Quality Standards
Please note Program Policies changes
Longtime blog readers will know already that we’re pretty picky when it comes to maintaining a quality network, even though we’re still in beta. It’s kind of an obsession, one you can read about here and here.
We’ve always maintained that artfully interweaving our ads with your original, relevant, entertaining content is a common sense best-practice. This helps ensure quality leads to our advertisers while helping you maintain your publishing credibility. Over the long term, enhanced credibility with users may lead to a wider audience and more frequent return visitors.
To encourage this best practice we have updated our Program Policies, which now require that no more than three ad units appear on a single page at one time.
Thanks for helping keep Yahoo! Publisher Network a high quality experience for everyone.
—The Management
| Post Comment | categories:: Announcements
February 3rd, 2007 at 12:15 pm
[…] Yahoo Publisher Network has updated their policies to allow only 3 ad units per page. I’m not really surprised by this, AdSense has had this same policy in place since I can remember. I’m sure this has to do with their recent change to eliminate duplicate ads in multiple ad units on the same page. If a publisher had 15 ads on their page, it would be difficult to fill all those spots with relevant ads. […]
February 4th, 2007 at 2:23 am
I asked a few questions the other day on a previous post, and since you’re not really overwhelmed with comments I’ll assume you missed it and repost it below. Perfectly relevant now that you’ve just brought up quality and policy:
“I’ve been following Yahoo Publisher Network since it began, and I have two quick questions for you that have been burning in my mind for almost a year now:
1. In what decade can we expect this to graduate from beta, and
2. If the reason for the eternal beta is quality-assurance, why are sites like (http://www.stansdeli.net/) displaying Yahoo Network ads when they’re SEO clones of sites like (http://www.stansphillydeli.com/) created only to intercept traffic?
I get the feeling that the quality demands for websites in the YPN have relaxed over the past few months; doesn’t that mean everyone who eagerly applied to become a publisher early on was overlooked in favor of content-scraping sites like the one above?”
In case you couldn’t tell, I applied with a site early on and was rejected without any reason. Understandable — I didn’t complain at all. However, I’m a little frustrated when (these days) I see sites like the one above, and sites that are undeniably in the same category with the same demographic though less visited, less ambitious, and less established than the one with which I applied to YPN. An explanation for the rejection would’ve been great; instead it’s time to hit the weblog.
February 4th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
[…] YPN have today announced policy changes - the main change being that you are now only allowed to place a maximum of three YPN ad units on any single page at a time. This is the same maximum that AdSense allows on a page at any given time (unless you have special permission to do more). If you enjoyed this post Subscribe to the Free ProBlogger Newsletter […]
February 4th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
And about quality regarding contextual ads? I’ve been using Yahoo Ads for a few months and although I already complained about this before, I don’t see any improvement.
The context to your/our ads seems to be calculated at a website level and not page level. In my blog, I blog most about technology, but also about some personal stuff. And even the technology posts can have a big variety. It was ovious for me that after some weeks using your ads, the system had already catalogued my website as a technology website. However, it doesn’t matter which page I’m on, the ads displayed are always the same. Off coure this is not good! Recently, my ads have been about vonage voip service. Although they are technology related ads, it makes no sense to show vonage ads on a post about databases or about image processing apps and much less when the post is not even about technology.
Please let me know what are the developments on this. Are you guys working on better context analyzis? I’m sure you guys have ads for all kind of topics I talk about, so there must be some reason why those ads don’t show up instead of the more “generic” ones.
February 5th, 2007 at 4:51 am
[…] The Yahoo! publisher network announced a revised set of program policies on their blog earlier today. […]
February 5th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
I’ve had the same problem as some of the previous posts - irrelevant ads. I know that many people may be upset over the irrelevance of ads placed on their sites, but I’m more concerned about the people who are paying for ads to be placed on sites…and how they would feel seeing their ad on a site that has completely different topics - that can’t be good for advertisers.
My ads keep getting more and more on-topic, and for that I am greatly appreciative.
February 5th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Hey Guys,
No, we haven’t been ignoring you. We’ve just had a lot to do in the last few days. We’ll be answering your queestions shortly.
Sorry for the delay!
-M2
February 6th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Noone writes:
I’ve been following Yahoo Publisher Network since it began, and I have two quick questions for you that have been burning in my mind for almost a year now:
1. In what decade can we expect this to graduate from beta, and
2. If the reason for the eternal beta is quality-assurance, why are sites like (http://www.stansdeli.net/) displaying Yahoo Network ads when they’re SEO clones of sites like (http://www.stansphillydeli.com/) created only to intercept traffic?
I get the feeling that the quality demands for websites in the YPN have relaxed over the past few months; doesn’t that mean everyone who eagerly applied to become a publisher early on was overlooked in favor of content-scraping sites like the one above?
