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The Almighty Buck The Internet

Yahoo to Launch Blog Ad Network 115

Posted by CmdrTaco from the escalating-the-battle dept.
Art Vanderlay writes "Yahoo is launching the much anticipated ad network for small Web publishers today, intended to strengthen its hand against rival Google, a source familiar with the plan told CNET. The service will undoubtedly turn up the heat in Yahoo and Google's ongoing rivalry to dominate Web advertising. Syndicated search revenue for Google was $630 million, of Google's $1.38 billion in revenue in the second quarter of 2005."
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Yahoo to Launch Blog Ad Network More

Yahoo to Launch Blog Ad Network

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  • I wonder... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If the ads are more insightful than the blog posts. I'm going to say... yes.
  • Considering that Google booted me out of AdSense a month ago (while I was on vacation, no less), and won't give any reasonable explanation as to why, at least Yahoo's service gives me another option.

    • Re:Guess I'll be signing up (Score:4, Funny)

      by daeley ( 126313 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @12:57PM (#13231674) Homepage
      "...and won't give any reasonable explanation as to why..." quoth Motherfucking Shit.

      Hmm. ;)

    • Re:Guess I'll be signing up (Score:4, Interesting)

      by b0r1s ( 170449 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @12:59PM (#13231703) Homepage
      Probably for "test" clicking your own ads. It's happened before. That $0.07 really hurts Google's bottom line.

      • Probably for "test" clicking your own ads. It's happened before. That $0.07 really hurts Google's bottom line.

        Nah. I'd been signed up since February, and had specifically avoided clicking any of my own ads due to others' horror stories.

        In 5 months of showing ads, I'd received one check for a whopping $120. I was averaging about 2,000 impressions per day, I think around $1 daily (can't check, because they won't even let me login to view my old stats); hardly breaking the bank. I was just coming due for anoth

        • I've thought of making a bot trained to find site's with google ads on them and just start 'clicking' them until the sites get kicked off their income source. Lets see how many websites we can screw over in 24 hours. :p
    • Not me. I get over 15000 hits a day on my site. All of the goofy ad providers I've tried )AdSense included) haven't paid out a single cent. It's a total waste of page space and time.

      - though I think that I'll keep the ads for www.tshirthell.com up, they make me laugh. (What Would Jesus Do... for a klondike bar?)

    • Why not both? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      Why not use both services? If I had a blog or something similar (ie: non-ecommerce), I'd but up an iframe for each of them, let them do their magic trying to match ads, and simply se which one paid the most. Or if they're close, why not just leave 'em both up? From what I understand, there's very little that the site showing the ads has to do to get them set up, so there's really nothing to lose using both (other than screen real estate, obviously).

      • Re:Why not both? (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Google's Adsense requires exclusivity - their TOS states that you can't use a competitive service on a site that uses Adsense.

        • Re:Why not both? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by TheAwfulTruth ( 325623 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @01:35PM (#13232014) Homepage
          Somehow that doesn't really seem to sit well with the "do no evil" bit...

          But maybe that's just me. Then entire AdSense BS stinks of evil already.
          • Somehow that doesn't really seem to sit well with the "do no evil" bit...

            But maybe that's just me. Then entire AdSense BS stinks of evil already.

            So you are of the well-thought-out opinion that capitalism is evil?
        • From the TOS:

          You agree not to display on the same Web page in connection with which any Ad Unit, Ad, Link, or Search Box is displayed (a "Serviced Page") any advertisement(s) that an end user of Your Site(s) would reasonably confuse with a Google advertisement or otherwise associate with Google. 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). If You have elected to receive Search Results on any

      • Re:Why not both? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Serveert ( 102805 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @01:30PM (#13231979)
        Can't do that with Yahoo's new program. Google doesn't allow you to place ads from another affiliate network which uses the context of your website to target ads to your site.
        • If I understand well adsense program policies [google.com], you can use both. You just can't display both at the same time. See:

          We do not permit Google ads or search boxes accessing Google search services to be published on web pages that also contain what could be considered competing ads or services.

