Which is better: Yahoo! Publisher Network Or Google Adsense?

24 Responses

1. Jim… I have been using Both YPN and Adsense plus Chitika, Kontera, BidVertiser and a few other contextual services that I won’t give away here… But from my experience overall… AdSense is the best solution.

   When YPN was in Beta they paid VERY well and it was super awesome for a while and then it seemed that when it was released to the public the payout went way down. Today… YPN will most likely pay more per click then AdSense (depending on category) but the biggest issue with YPN is that the ads (so far) are not very relevant to the page so your CTR will be lower then normal. You can have a page about Mortgage Refinancing and it will show ads for cell phone ring tones…

   I have never had a problem getting paid from AdSense or YPN but AdSense has a feature that I do really like a lot… I can have them put a hold on my check for as long as I want and then when I am ready I can get a FAT check mailed to me.

   One thing that I will point out that I tested last year is that Google would hit my site with a ranking penalty and stop crawling it as much when I ran YPN on my sites. This was a MAJOR issue for me and I almost flipped out after verifying this from multiple tests I did… I don’t know if this is still the case today but I would suggest you test it yourself and see.

   A few months back AdSense started displaying Video Ads on sites that it felt were of good enough quality and I know for some people it has really helped to boost their income.

   A benefit to YPN is they are not very strict with the quality of your page or what you do with your ads. AdSense recently publicly said that you can NOT have images next to your ads. Putting images next to the ads was the #1 way to boost your CTR and now we can’t do that?? So AdSense is much more strict and will ban accounts faster then you can tell what happened…

   I have made a lot with both services but both have their strengths and weaknesses… A lot of this depends on what market you are going after and what you are doing with your pages… I am waiting for Microsoft to release their contextual publishing service…

   Well… that is my two-cents worth 🙂

   Brett

2. I have only toyed around with each, both on a sports-related blog and on my SBS blog. In each case, I found the ads from Google to be much more relevant to my site.

3. Brett – thanks for the knowledge filled reply!
   2 votes for Google so far.

   C’mon folks, I’d really love everyones 2 cents on this….here I am asking everyone to give some thoughts and advice back on something really important for me and for many others…why is it so quiet in here…I hope this post doesn’t die out…Brett did a great start, and Matt chimed in…..I’m all ears 😉 for you.

4. The general consensus (on the forums) really is that google adsense is better. People generally go on to YPN when they’ve been banned from adsense.

   For me only adsense works because I live outside the US – so I can’t tell you about YPN personally.

5. I tried both AdSense and YPN. For my experience AdSense is better in terms of CTR and as Brett already mentioned – Adsence is much more relevant, but frankly speaking Google frightens me as they’re becoming stricter every day.

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7. I’ve used both and my experience has mirror Brett’s. Adsense’s targeting is far superior to YPN however I wouldn’t even say that YPN’s clicks pay better because you aren’t comparing apples to apples in terms of the ads displayed.

   And here’s the funny thing, I took YPN off all my sites, because they were targeting poorly and seeing an abysmal CTR, and about a month later they kicked me out claiming I was scraping/stealing content. When I emailed them back and asked them for an example (I was concerned google would come to the same conclusion so I wanted to remedy whatever yahoo saw) but they ignored me. And Google has never contacted me about violations (which leads me to believe the YPN claim was BS).

   So, put down another vote for Adsense. 🙂

8. I test these two extensively, and found that if you have a site revolving around one central topic – and a topic that has a wide advertising base (ie. law schools), Yahoo *will* make you more money (in terms of higher CTR and much higher CPC share). I’ve also found that Yahoo advertisers are a llittle less savvy than Google advertisers, and tend to opt in for Content (intentionally or mistakenly – probably more the latter) and raise their CPC bids for broad terms (which tend to appear in content network sites).

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10. ISPs who use the spam blacklists that don’t give you reasonable options for validating your email should themselves be blacklisted.

    Block their users from seeing your sites but redirect them to a Web page that explains that their ISPs are being irresponsible and harmful.

