Sugarrae has posted an Interview with Josh Siegel of Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN).
Rae starts off by asking a good question about ad relevancy – a topic that I’ve heard quite a few YPN publishers complaining about (in fact I’ve done it myself after running YPN here at ProBlogger for a month or so and seeing pretty poor results). Josh doesn’t really admit to any problems:
‘JS: I’m glad you bring this up because we’ve found that the majority of our publishers have been very happy with the ads served on their site. We do find typically that sites that have little content are harder for our crawlers to find matching ads to serve. Additionally, if your site has terms that we deem sensitive then we will serve generally targeted ads. My suggestion to help improving the ads targeted in your site is to use our Ad Targeting feature (which allows the publisher to influence the type of ad category) and make sure your content is well described and updated regularly.’
The other question that interests me in the interview is one Rae asks about YPN’s absence from the international scene. The question is a good one but once again Josh’s answer is fairly much the standard line we’ve been getting – ie the US is the focus of the beta test so that they can hone the formula for a wider rollout… challenges in going global… can’t say when we’ll release more widely…
While I understand the mammoth task of rolling out something globally I’m starting to sense a growing bitterness among international publishers towards YPN at a grass roots level. I know every time I mention them I get emails and comments on this international issue. From what I can tell the international rollout seems to be some time away and and I do wonder if they are going to have to do something to appease the international publishing community who could well go on a cyber-riot if they don’t get some attention.