          They talk about "web pages", not "web sites". So you can randomly show Google or yahoo ads. It would give you a greater pool of advertisers, probably with greater chance of displaying a interesting ad that will convin

          • True. It really boils down to contextually targetted ads, that's google's bread and butter really. This "non-compete" was a stroke of genius IMO. They came out with a good product using their contextually targetting technology then set up barriers to entry for other potential competitors in that specific space. While they built up their contextually targetted network they left everyone else in the dust, and now, as expected, yahoo is playing catch up. It will be interesting to see what google has in store
    • I wonder if your site ranking will go up on Yahoo and down on Google when you switch your ad service over? ..Or is summer the wrong season for tinfoil?
    • I'm going through the same thing right now.

      I got an email saying that my account had been disabled, due to suspected fraudulent clicks. I emailed them asking if they could elaborate, or if there was any way to get the account reinstated after deducting the amount they thought was fraudulent.

      They refuse to tell me why the account was disabled (So they don't give away any details about how their fraud protection works), and refuse to reinstate it.
    • They cut me off too just a couple weeks into trying their program. I didn't even get to launch on all my sites before they cut me off. I don't really care for their no explanation and no appeal process.

      It seems AdSense killed off most of the other decent Pay Per Click programs too which left me with mostly the option of Per Signup porn ads which pays nothing. :p

      AdSense ads greatly slowed down my load time too which didn't please me. I hope Yahoo does a better job. The slowness of Google's ads would have mad

  • Sounds like it has a market (Score:4, Insightful)

    by confusion ( 14388 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @12:56PM (#13231663) Homepage
    This really sounds like it has a lot of market potential, but the articles really don't have any detail as to what the fees will be or really how it is going to work.

    It is encouraging to see some recognition of the "little guys" though.

    Jerry
    http://www.cyvin.org/ [cyvin.org]
    • but the articles really don't have any detail as to what the fees will be

      Fees? Is this a Soviet Russia joke? The purpose of this is for blogs to get paid for advertising. This is similar to Google's AdSense program.

  • Microsoft won't be too far behind ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by xmas2003 ( 739875 ) * on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @12:56PM (#13231669) Homepage
    Any bets on when the Redmond gang will offer their Ad network?
    • Whoa! Don't be so hasty. MS just read about this now, so they've got to get a dev team together later today, wait for Yahoo to launch so they can steal ideas, then develop their own. Before they launch they will need to market it as an innovative revolution in online ads until finally it launches and nobody cares about it.

      At least that's what they did with MSN search and MSN maps.
      • You and I call it "theft of ideas," Microsoft calls it "innovation." I guess it's all a matter of perception... and I always perceive a lot of crap coming from M$.
      • for Yahoo to launch so they can steal ideas, then develop their own

        So, when MS does it, it's stealing. But when Yahoo does it (following Google), it's innovation? Or, when Google did it after Overture and Go2 and everyone else that had been in the game for years... what, they were just de-Eviling it? And, Google maps... was not one bit of it, conceptually or otherwise, derivative in any way from earlier offerings from MapQuest, and Yahoo?

        I guarantee that Yahoo won't be advertising this new service as
    • *bets for a limited beta in october*

    • "Any bets on when the Redmond gang will offer their Ad network?"

      MSN Spaces [msn.com] is Microsoft's free, ad-supported blogging site. Knowing how Microsoft plays their brands, I believe that they'll continue with that tactic. They get the ad revenue, plus they drive viewers to the MSN properties.

    • Any bets on when the Redmond gang will offer their Ad network?

      The Redmond mafia *is* it's own ad network. Marketing is all they *do*.

  • Formula for success (Score:4, Funny)

    by jesuscyborg ( 903402 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @12:57PM (#13231678)
    Microsoft and Yahoo's new formula for success on the web seems to be: Do whatever Google does!
    • Sweet! That means if I visit friends at Yahoo! or Microsoft, I can also drink $5 bottles of water and eat a variety of snacks that I would normally find too expensive to purchase for myself.

    • Re:Formula for success (Score:4, Insightful)

      by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @01:02PM (#13231732) Journal
      Microsoft and Yahoo's new formula for success on the web seems to be: Do whatever Google does!

