Mixing display with text ads for fun and profit with Right Media

Editor’s Note: Studies (like this one) have shown that online ad campaigns that combine text and display ads are more effective than those that rely on one or the other exclusively. At Yahoo! Publisher Network, we’re trying to meet that same demand among our publishers, while building the most open network we can. That’s why we acquired Right Media. Right Media’s Direct Media Exchange allows you to auction off your inventory to an array of bidders from different ad networks. Right Media’s Patrick McCarthy explains…

Yahoo! publishers might be asking: “Hmm, Yahoo! already has a product for us. So how will acquiring Right Media benefit me?”

This was a thought that could be heard rumbling through the Oregon halls of Right Media when we began acquisition talks with Yahoo!. Luckily, the answer was pretty simple, because of how Direct Media Exchange was built and how Yahoo! is embracing the open philosophy that we’ve been living with at Right Media.

Allow me to explain… Direct Media Exchange is a free web application that allows publishers to create an auction of their ad inventory that consists of their current ad network partners and the numerous display ad networks that are directly participating in Direct Media Exchange and bidding in real time. This means that Yahoo! Publisher Network and Direct Media Exchange can happily co-exist together.

The benefits are simple:

• Easier ad network management
• More potential revenue

Not bad if you ask me, or our publishers.

OK, so now that I have your interest, how does it really work?

1. First, add Yahoo! Publisher Network ad code and average CPM for each ad size into Direct Media Exchange, as well as code from any other ad networks you might work with. (Advertisers that you have sold campaigns to yourself are also welcome.)
2. Put the Direct Media Exchange ad code on your web pages.
3. When a user views your site, we run an auction in real time to see which ad network will pay you the most. If that’s Yahoo! Publisher Network, then great! We’ll show the Yahoo! Publisher Network ads that are relevant to your site’s content. If it’s another network that’s participating directly in the Direct Media Exchange, then we’ll display ads from that network. You win either way.
4. (Optional) Cash your checks and go to the beach!

The Direct Media Exchange team is happy to be a part of Yahoo!, and we’re more excited to be working on even more great advancements in the near future to make your life easier—while also making more money.

To find out more about Direct Media Exchange and get signed up, visit http://direct.rightmedia.com/

— Patrick McCarthy, Director, Direct Media Exchange

Secrets of Video Blogging Revealed

Editor’s Note: Our friend from MyBlogLog, Robyn Tippins, recently attended the BlogHer conference in Chicago to give a talk on video blogging. Her expertise stems from the fact that she’s been video blogging (or “v-blogging” or “vlogging,” if you prefer) at Gaming and Tech since the art was but a wee bairn. I asked her to jot down a few how-to tips about video blogging. True to her go-getter nature, Robyn went one better and made a video. Enjoy.  

Adding video to your blog or web site can be a great, interactive way to help get your users to stick around and keep them coming back for more. When I say that I am a video-blogger, one of the most common questions I get is, “How did you learn to do that?” Well, like most things, I learned by mucking it up. Lots of trial and error led to really learning my video editing software. However, rather than re-inventing the wheel, I thought I’d take a few minutes to show you an easy way to make your own videos and upload them for viewing on the Web.

To view my instructional video on Blip.tv, click here. 

For tips on web settings, you can download my “Tips for Great Web Editing.”  For some great conversion sites, check out Gena and Cheryl’s “Editing and Conversion Tips.” 

Don’t be afraid to put up a video that isn’t perfect. The charm of video blogging is that it’s personal and homemade. Your videos should be an extension of you and your personality: People like to know that there are real people on the other side of the screen. Remember, the more “professional” you make your video, the less fun it usually is.

If you run into a snag, feel free to email me at robyn@mybloglog.com.

—Robyn Tippins, Community Manager, MyBlogLog. She blogs here and video blogs here

Kids’ Crooked House Visits the Burbank Campus

On the surface, it seems so simple. After all, it’s just a nursery rhyme:

There was a crooked man,
Who walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence
Upon a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat,
Which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together
In a crooked little house.

It’s when you start to think about what that word “stile” means that it gets interesting. Just what is a stile, anyway? A turnstile, of course, is one of those one-way revolving gates that lets people in or out, but not out or in, respectively.

A stile, it turns out, is a border, and the border in the rhyme is the one between Scotland and England. And the crooked house? That’s an allegory, too. It refers to the newly cobbled-together United Kingdom presided over by the doomed King Charles I in the 17th Century.

But we’re not going to let all that weighty knowledge spoil our fun at hosting a genuine, Yahoo! branded, Kids’ Crooked House, right here at on Burbank campus. In fact, this knowledge only adds to the good times.

This wonky little playhouse was built especially for Yahoo! by Glenn Halliday, owner of KidsCrookedHouse.com and one of the winners of our Ultimate Connection contest. If there’s a 90-degree angle in this miniature villa, our little friends here couldn’t find it. It’s been great having it around, and the big Yahoos love it almost as much as the little ones. It’s been a lesson in geometry, poetry, history and fun.

Thanks, Glen, and again, congrats.

—The Team

We will of course be attending this summer’s Search Engine Strategies spectacular in San Jose, Monday, August 20 through Thursday, August 23. It promises to be a good show with lots to do and learn for both online publishers and advertisers alike. If you happen to be in the San Francisco Bay Area next week, look us up at booth 101.

