As more and more people are hosting their own webpage or pages,
advertisers have learned how to make contact with the audiences
who visit the pages. And not just randomly either; there are now
advertising programs that target ads specifically to the site
that the person is viewing. They are called contextual
advertising programs because they search through the context and
content of a page and identify keywords. They return ads to that
page that the program believes would be relevant and interesting
to the viewer. For example, if you are visiting a website on low
fat recipes, you might find ads about low fat products or weight
loss products.
Website owners aren't the only ones using this form of
advertising to generate revenue. You'll see these ads on search
engine pages themselves. For example, on Google, the ads
appear in a column on the right hand side of the results page.
The keywords you enter in the search box are used to target ads
to you. Advertisers are hoping that the short ad they supply
will lure you to their site, where hopefully you'll either order
their product or use their service.
Website owners can now earn money by allowing contextual
advertisers to place ads on their webpages. The more people
visit and click the ads, the more money the advertisers will pay
to the website owner. Many website owners make a considerable
stream of income from these programs. But the ads have to be
well targeted in order to get people to click. Which is why
right now there is so much excitement about a new contextual
advertising program being tested and prepared for the market.
Everyone out there making money on contextual advertising is
waiting to see if the Yahoo Publisher Network
(YPN) product will return better results than the leading
Google Adsense product.
At the moment, YPN is still in beta testing. A group of
users were invited to trial the product and the reviews on blogs
and postings all over the web are somewhat consistent on one
aspect. As of now, it seems that YPN is not returning ads
that are as relevant as the ones that Adsense
users are finding. For example, one blogger reported that on a
website on PHP programming, YPN returned ads for a florist and
for a phone service provider. The blogger couldn't understand
what words the YPN program picked up for the florist. But it was
the word 'hello' that apparently signaled the ads regarding the
phone service.
Additionally, some users have complained that YPN doesn't
seem to update earnings and visitor information as
often as Adsense. So website owners have to wait to learn
if changes they have made have actually impacted the visitors
that they get. However, although neither program will release
payment schemes until you register as a user, it seems that YPN
is paying more per click than Adsense. But the feeling is that
payments will be made more appealing long enough to get website
owners to switch from Adsense to YPN, but then prices will even
out. Some argue that in the long run it won't matter if YPN pays
more if they can't improve their ad relevancy because they won't
get the number of clicks from visitors to see a real difference
in their earnings.
As YPN is being tested, they are getting opinions and feedback
from the participants. So in time, the service may be improved.
However, competition for Adsense is a healthy thing. It will
force both companies to continually strive to improve their
service and offerings so that webmasters can continue to benefit
from a healthy stream of income in the future.
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