      Can you blame either company? In any line of business, it is a good idea to copy a successful competitor, especially when the cost of said "copying" is relatively low.

    • Well that strategy worked for Google...they just did what Yahoo and Microsoft did....

    • Re:Formula for success (Score:4, Interesting)

      by enrico_suave ( 179651 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @01:09PM (#13231811) Homepage
      " Microsoft and Yahoo's new formula for success on the web seems to be: Do whatever Google does!"

      As much fun as it is to piss on yahoo as the "old and busted" and google as the "new hotness"... Yahoo has made some interesting forward thinking purchases lately... like flickr and Konfabulator

      *shrug* YMMV, and I'm no yahoo apologist/fan boy... just saying not all that glitters is google.

      e
      • So true...all of the cool innovations in search have been coming from non google companies. Yes Google is doing all sorts of crazy shit with maps and photos and ajax...but the search is the same as ever, and Yahoo and MSN search is about equal in quality now. But where are the search innovations? Clusty [clusty.com] has awesomely useful clustered search, Yahoo came up with that search that lets you adjust the search to find more research or more ecommerce...Yahoo demoed that social linking search engine... I mean, wh
      • As much fun as it is to piss on yahoo as the "old and busted" and google as the "new hotness"... Yahoo has made some interesting forward thinking purchases lately... like flickr and Konfabulator


            Yahoo does have advantages. I gave up using gmail out of frustration when I found their mail servers sometimes hold messages in a queue or something for hours. So I went and bought me a 2GB mailbox from Yahoo and have not regretted it for a second.

    • Just like they copied free web e-mail? And personalized RSS feed homepages? Or searching the internets? ..oh wait...

      Let's face it, in the digital world, stealing ideas goes both ways. All that really matters is who implements those ideas better.
    • And Google's formula probably started off with:

      "Do whatever Microsoft and Yahoo! does but better."

      A formula for success in any business is to do something better than everyone else. If you're the only one doing it, great. But the point of competition is to beat out your competitors. And in this case, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN all compete for a very similar market by producing very similar products.
    • You mean Google's formula for success is "Do whatever Yahoo does" such as:

      News
      Maps
      Email

      And it's only a matter of time until...
      Instant Messenger

  • Wasn't Google awarded the patent for this technology recently? http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/30/14 41249&tid=217 [slashdot.org]

  • Yahoo will never win... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If Yahoo employees can't even park [realtechnews.com], how can they ever hope to defeat Google?

  • Well its a good thing... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by B11 ( 894359 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @01:02PM (#13231735)
    Someone is figuring out how to cram more ads onto the web. Lord knows we don't have enough.

  • Actual Program URL (Score:5, Informative)

    by LetterJ ( 3524 ) * <j@wynia.org> on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @01:05PM (#13231768) Homepage
    Since a quick scan of the article didn't include the actual program address, here it is: http://publisher.yahoo.com [yahoo.com]
  • It's for US residents only.... they can't forget about me! :)
    • It's for US residents only...

      If you want to use it, get a DBA (Doing Business As), a US post office box, and a US bank account.

      They aren't going to ask for a green card, fer cryin' out loud. Don't ask, don't tell.

  • Now the real test i their content matching (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Serveert ( 102805 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @01:08PM (#13231801)
    this is what differentiates adsense from everything else. The tech they acquired from applied semantics works very well as you can see by the success of adsense. It parses websites, figures out their meaning then finds corresponding ads. Not such an easy process.

    Yahoo's beta of this showed that their way of doing this is lacking, hopefully they improved it.
  • http://www.fuckedgoogle.com/ [fuckedgoogle.com]

    Google's earnings are over-estimated now, and Yahoo's are underestimated.

