Today I was accepted in the Yahoo beta program to test out their new Affiliate Network, for displaying contextual ads that they serve for my pages. I’ve always been a big fan of Yahoo, so shouldn’t have been surprised that I already had an account because I once used services from Overture, which is now owned by Yahoo. Most people think Google pioneered the idea of brokering pay-per-click (CPC) advertising but I remember Overture selling CPC advertising services long before I knew that Google was involved, however it was Google that improved upon the concept, broadened the scope by including all web publishers (instead of just the major news portals) then made it really user friendly to the masses.
Yahoo is attempting to catch-up to Google in the area of serving up advertising to web publishers. I’ve read that the success of Google’s Adsense program is a major part of the reason for their terrific revenues, subsequent earnings and corresponding stock price. It’s my guess that Yahoo will match or make better on the promise that this innovative type of advertising holds. So I for one, am quite glad to jump to Yahoo.
Upon logging into the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) for the first time I was impressed right from the start with the streamlined user interface, simple explanations and examples. It took me only minutes to be serving Yahoo brokered advertisements on my site. Another improvement over Google is the availability of RSS ad integration. Again this was really simple and well explained and helps me to make more money since an increasing number of people are subscribing to my Newsfeeds rather than reading from my web site pages, which means that I loose the opportunity of serving advertising to those users who prefer to read my content via a 3rd party news reader.
There doesn’t appear to be any huge differences or major advantages of Yahoo Publisher Network over that of Google but I prefer the clean look and style of the interface, appreciate the efficiency of the report tracking and feel good about trust factor with Yahoo.
Wow! after I posted this article some news reached me about a new Joint Venture between Yahoo and eBay;
EBay and Yahoo dropped an announcement bomb early this morning saying that the two Internet giants have agreed to combine their efforts on a number of projects. By 2007, expect an increase in eBay search results on Yahoo!, an increase of contextual text and graphical ads on eBay, PayPal to power Yahoo! Wallet, a co-branded eBay Toolbar, and click-to-call advertising using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice and Skype.
This is excellent news and confirms my belief that Yahoo will rise once again to become the dominant search engine.
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