In case you couldn’t tell, I applied with a site early on and was rejected without any reason. Understandable — I didn’t complain at all. However, I’m a little frustrated when (these days) I see sites like the one above, and sites that are undeniably in the same category with the same demographic though less visited, less ambitious, and less established than the one with which I applied to YPN. An explanation for the rejection would’ve been great; instead it’s time to hit the weblog.
Dear Noone,
The fact is that we have dealt numerous times here on the blog and elsewhere with regard to our beta program and to our international availability. I can only paraphrase what has been said previously:
We’re in beta. We will be in beta until we think this thing is fully baked; a high quality network that will benefit publishers and users alike. We cannot give you an exact date when we will come out of beta. After we have come out of beta we will then roll out internationally according to a phased-release plan. And, no, we cannot tell you in what order that roll out will come. Sorry.
If you would like to report what you believe to be an abuse of our terms and conditions, please email us at ypn-feedback(at)cc.yahoo-inc.com.
Please be advised that we state very clearly on the blog that:
“Yahoo! may, in our sole discretion, remove comments if they are off topic, inappropriate, or otherwise violate our Terms of Service.”
Note the clause “off-topic.” Blog comments should be contextual to the blog posting. In future, off-topic comments may simply be deleted.
If you have an issue with your account, please contact customer service.
-M2
Vitore notes:
And about quality regarding contextual ads? I’ve been using Yahoo Ads for a few months and although I already complained about this before, I don’t see any improvement.
The context to your/our ads seems to be calculated at a website level and not page level. In my blog, I blog most about technology, but also about some personal stuff. And even the technology posts can have a big variety. It was obvious for me that after some weeks using your ads, the system had already catalogued my website as a technology website. However, it doesn’t matter which page I’m on, the ads displayed are always the same.
Off coure this is not good! Recently, my ads have been about vonage voip service. Although they are technology related ads, it makes no sense to show vonage ads on a post about databases or about image processing apps and much less when the post is not even about technology.
Please let me know what are the developments on this. Are you guys working on better context analysis? I’m sure you guys have ads for all kind of topics I talk about, so there must be some reason why those ads don’t show up instead of the more “generic” ones.
Dear Vitore,
The ads displayed should be relevant to your content on a page-level basis, provided we have the ad inventory. As we continue to roll out our “Panama” system, you may well see improvements in relevancy over time.
The problem with a general interest blog is that the topics are often inconsistent. You may talk about servers one day, and what you had for dinner the next. Naturally, the ads that appear on your blog may also be somewhat inconsistent.
We’ve been running a series on how you can optimize your site to encourage ad relevancy here on the blog:
Part I: http://ypnblog.com/blog/2007/01/03/optimizing-for-relevancy-part-i/
Part II: http://ypnblog.com/blog/2007/01/11/the-robot-ate-my-web-page%e2%80%a6/
Look for Part III soon.
- M2
February 6th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Dear Administrator. You wrote:
“The problem with a general interest blog is that the topics are often inconsistent. You may talk about servers one day, and what you had for dinner the next. Naturally, the ads that appear on your blog may also be somewhat inconsistent.”
I don’t agree with this. If you say you target ads at a page level, on my post about servers we should see ads about servers and on my post about dinner we should see ads about food. Otherwise, you are targeting ads at the site level and not at a page level.
There is so many stuff to write about and so many stuff being advertised, that if you target the ads on a site level, they will never be good enough when compared with other systems.
I don’t want to start a flame war or something, but I have tested Yahoo and Google ads on the same page, and I wrote a post about photoshop. google ads shows photoshop related links, while yahoo ads shows the two ads “Water Source Heat Pump” and “Get your free cellphone”. See? There is no context at all, and I’ve been using Y! ads for months. I’m sure you have some photoshop or image processing related ads to show!
And please don’t take this as negative critics. Please take this as a user’s opinion of what’s wrong and what you need to change in order to be better. Currently, Y! context matching is bad, really bad. And this is bad for everyone because if the ads don’t make sense, people won’t click and Yahoo won’t make money (I won’t make money either, but I don’t believe I will ever get to the $100 in order to be paid :-)).
Cheers.
February 7th, 2007 at 4:43 am
[…] The Yahoo! Publisher Network Blog has officially announced that they have modified their program policies. […]
February 7th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
[…] YPN have today announced policy changes - the main change being that you are now only allowed to place a maximum of three YPN ad units on any single page at a time. This is the same maximum that AdSense allows on a page at any given time (unless you have special permission to do more). […]
February 7th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
[…] YPN have today announced policy changes - the main change being that you are now only allowed to place a maximum of three YPN ad units on any single page at a time. This is the same maximum that AdSense allows on a page at any given time (unless you have special permission to do more). […]
March 22nd, 2007 at 10:22 am
[…] Learn more about our efforts to build a quality network and how you, the publisher, fit in: Quality Standards Getting Better All the Time Tips from YahooSarah And Another Thing Maintaining a Quality Network […]
July 13th, 2007 at 4:25 am
[…] To encourage the best practice YPN has updated their program policies which now require that no more than three ad units appear on a single page at one time. You can see the updated policy here […]