    Block all emails from those ISPs, too.

    The reason some spam blacklists are so unforgiving is that their maintainers practice economic blackmail directed at hosting services the list maintainers believe are unresponsive to their demands. It is the oft-stated goal of these blacklist maintainers to drive away the innocent customers of the ISPs who don’t cave ni to the blacklisters’ demands.

    The ISPs who subscribe to those blacklists are supporting that economic blackmail. Hence, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. We should just ignore all traffic and email from ISPs who choose to support unethical Internet practices.

11. Adsense: better relevance which in turn = higher CTR, but lower revenue per click
    YPN: higher revenue per click but lower relevance and CTR.

    Winner: Adsense.

12. Maybe it’s just me, but I still am only able to apply for the YPN beta program. I don’t believe it has been released to the general population yet. The YPN blog appears to corroborate that. Been a helluva long time in Beta, too.

    So I’d have to say I’m not wild about what seems to be lower earnings per click over the years I’ve run Adsense, I still like it 100% better than something I’ve never been able to use.

13. you should use google adsense because it gives you more flexibilty in choosing the advertisments.

14. I have just started using Google AdSense. So far the ads are very relevant, and the revenue per click is much more than I expected. I’m focusing on slowly building valuable sites…not cookie cutter crap with dupe content.

    I have a friend/colleague who got banned from Google, so he has been using YPN for several months. He makes a lot of money with several sites that are dynamically generated for the most part. The ads look good and seem relevant. His CTR is about 0.5%…but I wouldn’t expect high CTR using templates and content generating scripts. His success seems to be more about high volume traffic.

    I plan to test YPN and Microsoft AdCenter.

15. Jim,

    Well put by Phil…

    Peter also made a valid point which I agree with but the CTR on YPN tends to be low from my experience.

    You know what would be great? If either of the two would provide more info on the ads that were clicked on from my sites and the payout…. It’s great that I am making money but tell me what is working in detail so I can do more of it…

    Logging into the Adsense interface reminds me of crap proposals bad seo companies use for thier clients that look like invoices.

    Imagine what it would be like if Goog & YPN provided reporting like you do for your clients.

    T

16. Google – Good relevance (although very peculiar results sometimes) but low CPC

    Yahoo Publisher Network – Decent CTR but the inability to turn off sites/ sectors that are not performing for you.

17. YPN very rarely seem to be relevant to my content

    Google is – even more so with added 🙂

    Great topic

18. h3 tags – added sorry

19. Thanks Jim…

    Well for me it is always google adsense… Clean and clear…

    Manish Pandey aka SAM

20. Well, haven’t got a chance to lay my hand on YPN, as residing in India, but then for us Indian Gsense is the best and i presume the only profitable option. Do we have any ???

    And also, have read a lot of complaints of Yahoo showing a lot of irreverent contextual ads but people also have been bragging about the payout..

    For now, Gsense rules…at least in India – Got a free 20$ adwords voucher with my monthly magazine subscription

21. Good stuff.

    I am using Adsense and my sites it seems to be most relevant except on one blog which is all over the map.

    MP

22. It depends on your budget… Majority of people use Google you can easily get some stats on which is more popular….

    You may also want to try both the mediums to see which medium works for you better.

23. I was banned from Google Adsense, I asked Google why and they gave me no relivant information and stated I had Invalid clicks… which everything I was tracking showed all legitmate people.

    So then I went to try YPN but they are still in BETA and I guess that since my sites don’t get more then 3000-5000 page views per month they never accepted me.

    Just 2 days ago, signed up for MIVA monitization. It takes a few days to get relivant ads on all your pages but you get to pick the keyword you use when you set it up.

    Then you also don’t have to worry about people copying you ads and placing them on there own sites, since they wont show up. Since I have an Article Site sometimes people post there Adsense Ads on my page. Which I didn’t know they could do since I have been band but it is something I have to look out for, which is quite agravating and those people should be banned from Adsense.

24. For me its google adsense, its gives you more choices than any other advertisement services out there.

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