YPN targeting any better?

[al2six]

I haven't used my YPN account in over year because the targeting was so terrible. Who cares if the CPC is high if you can't get an ad that your viewer wants to click?

So have they made any progress yet?

[Chris]

No, they haven't. And now they're starting to penalize publishers for their own poor targetting (putting in google-like smart pricing)

[Westech]

The big problem I have with them is that they allow completely misleading ads. The latest gem that's been appearing on our site is an ad for "gun shooting game at shopping.yahoo.com". The landing page is just the main page for shopping.yahoo.com! Do they really think that people who click that link looking for a "gun shooting game" and land at shopping.yahoo.com are going to stick around and buy something? And now they're going to start smartpricing us down because their misleading unrelated ads don't convert. Meh.

[al2six]

i don't get it... i could understand if this was coming from a company that didn't have their own search algo, but yahoo does. how can they make sure that webpages show up in the serps for relevant keyword searches, but can't seem to make sure relevant ads show up? is it that they just don't have enough advertisers?

[BGray]

No. Their per click rates have significantly lowered as well from what I've seen. If YPN doesn't have at least 3x per click payouts over adsense for the site's niche they aren't even worth considering at this point.

I think the smart pricing thing might just bury them if they can't get more relevant ads.
How the hell can a webmaster get penalized for poor targetting or conversions when YPN can't get a targetted ad on the page?