Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Geo targeting ads on small web sites

No wonder Yahoo bought RightMedia this week.

I recently dumped Yahoo Publisher Network. In large part the reason was because YPN put the onus on me to only show their ads to U.S. visitors. If too many people log on from the UK, Canada or China, or whereever, I risk losing my YPN account. Strategically, it might be handy to have a YPN account in the future, so in the short term I decided to just drop YPN and go with Google. Google lets me show ads to any visitor.

YPN other publishers such as 7Search (who I had earlier lauded in this blog) apparently lack the will or technology to do their own Geotargeting. They sluff it off on website owners. Its certainly possible, although in convenient and resource intensive, to take the hours necessary to implement OpenAds or screw around with .htaccess files to do what these companies are unwilling to do.

If you've ever tried to make money off of a website, you probably know its not that easy. But having "partners" like YPN or 7Search that force you to do their dirty work doesn't make it easy.

With the purchase of RightMedia, Yahoo acquired the technology to geo-serve ads, as well as the ability to serve unfilled inventory by showing ads from other networks. This acquisition is, by my account, an excellent move by Yahoo.

Some day, I hope to learn that YPN has started doing their own dirty work by geotargeting their own ads. That will make YPN a better partner. That's what I'm saving my YPN account for. Until that day, my YPN account will sit in mothballs, and I will make money with Google instead.

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