience a few weeks ago. “Unfortunately, due to poor traffic quality, we will be closing your Yahoo! Publisher Network…”

    Now, we are a US company with US web sites and had spoken to YPN in both Oct and Nov and in both conversations YPN had stated they were happy with the relationship and one even said that our sites were all within their terms and conditions and they “valued” the relationship.

    Then less than 8 weeks later we get an email with less than 24 hours notice terminating the relationship. Fortunately it was a simple task to swap in AdSense. Asking for explanation was ignored.

    However, my question is what is up with YPN?

    Since they wouldn’t explain the “traffic quality” statement, there was no way to know what the problem was, but I suggested that YPN look at:
    1. Lack of relevance in context matching
    2. Better ad depth so that if they get the match right, they have an ad to show
    3. Better communication with publishers. If there is a problem, TRY COMMUNICATION Yahoo! YPN acts like a 1st grader who is having a tantrum and can’t explain why they are upset. That is not the way to build a business, but it is a way to burn bridges with publishers.

    The nice thing was that a few days later Google sent a note asking us to join their “custom placement packs” for “our largest brand advertisers” so it is Yahoo’s loss.

    p.s. Microsoft will be a welcome addition here – the winner will be the company that works with publishers and treats them as partners so that Google/MSFT/YPN(not) win, advertisers win, and publishers win. As long as Yahoo is adversarial, non-communicative and unable to serve quality ads, they will have no chance against MSFT and Google.

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