Jennifer Slegg, JenSense.com, Jenstar. She said she will talk about YPN versus Google AdSense. Both are very similar in terms of real time stats, similar ad formats, similar tos, and so on. She showed YPN versus Google side by side. Google AdSense international publishers can apply, YPN you currently can not. Google offers additional tools and services, YPN only offers traditional ad units. Google AdSense more competition for highest paying ads, YPN has fewer publishers right now. Google allows Multiple ad units per page, YPN you can do it but you might not see different ad units. Google has smart pricing, YPN does not at the moment. Alternatives to AdSense and YPN; Kanoodle BrightAds is for US publishers only, average $.35 per click, payment terms are net 30, no min page views but should be professional, serves all verticals, real time stats and 30,000 ads. Quigo AdSonar, international pubs accepted but mostly US traffic, pay net 30, acceptance criteria much stricter, effective eCPM varies on vertical, real time stats is about 15 m in delay, ads come from in house (about 1,000 now). Chitika accepts international pubs, average epc is $.50, net 45, no traffic mins, offers all verticals, stats updated daily. Mirago accepted pubs in UK, average EPC .21p (.31USD), payment 30 days, each pub is reviewed and real time stats. ContextWeb accepts international pubs, EPC varies, payment via net 15, offers all verticals. Miva has AdRevenue Xpress, must be at least 80% US, Canada, Australia or UK. EPC varies, payment by check, paypal, wire, no min traffic, serves all verticals, real time stats. Clicksor accepts all international, only english, average $.20 per clic, check on the 15th or end of the day, real time stats, all verticals, and 4,000 advertisers. BidClix international pubs with english content, average is $.30 per click, payment by check or paypal net 15 after moth, min 10,000 uniques per month, offer 30 content channels, real time stats and 11,000 advertisers. When is MSN coming out with it? Soon I guess...
Optimizing contextual Ads; poor placement is when you put the ads outside of the context (all the way to the right or bottom). Good placement is when you remove the border and place it within the context. If you place the ads on your left nav, people might click more. Proximity; content surrounding your ad unit can influence your ads. Ad Unit Selection; dont use what is rumored to be the best ad unit because not all ad units work for all sites, try a variety of sizes to determine what size gives you the highest CTR rate. Ad Units colors and borders; experiment with colors, most sites find hidden borders, never use default ad colors. Quality Content. URL filters; this is not a strategy to force higher paying ads to appear. Testing Contextual Ads; use your AdSenses or YPN channels, always test on non holiday weekends, try switching ad placement, keep track of what works and what does not, never assume that what works on one site will work on an other. Read your terms & policies, test placement, ad styles and colors, and do not go overboard with your URL filters.
Google is now up, Gokul Rajaram. The Internet Ecosytem; users, advertisers and publishers. Drive monetization through innovation; Google is committed to helping you achieve this. Google AdSense for content and AdSense for Search are the two products. Google AdSense is global (17 languages), click feedback is used to maximize feedback, and they use a combination of contextual-targeting and site-targeting technology. Contextual Targeting looks at link structure, keyword placement and so on. Site Targeting allows advertisers to bid to put ads on a particular site. They Site targeted ads compete in the same auction as contextual ads. This allows a publisher to tell a potential advertiser to bid on a particular site, without an advertising department. Link Units is an other new thing they added, link units is a topic based link, and when clicked it takes the user to a page of ads ads based on that category (topic). AdSense for search enables publishers to put web search on their site and a method to monetize it.
Will Johnson from Yahoo! Publisher Network was next up. YPN Self Service Platform; beta program to extend Yahoo!'s distribution program to a broader set of quality publishers on the Web, same ad network, invite only program with ~2,000 publishers to test and learn before a broader release. Yahoo! Value Proposition; competitive revenue, conversion, control, content, customer focus, community. Competitive Revenue & Conversion; provide publishers opps to earn revenue from context ads, beta product is just the beginning...Yahoo will be rolling out additional revenue opps in the near term, there is significant investment being made in the quality of the network. Publisher Control; a new feature will be rolled out named 'ad targeting' which allows the publisher more control. Content; create a more engaging experience for your users by providing visitors with convenient search related results, promote and distribute your content on Yahoo! via RSS. Customer focus and Community; they have phone support (I used it), they show the frontend of the portal which has "messages" to inform you about new announcements and a method to "send us a note" that takes you to a phone number. Second thing on that portal screen is a publisher poll. Third thing on that screen is a "Tips for Publishers" area.
Weblogs Inc., Jason Calacanis, will show us how he uses ads on this site. He loves Google, and wants to love Yahoo!. When he first started he didn't thing AdSense would work. He said users don't look at the text ads as ads, they look at them as content. He showed how one site had the adsense above the logo, it did not work to well, moving it under the logo works much better. He said putting ads in the content is evil and wrong - don't do this he said. They do lots of testing and optimization, and they do put ads in RSS ads. He said putting the ads right next to the content is not nice, but it does work well, he wont do it. He said his biggest mistake was not to use channels more. He said, should you do any SEO? He said SEO is a scam and its over. He said Google has humans pushing sites up in the results. He said its over because humans are looking at it now. He said they do zero SEO and they do extremely well. Should you work with Google or Yahoo? As a publisher, he says, they are very loyal to Google. It doesn't mean they wont stick with Google, they will try Yahoo. The issue is, Yahoo! is in the content business, Google is not in the content business. Do you want to partner with a competitor? Yahoo wants to keep the user, but Google sends people to the sites. [Very good question, very good.] He said he expects to see guarantee minimums, the publishers are taking the risk, not the advertising networks.
About.com, Scott Meyer was next up. This is his first talk at a big event like this. They are the single largest developers of original content on the Web. He then talks a bit about SEO, [they should leave SEO for a different session]. So how do they make money about every page? They have relevant image ads, they have e-commerce lead generation ads, and they have sponsored links on side left navigation and in a box in the content. Challenges and opportunities in contextual ads; you can monetize niche content that display ads that can not be reached, requires the right placements and a great deal of maintenance, vendors have not yet cracked the code for targeting the individual (nytimes.com), local ads is still under-developed (boston.com). He said in print, like NY Times - there might be an article about famine in some place. The ad in print is for high end jewelry, but the ads on the Web are for non profits. They prefer the high end jewelry ads because the readers are those that want to see ads on high end jewelry.
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