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Google Adsense Versus Yahoo Publisher Network
- by Garry Conn

In March of 2003, Google launched Google Adsense. Since that time many companies have gained interest in this market. One of those companies is Yahoo Inc. They wanted to get their hands into the the market of Ad Serving as a means of direct competition with Google Adsense. In August of 2005, Yahoo Inc. launched Yahoo Publisher Network Beta. How is Yahoo doing in the advertisement serving competition? Which program is right for your site? In this article you will learn key features of both programs and be able to decide which advertisement serving program is better for you, your site, and your viewers.

Google Adsense Unique Features:

• CPM Advertisements: Google Adsense is unique for the fact that advertisements displayed on your site can be both pay per click (PPC) or cost per 1000 impressions (CPM). PPC ads are self explanatory. If a viewers clicks, you get paid. However, CPM ads are a little different and its something that Yahoo Publisher Network doesn’t offer on their program. In a nutshell, you are paid money for displaying CPM ads on your site. You are paid by how many times the advertisement is viewed or displayed on your site… Not by how many times it was clicked. This is very useful for publishers that have sites with moderate to heavy traffic as every time someone visits your site and a CPM ad is displayed, you generate a little bit of additional money, where as if you run YPN ads on your site… this is money that would be missed.
• Wide Selection of Advertisements: There is a huge selection of different size ads you can use with Google Adsense. I can’t fail to mention also that you have many different choices, including deciding whether to display image ads or text ads, or both! YPN doesn’t give you the option to control text or image ads being displayed and appear on your site randomly. Having the ability to create such well thought out custom advertisements gives you a higher chance of success with the advertisement serving program. Google Adsense considers this and gives you all the tools needed towards creating effective advertisements on your site.
• Advanced Analysis and Reporting: While YPN also provides some tools for analysis, Google Adsense has them beat by a long shot. If you spend about an hour learning how to utilize the analysis and reporting tools provided by Google Adsense, you will know precisely which ads on your site are the most attractive, which ones pay the best, and which ones are not effective at all. Google Adsense gives you the ability to totally micro-manage the ads being displayed on your site, and if you are a picky bean counter like myself, this should prove to be very useful to you.

Yahoo Publisher Network:

• YPN is the only program that I have gotten paid. I have used both programs on BTI in the past and in the past three months of using YPN, I have received two $125 dollar payments. I am very pleased and totally thrilled to receive these payments. Just a few days ago I did make the switch back to Google Adsense. I do intend on using YPN again in the very near future, but at this time I want to experiment again with Adsense.
• Why Do I Like Yahoo Publisher Network? For me, using YPN was great when BTI was only getting a few hundred visits each day. To me, it was a balancing act. As it seems, YPN pays more per click compared to Google Adsense. Sites with very little to somewhat moderate amounts of traffic, can benefit more from using YPN instead of Adsense for the fact that their PPC pays higher. This is great for people that are just starting their site and still want to make a little money to help lighten the expense of blogging, hosting, etc…

In summary:

Once your site starts to receive close to 1000 unique visits per day, I would strongly consider using Google Adsense for the fact that having the extra traffic, more professional and custom advertisements, and better relevant advertisement content totally and easily makes up for the lack of lower PPC. Having higher amounts of daily traffic somewhat allows you to play numbers and percents. You will find after doing a little bit of stats research, that Google Adsense can make you more money if you have higher amounts of traffic to your site compared to keeping YPN as your active advertisement serving program. Having the kicker bonus of Google Adsense providing CPM ads makes it easier to be successful running Adsense on higher traffic sites. For lower traffic sites just starting, I recommend using YPN.

Just a few days ago prior to writing this article, I switched back to Google Adsense because daily traffic has reached a level to where I feel Adsense will be more effective than Yahoo Publisher Network. At this moment, I totally have full intentions to continue to use YPN. I am spending some time experimenting with different ways YPN can continue to be a success here on BTI and I am also playing around with different ways where I can use both programs at the same time while not causing any conflicts with either programs’ TOS. As it stands, you are not allowed to display both YPN and Adsense codes on the same page at the same time. I am working on a way to display these ads in a rotation pool which will prevent this from happening.

If you should have any comments, questions, or suggestions… please feel free to voice your opinion by adding a comment to this article below. I want to invite you to share your thoughts and if you still need help choosing an advertisement serving program, I will be more than happy to learn more about your situation and help you make a decision.