We launched the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta in August of 2005 with the goal of helping online publishers of every size to grow and prosper.  We have learned a lot from you in this time, and hopefully you’ve benefited by working with us. 

Today, we are thrilled to announce that we have taken the first step towards the next chapter in Yahoo!’s services for publishers: Yahoo! has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Right Media Inc.

Yes, after six months of testing the waters with Right Media as both a strategic investor and a participant in the Right Media Exchange, we are jumping in with both feet! Right Media will help us to extend our Yahoo! Publisher Network while also enhancing our efforts to build a self-serve display advertising system. Right Media currently has a self-service publisher product called Direct Media Exchange that enables publishers to sign up for, manage, and optimize against multiple advertising networks in one convenient interface. They offer a set of ad network partners for you to join and you can add your own ad network partnerships into the optimization mix as well if you like. 

We’re extremely excited about what Right Media offers to the publishing world; we think that it epitomizes the “right” way to help you as a publisher to get the most out of your site. The Right Media tools provide many of the things you have been telling us are important to you: control, openness and transparency. Check out our Yodel blog to hear more details.

Stay tuned for further changes and announcements over the coming months as we work to complete the Right Media acquisition and then, once the acquisition is complete, begin to integrate Right Media into Yahoo!’s publisher offerings and move forward with other exciting developments.  We think that this is the start of something really great. We hope that you do too.

Keep on publishin’.

—Cody Simms, Senior Product Manager

Don’t Give Community the High Hat 

Big conferences don’t necessarily bring big surprises, especially in these days of geek overload and marketing hyperbole. But if you look hard enough you can find a few real gems of insight here and there.

Case in point: the Web 2.0 expo in San Francisco last week. A solid show, to be sure, with lots of heavy-hitting keynoters and sharp-eyed exhibition-hall pitch-masters (as a well as a few characters, like The Human Creativity Project’s Julian Cash, at right). But the most practical tips for publishers were to be found in the sessions and workshops, and in the special and semi-spontaneous un-conference called Web2.0pen that went on in the wings.

While there were a number of good panels and presentations, a few stood out as exceptional.

The first was Media 2.0: How Web 2.0 is Transforming Traditional Media. This panel discussion was moderated by one of our favorite bloggers, Charlene Li from Forrester Research, joined by Gabe Rivera from TechMeme, Ted Shelton, who went from Personal Bee to Technorati just before the Expo, and Rich Skrenta of Topix.

Li opened the proceedings asking the now seemingly age-old question, “Whither traditional media?” Shelton offered that we are entering an era in which anyone can be a web publisher, and that as publishers we’re more often curating rather them developing or even aggregating content that appeals to users, whether it is user-generated or generated by other publishers. “Mobile Internet,” Shelton added, “will put the final nail in the coffin of print newspapers. Once you have a good reading experience, print will be done.”

All the panelists agreed that “audience aggregation” has surpassed content aggregation in importance. “Build your audience by focusing on their content needs, and everything else follows” was the mantra. The key? Curate your content from enthusiastic providers such as bloggers and users who are keen on your subject, and write about it for the love of it and for the glory of being heard.

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The Blog Turns One

OK, we admit it: We’d make a bad husband. Our anniversary slipped passed and we didn’t even notice.

Our first posts on the Yahoo! Publisher Network Blog went up on April 10, 2006. Wow. It’s been a heck of a year, and then some.

This blog has been all over the publishing map as we’ve striven to become a valuable, trusted resource for publishers both in and out of our network. Since we started, our readership has more than doubled.

We’ve written about:

• How-to’s, including: Optimizing for Relevancy, Driving Traffic with Linkbait and avoiding Blogging Faux Pas.
• Guest Columns by smart people in the Web biz like JZ, Daron Babin and Barry Schwartz.
• Optimization Tips like your ad display preferences, choosing clickable colors and ad placement tips.

And so much more—more than 260 posts in all. For a complete list, check out the Archives page.

Thanks so much for making this a really great year.

—Michael Mattis and the entire Yahoo! Publisher Network Team

Ten Easy Steps

As you may know, we’re all about helping you drive traffic. In fact, we did a pretty comprehensive series that was well received on that very topic (see below). But we don’t pretend to have all of the answers on how to drive traffic. Others sometimes know more than us.