  • Well.. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by dotdan ( 902253 )
    After reading the comment about how someone was booted from AdSense unjustly, Yahoo will have the upper hand. ANYONE who has been booted or denied by Google, or just plain doesn't like them, will instantly go to Yahoo. However, will there be sites with Google on the left and Yahoo on the right?
    • Not unless they want to be kicked out of Adsense. Google's T&C prohibts the use of any other contextual ads on the same page.
    • "ANYONE who has been booted or denied by Google, or just plain doesn't like them, will instantly go to Yahoo."
      That's bad news for Yahoo they will get all the AdSense rejects. Advertisers won't be very happy about that.
  • An interesting side-effect of this might be that Google may feel pressure to publish exactly how they split the revenue of Adsence. At the moment its all guesswork, but most estimates seem to converge at about 60-40 split in favour of the publisher. Competition has got to be a good thing, but I can't wait to see how Yahoo foul this up like they did with 'search'
  • It wont be easy for Yahoo...
    Because most of us who pay AdWords primarily do so because we want our ads placed on the search itself. Sure you have the option to not allow it showing on pages, but that's not the issue: you want your advertisements in the search engine, when users are searching for something like what you offer.

    Yahoo's search popularity is way inferior (specially outside the US) so those with tighter budgets will still be sticking to Google alone... meaning that Yahoo will always have fewer ad
    • I disagree with you on two points.
      People who pay for Adwords primarily do so to get customers to come to their sites and buy products, they shouldn't care where the ads are displayed. Google have claimed that Asense advertisements have a higher click through rate compared with ads displayed next to the SERPS and many webmasters have said that the conversion rate from adsense ads is higher. If this is true then Adsense style advertising should be the prefered option.

      As to Yahoos "way inferior" popularit
      • My real hope here is that increased competition leads to a higher percentage of the click fee going to the publisher instead of Google or Yahoo.

        Good point. Many people seem to go on and on about how they rake in hundreds and in some cases thousands in payments from Google for running their ads on their blogs or other sites. I think that this is actually a tiny minority, and that many of these claims are suspect anyway. I think most people may get at most one or two hundred every few months, if that. The ma

      • - People who pay for AdWords do care about it because they are paying for that click. I do. If I have to pay for a click I rather pay for someone who is searching for something specific that I offer than someone who was visiting a site and just out of boredom or curiosity clicked your ad. The difference is that you know for sure that the one who searched is interested in what you are offering, the other might just be curious.

        As for your real hope, I hope that too. :-)

    • ...those with tighter budgets will still be sticking to Google alone...

      Unless Yahoo is substantially cheaper. They might bill themselves as a bargain, for half the price, per view, you can reach users through Yahoo. After operational costs, this is all pretty much gravy for them anyway. A price war could be just the thing to make this more affordable.

  • Participants of the program must be a resident of the U.S., with valid U.S. Social Security number or Tax ID. (from http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/scp/viewer/ind ex.php?loc=USYPN0005&client_id=5468&event_id=15952 [yahoo.com] I know its in beta, but bloody hell...

  • Ad == Credibility? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Thunderstruck ( 210399 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @01:38PM (#13232040)
    I've been all around this great big web
    and I've seen all kinds of 'blogs
    But I can't wait to get back to the blogs
    that are good enough to support ads...

    (With appologies to the Beach Boys)

    My question is, does the presence of advertising on an otherwise ordinary web log make it look more credible to the average web surfer?

    • My question is, does the presence of advertising on an otherwise ordinary web log make it look more credible to the average web surfer?

      You raise a good topic. While it is possible that a site uses ad-revenue to cover bandwidth and hosting fees, it may or may not be necessary. If people are used to reading mainstream news sites, of which some blogs are part of, they may feel uneasy about the lack of ads on small blogs.

      This reminds me of a some critiques of Moscow shortly after the fall of Communism in the
  • Ad-sense is not the only area Yahoo! is playing a bit of catch-up with Google...the other is in the area of blogging. Yahoo! just recently decided to "open up" its blogging network to the broader web, much like Google has done for a while with its Blogger acquistion of a few years ago. More here: http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/07/on_yahoo_360_pe.ht m l [blogs.com] On the other hand, the company has also been doing things better than Google, including the recent Yahoo! MyWeb initiative which provides a whole new way to sa
  • If doing is pronounced as it is, whats up with boing? Shouldn't doing be some form of dong or something? just flew in from 32afdraskrank vector of the multiverse, coincident to this moment but very far away, its nicer there, and I am also wondering about these words yahoo and google...are the users googloids and yahroids? and what do those words MEAN????? do they mean ANYTHING??? This article alludes to some sort of competition between yahoo and google, the world is now arguing about who will win, yah
  • Sadly, unlike Adsense, it looks like the Yahoo Publisher program is only for US residents (at least for the time being).

