I know what you mean...

I have 4 different blogs, all with different content categories. One's a "Tech" blog, one's a car blog, and there are two more. No matter which I place the ad code on, they're always the same ads.

I think they're biggest problem, right now, is not having a large enough base of advertisers. I could be wrong, however.

I see botox, plastic surgery, mortgage refinancing, dentist, teeth whitening, and vonage ads showing up on my sites. I'd say less than 20% of the ads being displayed are on target.

Not good.

I've got Mortgage Refinancing, Vonage, and some kind of financial company. Considering they were on a tech blog, they obviously didn't bring many (any) clicks.

I was convinced it was a lack of advertisers causing the off target ads...not any longer.

When I check my KWs on Yahoo Search, I see many great on target ads. They just don't make it to my site...

I too have removed all Y ads except on one small site to keep the account open. I've just lost too much $$$ waiting for some improvement...
I hope they get it together, but for now I've switched back to the old tried and true.
Fish Texas

**Open Memo to Terry Semel**

Dear Mr. Semel;

Please take a walk over to the Yahoo Publisher department and put the fear of God into your software engineer(s).

Yahoo is losing at LEAST $200 million a year in revenue due to poor ad targeting on their Publisher product.

After you threaten to fire all of them in within 48 hours (because that's how long it should take to fix this), here are some hints to give to your now alert software engineer(s):

1) ford trucks <> teeth whitening
2) mortgage loan <> plastic surgery
3) real estate <> cosmetic dentistry

---- Key: "<>" means "does not equal" in geek speak ----

Thank you, and I'm looking forward to seeing the improvements in the Publisher product as well as my stock portfolio. Also, I don't want Google to own the entire internet, and Yahoo seems to be trying very hard to give it to them right now.

Best regards;
rehabguy

A few more to your list:

politics<>Vonage
cell phones<>Mortgage Refinancing
Cars<>Rhapsody
blog software<>credit checks

Thanks!

I'm down to 1 page of 350 page site.

What bothers me most is they won't honor my block list and when I call for support I get the same old story.. it is like a surprise to them that ad blocking doesn't always work.

They want me to send them screen shots to 'help their programmers' - how absurd is that. I guess the programmers are looking in the wrong spot (my page) when they should be looking at the block list - idiots.

I also stopped all my (content) advertising campaigns on yahoo since I know my ads are showing on the wrong sites. I feel like calling some of the advertisers and letting them know that clicks from my site are worthless and so is Yahoo.

My daily earnings have now gone up by an average factor of 4.5x on the pages I switched from Yahoo to AdSense.

If Yahoo could give me some good reason to keep running their ads, I'd love to hear it. I really can't think of one myself.

Not only that, but my general revenues on Adsense have gone up, almost as though they were penalizing me for running Yahoo ads on other pages on my site! I can't really believe that this is true and the overall increase in site revenue for the AdSense pages (about 10-15%) is due to the removal of Yahoo ads on other pages. I think this must just be a coincidence and due to normal seasonal variations (or a run of good luck), but it does make you wonder!

It hit an all time low, sorry, I must also remove it from all major pages. Will keep it on some pages to watch. You would think that it being in beta would generate a better revenue, I just can't see how once they ad more publishers it can do anything but go down. I hope they prove me wrong : )

Every once in a while I switch some ads back to Yahoo to see what happens. I always see horribly-targeted ads for a few hours, then absolutely no ads after that - just blank spaces. The CTR and eCPM are horrible, and I switch back. I've pretty much given up on YPN. Maybe if they do a complete revamp of the contextual matching, I'll give it another shot.

That reminds me, does YPN use the same technology that was part of the "Panama" upgrade? If so, then that's a huge disappointment...

I'm getting the plastic surgery ads too. I wrote Yahoo saying that the ad targetting isn't working for me and no one is clicking the ads and little revenue. They wrote back that (I'm paraphrasing) I should refresh the page (should my customers do that too? Oh, I guess they didn't know that, all they wanted was to see the page once). He also said their system is working fine and that it's on purpose because their algorithm detects that some other ads do well on my site and generate more revenue and clicks....hello...I wrote them because no one is clicking their ads...

I wrote back, no problem. If it's working as designed then it's not for me. And I reduced Yahoo to 1/10th it's former rotation in my system.

I'm reading through this thread seeing people complain about being plagued with the very ads I would beg for. I thought the dearth of on-target ads was due to low inventory, evidently not.

Another thing I see with YPN is that the ads are on target as far as topic goes, but in regards location they're ridiculous. As an example, I might have a page on installing a faucet on a sink. Instead of ads from Kohler, American Standard, Moen, and whoever else makes faucets I get ads for "sink repair im Memphis," "plumbers available in Salt Lake." I'm telling you, my Salt Lake traffic just isn't that high.

My impression was that companies offer to develop websites for plumbers. As a part of the "package" they promise to promote the site. For promotion they go to YPN and place ads, because they know its not going to cost them anything (no clicks) because the targeting is so screwed up. It's a cheap way for them to fulfill their obligation to the website owner and its free branding for the advertised website.

Another vote: YPN just isn't doing it. Every couple of months now I've been experimenting with switching a site to Yahoo for a week or two and sometimes I've been encouraged. The latest go-around was so bad I could not believe it! I have to think it is a software issue as in the past I did get ads that were reasonably (note that I said reasonably, not great) targeted. Did their inventory get that bad that quickly? I doubt it.

Microsoft should think twice about what they are (negotiating to) getting themselves into.

I am getting close to dumping YPN also.

I used one domain as a test site for Yahoo, it was doing okay the last few months. Since May 1st, clicks disappeared, with the same amount of traffic.

I was ready to remove the ads last week, but decided I will wait and see what will happen with the MSN/Yahoo talks of merger/buyout first.

I see botox, plastic surgery, mortgage refinancing, dentist, teeth whitening, and vonage ads showing up on my sites.

I believe these are all the hot products being hawked by affiliate marketers right now. Not exactly high quality advertisers in my opinion.