There’s an interesting post over at SEO RoundTable that speculates that the Yahoo! Publisher Network could be Coming Soon which will definitely bring something of a shake up to Google’s stranglehold on the contextual advertising market through Adsense. They write:
‘Nick at ThreadWatch then wrote a thread, Yahoo Publisher Network to Debut in August? In that thread, he uses some logic to determine that it is very possible that YPN will be here in August. The logic comes from the announcement by JenSense about the recent listed panel on the SES San Jose 2005 Contextual track Earning From Search & Contextual Ads. On that panel is an individual by the name of Will Johnson from Yahoo! Search Marketing.’
So the question is – who will be tempted to move over from Adsense to Yahoo’s publishing system? Will you be tempted to give it a go or will you stick with Adsense? What would convince you to switch?
I think most will at least try Yahoo to see if it generates more revenue. After the dust settles, there will be three reactions: the Google zealots will publish a plethora of persnickety articles critical of Yahoo, the Yahoo zealots will critisize Google, and some of us will have both advertisers on our site.
Then, Google or Yahoo will make a rule that you can only have their ads and no one else’s on the site. That will further the divide as the middle-of-the-roaders then have to choose one or the other. More angry articles will be written and bloggers everywhere will be ensconced in a civil war.
I’ll try both side by side, if allowed, then almost certainly stick with Google. They strike me as more impressive across the board than Yahoo, who are the best of the rest, though Yahoo has caught up quite a bit recently.
There will be growing pains both for Yahoo! and for site owners, but I am really happy to see a bit of competition in this field and hope it improves things for everyone including Google in the long run.
I know there are a lot of issues that Yahoo! could capitalize on if they move fast. If Yahoo simply comes out with a Adsense clone, it will really come down to who I trust more, tools provided and the possible benefit of a more consice payment structure.
Google is beefing up their reporting capabilities but still lacking a bit.
In the face of real competition, the “in-the-dark” algorithms of Google could prove to be a crutch if YPN offers a more calculable method for determining effectiveness of ad placement, design changes, impressions, etc.
Finally, the bottom line. Competitive pricing is definitley a factor in this game. Even comparable payouts could be enough leverage combined with some of the previously mentioned issues to win over a lot of Adsense publishers.
Almost everyone will try it, esp. the low earners and see how their sites will fare in terms of clickthroughs and earnings. Then, they’ll all go back to AdSense.
If I’m not mistaken (and I may be,) didn’t Google’s recent TOS changes specify that you can not run AdSense on the same page with other context-driven text ads? That should make for some interesting choices having to be made. I for one will be watching for how many different sizes, etc, of ad blocks Yahoo offers. I really like AdSense, but find the small number of ad layouts they offer to be frustrating.
It should be interesting…
I would try both if it is allowed by the services.
yep, here it is, if I’m reading it right…
“If You have elected to receive content or Site-based Ads, You further agree not to display on any Serviced Page any non-Google content-targeted advertisement(s)”
Just an FYI.
[…] hoo!’s move into the contextual advertising space with a post at ProBlogger entitled Yahoo! Publisher Network Coming Soon? If the scuttlebutt is c […]