My experience mirrors yours.

So far every page I've tried Yahoo on has resulted in less relevant ads and a much lower click through ratio than running the same format ad from AdSense.

Earnings per click are higher, but the bottom line is down.

This has been my experience - no matter what I block, I still will end up with bad ads. Even if I use Ad Targeting (which will give me some relevant ads), bad ads still sneak in.

I like that the clicks pay more, but I get far fewer clicks to the point it's not worth it.

Maybe YPN needs to do what Chitika, or even Amazon does and allow you to really set the targets/products advertised, because while obviously mortages are big business, I have no desire to try and push them.

It's lack of advertisers folks...IMO
Fish Texas

Then don't serve ads. Give me the option of serving my own ads (like AdSense does) if they don't have anything relevant to serve.

I'm tired of ads for financial services or other stuff that's so far off topic it's not funny.

They are never going to grow their business at this rate. I've pretty much dropped all Yahoo ads now in favor of AdSense. Obviously I'm not the only one. I'd love to be able to diversify and not be dependant on AdSense for contextual ads, but I can't really afford to lose money to do so.

Maybe they need to add some money into the program, give good advertisers a sweet deal and take a loss for a while in order to grow their customer base. Amazon.com lost money for years while they built up their business.

Whatever they are doing now just isn't working.

No one on the planet wanted YPN to become another Adsense more than me. Clearly it hasn't.

One thing that I just never understood is this: YPN just doesn't seem to have any advertisers. Why is this? If there is a dearth of advertisers wouldn't this mean that the YPN bid prices would be low compared to Adsense. So why don't advertisers flock to YPN to take advantage of this mismatch?

The other thing I don't understand is Adsense and YPN can take the exact same format. So why is my click through rate with YPN so much lower than Adsense? Are advertisers so dense that they can't look at an Adsense ad block, see what ads seem to get shown the most (implying that they generate Adsense the most revenue) and then go to YPN and create the same ad text for an ad there?

I think Y advertisers shy away from content because of the same reason we are driven crazy with off-target ads. I turned all content off since I know that my ads would get shown mostly where I would not want them to be shown.

Seems like many companies use Y for branding or 'any' eyeballs they can find since I get used car ads on my software site, and dating ads and everything except software - even though I've given them the 'software' hint. Those advertisers must have the keyword 'the' in their list.

Yahoo's only hope is to get real. Get out of beta, slash the payout they are giving publishers. Even with slashed payouts they can still scoop up publishers from all the secondary ad networks. They need to forget about competing with Google for the moment and get some ad inventory with low prices. Once they increase inventory and seriously improve targetting then they can increase advertising rates. If they have a decent auction, this should occur naturally with supply and demand. Subsidising a broken system to keep up with Google payments is recipe for putting Yahoo out of business, which seems to be underweigh. They are living in hope and will surely die in desperation by trying to win a pissing contest with Google.

Note to YHOO Shareholders. Fire the CEO who has been piloting Yahoo's controlled flight into terrain.

Just to continue my rant. I hear a lot of good things about YPN customer service and how attentive they are. That's fine if you want to run a boutique for ads and be known for great service. But I suspect that Yahoo would rather be the Wal-Mart of internet advertising. If you want to be the Wal-Mart of ads then you do things a bit differently.

People go to Wal-Mart for low prices (relatively) and tons of inventory. If you shop at Wal-Mart, you damn well know that you're up the creek when it comes to customer service. But you're not there for frilly stuff, you're there because they're stack'em deep and sellin'em cheap.

Yahoo needs get out of beta and just bring it on. You're not going to the prom with a stain on your dress. Get out there! If some of your customers fall victim to electronic samonella in the peanut butter, then hey, that's just the cost of doing business. Throw those lawsuits on the pile and just keep running that cash register. Get this thing moving. No one expects it to be perfect and it never will be. Just fix it as you go along, opinions and profits will improve as service improves.

I'd love to be able to diversify and not be dependant on AdSense for contextual ads, but I can't really afford to lose money to do so.

I would love to be diversified across many sites. I'm not worried about getting banned from AS or anything like that as some are (going by the threads you see on the topic). I'm worried about changes being made, etc., and having to accept them because AS is the only game in town.

I would rather be able to play them off against one another - I have niche sites that may do better with YPN over AS or AS over YPN, but unfortunately I can't do that right now because YPN is just not serving good ads for me.

Right now Chitika and Amazon are the best alternatives to AS for me, because I can target them.

If I do targeting on YPN, I still end up with the financial and dating services :(

I get a lot of traffic from Yahoo. Probably 15% - 20%.

If Yahoo can send me that traffic, why can't they send me proper ads?

I really don't know what is going on with YPN. When you look at their search results pages, 99% are on target with what was searched for. Why then is it so much harder to give the same type of targeting to sites who run YPN?

If it has to do with keyword density on page, why not just up the ratio for ads to show?

I'm starting to think that it may just be because they are in beta and limiting it to US only. When limiting it, and the way their geo-targeting of the ads seems to be set up, it really limits what ads will be shown. Why not show ads to a German website (which is written in english) and targets american visitors? What is so wrong with doing that?

Instead, my experience with YPN suggests that the majority of the ads are city-based. i.e. buy a widget in New York. Instead of showing websites which say, buy a widget and ship directly. Or even international ads which say to buy a widget. It is very, very, very limiting both advertisers and publishers.

I'm thinking Fish_Texas is right - lack of advertisers, which means lack of diversity among advertising.

I think YPN needs to open internationally. If international publishers come international advertisers will come too.

They need to make some fundamential changes.