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