What the hell is Jeff Barson doing?

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This is the blog of Jeff Barson. I'm currently running HireVue Labs, former Director at Sendside, founder of Surface Medical, Nimble, Medspa MD, Freelance MD, Frontdesk, Uncommon, and Wild Blue... angel investor and startup advisor. Oh, and I'm a artist. More >>

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    Thursday
    Jan042007

    What's wrong with Yahoo context ads?

    ysmma_1.gifI'm  am running Yahoo Publisher Network for my text ads on my blogs and not Google's adsense.

    My brother-in-law was in town for Christmas and he and I argued over which ad system was better. My arguement was that Yahoo paid more than Google. He felt that Google had a higher click through rate because Google's relevancy engine is based on click throughs as well as cost. (Supposedly Yahoos new Panama engine does the same thing.)

    But my blog at Medical Spa MD is a real hit and miss. When Yahoo is working well it places ads with great relevancy. But around 20% of the time the text links are some form of generic financing ads. Since I've not run adsense on that blog it makes me wonder if Google wouldn't do better for me?

    One thing is for sure, with Yahoo getting their ass handed to them by Google, they can't really afford to loose the clients they already have.

    Capitalist Pig isn't happy either.

    The excitement was short lived as within three days, the yahoo editorial staff had removed 231 of the keywords.  That’s over 75% of the keywords that I’m currently running with google that have high CTR, and great conversions.  So now, if I want to get back in, I have to spend more time resubmitting the keywords that were declined.  The question is, what would be a better use of my time?  Trying to get all my ads back into yahoo so I’m in front of the roughly 25% of users that use Yahoo or increasing my exposure in Google?  It’s definitely more efficient for me to spend more time with Google since I’m sure my ads and keywords are going to show there.

    ...More than one advertiser has come public with their experiences with click fraud on Yahoo’s network.  One of the bigger claims was from Pepperjam which had a client that ran through $10k worth of clicks in one day with Yahoo.  I first read about the story when reading Shoemoney’s blog, who has a strong relationship with Pepperjam.  Yahoo responded with a $10k “goodwill” credit to the advertiser without admitting that there was fraud.

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