Speaking of answers, did you know that you can use Yahoo! Answers to help drive traffic your site? Joel Caleb Thomas, a software engineer in India, certainly does. He recently posted an article to his LyeByte blog, “10 Steps to get Traffic from Yahoo! Answers,” that anyone who is serious about driving traffic should find useful.

Joel’s top tips include:

No. 1: Find a Category—”Yahoo! Answers is categorized, so look for the category which is relevant to your blog’s theme. If you take Lyte Byte for example, it’s related to Computers and Internet. There are so many categories, so obviously your blog will fit into one…”
 

No. 3: Answer with a Link—”Look out for questions which you can answer and give a link back to your site for more detail. When you answer, don’t just give a link, answer it in brief but…”
 

No. 6: Be a Top Contributor—”Yahoo! Answers also gives points for your answers. Two points for an answer, 10 points for the best answer and one point for voting an answer. As your points grow you [can] become the top contributor…”
 

No. 8: Lead Generation—”Apart from the traffic you get, Yahoo! Answers also gives lead generation. If you have ever wondered what to write about in your site, you will never run out of ideas now…”
Read the rest on LyteByte.com. Also, check out our series on driving traffic:

Signal to Noise
Leveraging Linkbait
25 Things to Think About Widgets
Secrets of WoMM, I
Secrets of WoMM, II

—Michael Mattis, YPN Answer Man

Or, how I learned stop worrying and love the future at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, April 15 to 18

I’m pretty much a sucker for anything with “two-point-oh” (”2.0″) in the title. At this point it’s almost embarrassing. It comes from the fact that I was once on staff at the trendy business news magazine, “Business 2.0,” where we embraced (and pimped) the so-called New Economy and made up all sort of new rules to go with it. It was 2.0 tons of fun.

The New Economy didn’t quite pan out the way our little cabal of idealists had envisioned, but there’s still a lot to it. Take this whole Web 2.0 thing. Some say that Web 2.0 is to the Internet what string theory is to physics—a pretty theory that can’t be proven in practice. I ought to be jaded about it, but actually I’m pretty jazzed.

Web 2.0, to borrow lingo from the fellow who first coined the term, “is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”

Yep, that’s a nice sounding theory all right. But in practice it means enabling users to do their thing—create new content and communities of interest through wikis, blogging, social bookmarking, v-casting and the whole plethora of social media—while learning to make a buck or two off of it where you can. It’s not unlike selling picks and shovels to gold miners. Got a problem with that? Then move back to the Soviet Union, pal.

Anyway, this is a round-about way to get you excited about next week’s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, where you’ll be able to learn some of the tricks of the Web 2.0 trade from some of the best 2.0 minds. This is not your ordinary theory conference, but a get-your-hands dirty, networking-heavy, learning confab-gabfest designed to show you where the Web is going and, possibly, where the money is going, too. Highlights and Yahoo! appearances include: 

Read the rest of this entry »

The new VP of Marketplace Quality shares insights on Yahoo!’s higher traffic quality goals

As an advertiser or publisher, you may have some concerns regarding traffic quality. Yahoo! places a great importance on quality traffic and we’ve dedicated significant resources to create the world’s highest quality search and display advertising network.

We also hear that you want more transparency and dialogue with us, and that’s part of my new responsibilities in leading the company’s marketplace quality efforts and helping to drive the industry forward on these issues.

Click fraud is an industry-wide issue and there’s no question that click fraud is receiving increased media coverage recently, casting a dark cloud over the industry. I want to make it clear that we hear your concerns, and we’re putting a vast amount of resources to combat click fraud.

Since 1998, our Click Protection System has operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, monitoring all traffic with the goal of filtering out click fraud, as well as other clicks that we believe shouldn’t be billed to our advertisers.

Today at Search Engine Strategies New York 2007 Conference (SES) we’re happy to announce that in the next few months, we plan to launch the Yahoo! Marketplace Quality Center, an online resource designed to help provide more visibility into what we’re doing to help define, prevent and protect against click fraud, plus provide information on other aspects of traffic quality.

Its features will include:

• Directions on how to submit a click investigation request
• News on traffic quality
• Tips on how to detect click fraud
• Articles on best practices and more

We plan to continue expanding and enhancing the Marketplace Quality Center with more features in the following months after the official launch.

We are also working with the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) to develop industry standards around click fraud. Once agreed-upon standards are in place, we’re fully committed to undergoing regular audits to provide advertisers with greater visibility into our protection efforts.

