Once having established itself as a default Internet trendsetter Google goes on leading the immense online community in what is related to online search and advertising. And the companies, namely Microsoft and Yahoo, which some time ago were leaders of the industry can hardly now hold a candle for Google. While Google introduces something Yahoo and Microsoft just replicate it. While Google goes in the vanguard others just catch up with it. And this is not a eulogy to Google. Statistics and feedback are elementary indices which can show you the actual state of affairs. Well, if you don’t trust even these, the fact that you are likely among those who first search for information through Google and then through Yahoo is enough to determine who is the best. But if you decide to dispute the fact and assert you are an ardent adherent of Yahoo the fact of Google’s leadership still remains irrefutable as long as it is Yahoo who is seeking to establish a partnership with Microsoft in their conjoint move to compete with Google. Anyway, while Yahoo is trying to decide on how to more effectively dethrone their strong rival, we will focus on the facts on the basis of which you can make your own conclusion though we are sure a priori that Google is the best, at least for now…
Certainly the heading of our current post should have prompted you in what light we are going to compare the two unequal competitors. We would like to compare contextual advertising services of Google and Yahoo and show their advantages and disadvantages, if, of course, there are any disadvantages.
Availability
Google AdSense is available for use to any publisher around the globe. You must apply for the service with a given site and be accepted on the basis of that site. You can also add other sites which should be compliant with the Terms of Service.
Yahoo Publisher Network is available only for U.S. based site owners. Besides, in order to apply for the service you will be required to provide your U.S. address and U.S. Social Security number or your U.S. IRS tax ID number. Interestingly, launched in 2005 YPN has not still been developed to be accessible to users in other countries. At first the company tried to provide the service to site owners in Europe but then it suddenly terminated it.
When Google AdSense was launched it accepted almost everyone who wished to participate but eventually the company became too strict in its rules. Now AdSense may terminate accounts of the non-performers. If the number of clicks made by the visitors of your site on the ads provided by Google is minor or if there are no clicks at all AdSense won’t be long in abandoning your site.
As for Yahoo it was always selective in who they want to accept. But eventually YPN became even stricter. While Google declines you after you brought no revenue to its advertisers YPN may refuse to accept your on the basis of your poor traffic.
Google AdSense supports the following 29 languages:
Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Chinese (trad.), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish
Meantime YPN is available only for English speaking users. Thus those who live in the U.S. but speak other languages than English will have some difficulties in incorporating the advertisements into their websites.
In May 2005, Google announced a limited-participation beta version of AdSense for Feeds, a version of AdSense that runs on RSS and Atom feeds that have more than 100 active subscribers. According to the Official Google Blog, "advertisers have their ads placed in the most appropriate feed articles; publishers are paid for their original content; readers see relevant advertising—and in the long run, more quality feeds to choose from."
AdSense for Feeds works by inserting images into a feed. When the image is displayed by a RSS reader or Web browser, Google writes the advertising content into the image that it returns. The advertisement content is chosen based on the content of the feed surrounding the image. When the user clicks the image, he or she is redirected to the advertiser's website in the same way as regular AdSense advertisements.
AdSense for Feeds remained in its beta state until August 15, 2008, when it became available to all AdSense users.
Once Yahoo had some advantage over Google in that it allowed ads in RSS feeds for all publishers unlike AdSense which selectively choose publishers. On February 2, 2009 YPN dropped ads for RSS Feeds at all.
Ad targeting
Currently, AdSense uses JavaScript code to incorporate the advertisements into a participating website. If the advertisements are included on a website that has not yet been crawled by the Mediabot, AdSense will temporarily display advertisements for charitable causes, also known as public service announcements (PSAs). As for Yahoo first ads served are RONs – Run of Network advertisements.
While with AdSense subsequent refreshes produces targeted ads with Yahoo it works sometimes. Besides, if YPN can't find ads, you get the same 4 RON ads over and over. If one "apt" ad is found, it is presented at the bottom or middle of the 4 ad set, not at the top.
Naturally, AdSense pays nothing for PSA ads but if you want you can specify an alternate URL or as some users recommend you can disable them, by specifying a blank color instead. Yahoo displays RON ads that pay fairly well and still allows you to disable them if you want.
AdSense sets no limits on the number of pages where different ads can be placed. Yet there are obviously some limits in the number of ads available for targeting the audience of your site. You cannot choose yourself the categories of ads that should be displayed on the pages of your site. It is AdSense system itself that recognizes the content and then basing on the keywords provides targeting ads. Some users report that there was nothing on some pages of their websites and they suppose that in fact ads for some content just don’t exist.
In case with YPN the task is much easier as the service provides a choice of 20 broad category selections:
Apparel and JewelryAutomotiveB2BBooks - Movies - Music - TicketsComputingEducation and CareerElectronics and AppliancesEntertainment - Social EventsFinancial ServicesFlowers and Candy Health and BeautyHome and GardenMass MerchantsProfessional ServicesReal EstateReferenceSporting GoodsTelecom - ISPsToys and HobbiesTravel
There are also 132 YPN subcategories. But you can apply YPN ads from different categories only to 50 pages. Besides, these categories are general while your content needs keyword targeting which works at YPN not very often. In most cases ads from YPN are irrelevant to your content.
Performance
It is commonly admitted that YPN provided much better CPC than AdSense. But at the same time it is well known that CTR is much higher at AdSense than at YPN. Besides, eventually YPN started decreasing its CPC rates.
Discussing the question of which contextual advertising service is better one user said : “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 than normal. You can have a page about Mortgage Refinancing and it will show ads for cell phone ring tones…”
In one comparative analysis of YPN and AdSense it was noted: “Initially, YPN paid much higher than AdSense. Now, they either pay less, or much less… The YPN payout is steadily decreasing over time. With the recent introduction of YPN's version of Smart-Pricing, many are reporting that payout has been dropping like a rock. A typical CTR difference of 10 times totally offsets an EPC difference of 2 times, or even 5 times. Because of this, in almost all cases, you will make more money using Google.”
Conclusion
Of course parameters against which we have analyzed the two services are not all the areas where YPN and AdSense reveal their advantages and disadvantages. But as one user maid a fair notice “Other than the issues already mentioned the service [YPN] is more or less a clone of Google Adsense. You have plenty of options for unit size, and can easily customize the colors. Payment terms are roughly the same as well.” That is why discussing other features are not necessary. These main characteristics are enough to have a sufficient apprehension of what is worth what. So, YPN is useful when it comes to the ability to select ad categories yourself for your pages while Google AdSense having no such functionality still provides you with more effective keyword targeted ads. YPN gives websites higher CPC but it means nothing if you take into account its extremely low CTR. Google AdSense has a very high CTR and though it gives lower CPC you can generate much more revenue at the expense of higher relevance of the ads placed by AdSense on your website. We think that AdSense is so far the best contextual advertising service while Yahoo Publisher Network needs much to do to upgrade and improve their system. Who knows maybe after some time YPN will be able to surprise us and become a true and decent contester to Google AdSense.
