blogvp

So I got the email today from YPN, and they are telling me that since I’m already in their beta program I can now add ads to my RSS feeds.

We’re pleased to announce another method for you to maximize your revenue and bring value to your content properties: Advertising in RSS feeds is now available through the Yahoo! Publisher Network.

This new product feature allows you to place Yahoo! Search Marketing ads within your RSS feeds. The ads that appear may be relevant to a specific article or post, or to your content in general.

So I did some reading, and they only display ads when the full post is being shared, not just the summary. I’m not sure how I feel about this, since I don’t send full text on any of my blogs. YPN RSS ads can only be displayed on Movable Type and Wordpress platforms.

YPN, Yahoo+Publisher+Network

Duncan has a long write up on ad sizes and their results.

Some quick takeaways if you don’t want to read it all:

1. General ad placement
   

   Inline ad spots, such as a Google Adsense ad placed within the text post for example is highly regarded by many

   Side bar spots have various levels of success, where as top banners (above the heading) or footer ad spots have the lowest level of clickthru.

2. Ad sizes
   

   Leaderboard (728×90)
   36.7%

   Wide Skyscraper (160×600)
   16.7%

   Half Banner (234×60)
   12.0%

   Button #1 (120×90)
   11.7%

   Full Banner (468×60)
   7.5%

3. Blog unique spots
   

   Google Adlinks bar, which I use in a 728×15 configeration on a number of blogs, and it works well. Its not my highest paying spot at the Blog Herald but it regularly ranks at no 2. On other blogs I’ve had no luck with it, and others its been beyond successful.

4. The Chitika factor
   

   One last different sort of ad spot that is getting a lot of raves across the blogosphere,

5. Experiment, Experiment, Experiment
   

   Dont be afraid to experiment with your template as you would with any other aspect of your blog. First and foremost, its fun.

chitika, ads, adsense

So I was chatting with some serious bloggers and the discussion came around how would we, as bloggers, fix Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) and related services. There was many ideas, I think we came to at least 10 good ideas, but the two at the top were:

• Better stats - fix the stats. Nobody does great stats, at least not with a lot of hacking from the blog owners. What would be nice is for Google to actually reveal more of the stats that they keep on everything and empower us with it. We would be even more happy. Because testing and stats are some of the most important numbers in blogging.
• Provide a server side solution - don’t rely only on browser side JavaScript, give us something that can be embedded in PHP, that way we won’t have to worry about the people that turn off the javascript. And if google or somebody else did provide PHP instead of JavaScript, that would give us more control, and we would be able to track it better for better stats and customize it.

If you have other ideas, please let me know.

google, adsense, ypn, yahoopublishernetwork

There’s been some talk ( also Jen) about what to do when the visitors that come to your site have their javascript disabled, which prevents Google Adsense ads and Yahoo Ads from displaying. And the suggestion that came out was to use the NOSCRIPT tags like this:

<script>
… Google AdSense Code….
</script>
<noscript>
…. alternate ad here….
</noscript></blockquote>

My suggestion is to use a server side ad management software for the NOSCRIPT, so it will no rely on the browser to support any technology that can be turned off by the visitor.

adsense, ypn, javascript, noscript

I wanted to thank Jen for writing in her blog that she uses phpAdsNew for split testing her YPN and Adsense ads.

My hosting company has the program which comes with “auto installer”, and many others. via Fantastico. And Fantastico plainly rocks: it installs many different programs AUTOMATICALLY, two clisk and it’s installed.

Here’s the entire list, copied and pasted:

Navigation
Fantastico Home
Control Panel Home

Blogs
b2evolution
Nucleus
pMachine Free
WordPress

Content Management
Drupal
Geeklog
Mambo Open Source
PHP-Nuke
phpWCMS
phpWebSite
Post-Nuke
Siteframe
Typo3
Xoops

Customer Relationship
Crafty Syntax Live Help
Help Center Live
osTicket
PHP Support Tickets
Support Logic Helpdesk
Support Services Manager

Discussion Boards
phpBB2
SMF

E-Commerce
CubeCart
OS Commerce
Zen Cart

F.A.Q.
FAQMasterFlex

Guestbooks
ViPER Guestbook

Hosting Billing
AccountLab Plus
phpCOIN

Image Galleries
4Images Gallery
Coppermine Photo Gallery
Gallery

Mailing Lists
PHPlist

Polls and Surveys
Advanced Poll
phpESP
PHPSurveyor

Project Management
dotProject
PHProjekt

Site Builders
Templates Express

Wiki
TikiWiki
PhpWiki

Other Scripts
Dew-NewPHPLinks
Moodle
Noahs Classifieds
Open-Realty
phpAdsNew
PHPauction
phpFormGenerator
WebCalendar

testing, splittesting, phpadsnew, fantastico

Paul from YPN writes: “RON ads are ads that qualify for every site. Otherwise, there is nothing special about them. That means they get ranked and blocked like any other ad. If you’re seeing RON ads in a result set, that’s because our system believes that the RON ad is one of the best possible advertisements to show on your site.”

He says RON ads can run for two reasons on your site:

1. No other ad to run.
2. They are working on the system.

YPN, yahoopublishernetwork, RON

Chris Pirillo has an interview (which I didn’t catch earlier) with Will Johnson of YPN, “about what the service offers for publishers of all sizes and how they plan to compete with the popular incumbent.”

MP3 or WindowsMedia.

ypn, yahoopublishernetwork

Paul, from the Yahoo Publisher Network has addressed the issue that Tim Flight was having with his site when he was rotating YPN and Adsense ads.

The whole experience has suggested to me that the blocking feature, among other things, should probably be domain based and not an exact match to the site host.

Here’s the full response.

YahooPublisherNetwork, YPN, googleadsense, adsense, timflight, rotatingads