    If you're interested in being considered for the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta program, please enter your information below. Participants of the program must be a resident of the U.S., with valid U.S. Social Security number or Tax ID.

    From here [yahoo.com]

  • Right now yahoo webhosting [yahoo.com] gives free $50 credit for Google Adword when you sign up for hosting account. I guess they will change this in future.
    Most of the bloggers and website owners will use both Google and Yahoo to earn money, so in the future we will see ads shown by both network.

  • Already exists (Score:2, Informative)

    by SaturnSS ( 160457 )
    Blogs already have an option, it's called BlogAds [blogads.com], it works, it's very easy for advertisers to submit an ad and buy space.

  • Perfect timing. Google Adsense can screw you over. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by l-ascorbic ( 200822 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @03:07PM (#13233064)
    I have had Adsense running on my site for over a year now. Initially I didn't get many clicks at all. In fact I hadn't yet made the $100 minimum to get paid. However last week I redesigned my site and read through Google tips on ads optimisation. I changed the format, moved the ads around and generally tidied them up.

    Sure enough, my clickthroughs jumped considerably. So much so, in fact, that I earned another $100 in about a week. This morning I got an email from Google stating that they'd disabled my account due to "Invalid clicks". I had not violated any of the terms: I hadn't clicked my own ads, I hadn't used bots, I hadn't offered incentives to anyone else to click them. All I'd done is follow their own optimisation tips.

    I sent an email saying this and got another automated response, stating that their "proprietary algorithm" mean that they couldn't elaborate as to what these invalid clicks were, but they were nevertheless disabling my account and witholding all payment.

    I spoke to a few of the users of my site, who said that yes, many of them had been clicking ads more. Some said that they'd gone on to buy things through these clicks. None had used bots or anything: they'd just clicked on the ads as any user might, because they were more noticable now and many of the targetted ads were amusing or interesting.

    My reply to their second canned email has gone unanswered, and I'm left down the $200-$250 that was remaining in my account, and it seems I have been hosting Google's ads for over a year for free. It seems that I'm far from the only person to experience this arbitrary account cancellation:

    • Tell me about it! Google zapped my account yesterday for no reason, though my traffic hasn't been that high lately so I'm guessing the rumour that they're booting off people who don't make them enough cash might be true, whether it makes sense or not.

      I hope Y!PN works out.

    • Take them to small claims court (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      See what the minimum is in your district. Probably is at least 200. The judge will surely rule in your favor if google refuses to divulge *why* the canclled your account. Also if you are not located in california, you will probably win by default because they won't want to pay for a lawyer to fly out and show up.

    • Just a consideration: i know many bloggers and web masters who have seen their Google Adsense account disabled, but i never seen a Google Adwords user having his money back for "invalid clicks".
    • Wow, interesting. I work in advertising and our account advertises pretty heavily on Google approximately $180K US over the last 18 months or so. Our agency's accounts combined are probably spending over $1 million US by now.

      I just asked our interactive media buyers, and we've never been reimbursed. Though I am more familiar with banner advertising, based on the invoices I've seen, I believe we get credit when we aren't achieving the desired CPM.

      Advertisers aren't getting reimbursed and publishers
  • Google has always been grey on how much they've paid via Adsense and as a result many sites which made more using different PPC's made less on Google. Or they started off making more before planing off. Plus Google refuses to play nice with others. I'm glad to see more competition.
  • A list of related discussions be be found here:
    http://advertisingdiary.com/blog/_archives/2005/8/ 2/1101735.html [advertisingdiary.com]
  • ... for an ad-server that isn't obnoxious, moderately topical and doesn't support Chinese censorship?

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