Yahoo Publisher Network: Exclusive Interview with GM of YPN

All the rumors about YPN launching on Wednesday are true. As you can see from the Yahoo contextual ad at the top right of this page, I was one of the beta testers. You can sign up for Yahoo Publisher Network and when approved, you will be able to sign into the YPN Portal (I believe they are not accepting everyone at this time for beta purposes). I am not going to talk features with you (you will get that from the press release), instead, I have an exclusive interview with Will Johnson, YP & GM of Yahoo! Publisher Network Online. Tomorrow I will cover the forum buzz.

Q&A with Will Johnson, YP & GM of Yahoo! Publisher Network Online
(1) Question: If you had to pick one characteristic of your program that stands out from the rest (specifically Google's AdSense), what would that be?
(1) Answer: Can I pick four? :-) In the short term we are differentiating ourselves from the competition by providing additional controls for publishers, providing superior customer service, and focusing on the development of a high quality network. Longer term we will differentiate ourselves by providing access to, and integrating with other great Yahoo! content and services (think: web search, RSS ads, shopping, travel, and some day maybe music and video) to provide publishers with a means of generating additional revenue and engaging their users.

(2) Question: When I first put the ads up on this site, I noticed the PSA (public service announcement) ads. Which advertisers qualifies for those ads? Are they free?
(2) Answer: Yes, these ads are free to these advertisers (typically non-profits). Non-profits are approved based on standards set by the Yahoo! marketing team.

(3) Question: As an experiment, I would love to run a Google AdSense ad and Yahoo! Contextual ad side by side, on this site. Is that against your terms of service? If not, or if yes, would you be up for the challenge? Basically, measuring CTR, income and so on would be nice. But I am also very interested in measuring ad relevancy.
(3) Answer: Interesting idea! Our terms of service require page level exclusivity, in addition we will be running lots of tests and different matching options over the next few month that will make any comparison difficult. That said, let's revisit this idea in the near future.

(4) Question: Google AdSense is being targeted by spammers, in order to make a quick buck. You know, the scraper sites... How do you plan on preventing this from happening with Yahoo!'s product?
(4) Answer: Click-through protection has been a top priority for Yahoo! since we pioneered the search marketing space in 1998. We've continually refined our systems and have built up numerous layers of defense against unwanted clicks. In addition to our click protection efforts, we are implementing front-end and back-end processes (both automated and manual) during this beta to ensure we build a quality network of publishers.

(5) Question: How up-to-date are the "Performance Report"?
(5) Answer: During the beta period, we will be providing an estimated daily earnings updates every 1-3 hours and full progress reports on a daily basis. This means that a publisher can see his or her daily earnings as they accrue throughout the day, but must wait a day to get full performance reports. We expect to improve the timeliness of our reporting as we progress through beta.



Thank you Barry.