At SES, I’m gathering feedback regarding key areas of concern around traffic quality, and I want to give you the same opportunity here—just add your comments below, and I will read every one.

I’m excited about the opportunities to work with and help our advertisers and publishers in this area, and I want to assure you that we’re listening to your feedback and concerns.

—Reggie Davis, VP, Marketplace Quality

It’s that time again, sadly.

April 15—”Tax Day“—is right around the corner. (Actually, Uncle Sam, ever generous, is giving you a couple of extra days this year because the 15th falls on a Sunday, so April 17 is the real deadline) 

Ironically, you, the “average American,” will have to work until April 30 this year before you begin to pocket the cash you earn from your labor, according to the Tax Foundation. Before that, it’s all going to Uncle Spam to pay for useful stuff like mythical $3,000 hammers, the National Helium Reserve and peanut storage. And by the way, the Tax Foundation says that the time it takes for you to start keeping your wages this year is two days longer than in 2006, and fully 12 days longer than in 2003.

But never mind. We’ve all got to pay the man, so there’s no use griping about it.*

If you haven’t reviewed your tax information to make sure it’s accurate, now would be a good time. Visit the Tax Information page in the account interface to review your information. For more information on taxes, visit our and FAQs.

A few things to note when prepping your taxes:

• If Yahoo! Publisher Network paid you $600 or more during the calendar year 2006, you should have received a Form 1099 from Yahoo! by January 30, 2007.
• If Yahoo! Publisher Network paid you less than $600 during the calendar year 2006, you will not receive a Form 1099. However, you must still declare this income to the Internal Revenue Service.
• Your a Form 1099 will only reflect payments made during calendar year 2006. Balances accrued (but not yet paid) during December 2006 may not appear due to the payment schedule.
• Only individuals should use Form 1099 when filing. Corporations should not use Form 1099 when filing.

Happy filing!

—Michael Mattis, Blog Auditor

* Yahoo! does not provide tax advice. For more information, please consult your tax professional, or visit the IRS web site at: http://www.irs.gov/.

Just a Little Nip/Tuck Here and There
 

Burbank, California, where our offices are located, is a funny sort of place. It’s kind of like Hollywood’s workshop. Most of the glory goes to the actors and directors, but the real nuts-and-bolts work goes on behind the camera. It’s not uncommon around here to pass a flatbed truck piled high with giant Styrofoam rocks on its way some film location, or come across shops that rent costumes and even medieval armor and weapons to film production teams.

Here at Yahoo! Publisher Network, a lot goes on behind the user interface. Take last night’s scheduled outtage. We made lots of little tweaks that you probably won’t notice, the sort of stuff that will make it easier for us to manage the system and offer better service to our publishers.

But there are a couple of small items you may appreciate, especially if you take advantage of our extensive Publisher Services. We’ve updated our info on Yahoo! Site Explorer, the service that allows you to track links to your site(s). We’ve also added info on MyBlogLog, a useful traffic-driving and analytical service that has recently come into the Yahoo! family. In addition, we’ve updated the Yahoo! Action Buttons page.

If you haven’t explored these services before, you’ll definitely want to check them out now (or maybe have your Best Boy or Key Grip check them out for you), because they can be valuable resources in helping you create your own productions.

• Drive Traffic
• Enhance Your Site
• Build Your Site 

—Michael Mattis, Blog Director

Publisher Account Interface to undergo scheduled enhancements, April 9, from 6:00 p.m. to approximately  9:00 p.m, Pacific Time

The smart folks in the propeller beanies will be doing a few minor enhancements and tweaks to your secure account interface on Monday, April 9, from 6:00 p.m. until about 9:00 p.m., Pacific Time. For the duration of this maintenance your account will be unavailable. We’ll tell you and little more about these small changes once they have been put in place.

This minor bit of monkey business should not impact your account earnings or the serving of ads to your site.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

—The Propeller-beanie Team

Overture Japan Launches a Blog of its Own

Moshi moshi—say it real fast—is the charming Japanese phrase for “hello!” when answering the phone. Well, on Wednesday, Overture Japan (Yahoo!’s search marketing operation in in that country), launched its own blog and we’d like to say “hello” to the team over the Internets.

Kicked off with a post from Yahoo’s Mark Morrissey, the Overture Japan blog opens a new line of interactive communication between Overture and its search advertisers in the Japanese market. 

So to our friends across the Pacific, moshi moshi. Tonight we raise a cup of saki to you and say kanpai!

—The Team