For more detail on the sessions we’ll be paneling, click over to our sister pub, the Yahoo! search Marketing blog.

—The Team

8 Simple Rules for Creating Compelling Content

Editor’s Note: We’ve written a lot recently about how bringing more users to your site through various marketing methods, such as word-of-mouth marketing, social media marketing and linkbaiting. But getting users to your site is one thing. Getting them to stick around–and click around—is another. It requires a strong foundation built on compelling, high-quality, original content.

I asked John Murphy, a Senior Manager of Partner and Product Policy, and one of our superstars of online content, to put together a sort of “Content 101″ to help guide new publishers (and offer active publishers a remedial course). He came up with the following nine must-do’s that you can use to help make your content experience the best it can be.

1. Write what you know.
Compelling web content starts with a webmaster who understands his or her subject and knows how to write about it. Think about your own experience as a reader: You take the time to read articles and blogs because you believe the author has special insight into a subject, gleaned from personal knowledge, industry connections, or just plain old hard work. If you feel the author didn’t know what he or she is talking about, you stop reading.

With the sheer variety of content available on the web, and switching costs approaching zero, there’s absolutely no reason a user is going to stick around if your content isn’t “up to snuff.” So don’t try to write about things you don’t understand—your audience will pick up on your lack of knowledge immediately and turn away.

2. Write what you love.
Equally important to creating compelling web content is that you write about topics you care about. Nothing is as infectious as someone’s passion. By focusing on subjects or causes that you love, you both engage your audience and give yourself incentive to continue the hard work and long hours necessary to develop high-quality content. It’s easy to write a blog entry or two; but if you don’t have a true interest in your topic, what will you do when you need to write your one hundredth?

3. Start with a narrow focus.
Unless you are one of those rare polymaths who can write as artfully about the finer points of quantum mechanics as well as the sordid lives of reality show contestants, you’re best off picking a fairly narrow topic that satisfies points 1 and 2 above. Besides that, you’ll be much more likely to stand out from the crowd if you focus on a niche rather than trying to be all things to all people. As a smaller publisher with limited means, you’ll also be better positioned to survive competition from larger, better capitalized sites.

So, rather than writing about cars in general, focus on your favorite make and model. Instead of writing about restaurants in California, focus on ’50s diners in L.A. You can always expand the scope of your site as you gain an audience and build up your knowledge base.

4. Build a community.
Your goal as a web author is to build a loyal, engaged audience—an audience that comes back to your site because they want to, not one that you have to continuously replenish though expensive SEM. The first step toward building a community is to get to know your audience. Be sure to solicitfeedback: Create a conversation with your audience by adding a comments section or forum. Understand the ways users want to receive your content, such as RSS or email, and incorporate these features into the site’s design. Advertisers value an engaged, well-defined audience whose interests and characteristics are known or can readily be inferred. The more you know about your audience, the better advertisers can target them, which translates into higher CPMs for you.

5. Focus on unique content.
You’ll only to be able to draw an audience to your site if you offer them an experience they cannot find elsewhere…

Read the rest of this entry »

Publisher Spotlight: Jeff Foust, The Space Review

You’re probably familiar with the 1866 Jules Verne Science fiction story, From the Earth to the Moon, which anticipated the manned space program by nearly a century. In the story, you’ll recall, three Americans build an enormous cannon and fire a projectile—with themselves inside—that flies all the way around the moon and “splashes down” back on earth a few days later. In between, adventure ensues.

It’s a classic tale, one that has inspired many riffs, including the 1902 French film, Le Voyage dans la Lune and the attraction Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune at Disneyland Paris. But did you know that it’s actually possible to fire a projectile into space? Not only that, but did you know that a group of young entrepreneurs out of MIT are planning to build a modern version of Verne’s mighty “Columbiad” space canon to blast unmanned satellites into orbit?

You would know it if you read The Space Review, a weekly, blog-style webzine devoted to the technology, politics and business of space exploration. The Space Review is produced and edited by Jeff Foust, a member of the Yahoo! Publisher Network.

Jeff is a real publisher’s publisher, a person who has turned his passion into a part-time business using freely available, open-source technology and a contributor base of knowledgeable and like-minded enthusiasts. I recently spoke with Jeff about his passion and about web publishing.

M2: I’m a huge space nut myself, and have been since I first watched men walk on the moon on TV when I was a kid. What got you excited about space?
Jeff: There was no “eureka” moment. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in space, be it from watching Star Trek reruns or the movie Star Wars at a young, impressionable age, or something else entirely. I think I perceived space exploration as the future, and wanted to learn as much about the future as I could; that’s what got me hooked.

M2: What is your background in aerospace?
Jeff: I work as a space industry analyst for the Futron Corporation in Bethesda, Maryland. Since I deal with a variety of space industry issues, there’s a lot of cross-fertilization between my work and my writing. Some of the work I do generates ideas for future articles, while the articles that I and others write help inform me in my work.

M2: So why start The Space Review?
Jeff: I have a long history, relatively speaking, in online publishing on space topics. In 1993 I took over SpaceViews, a newsletter of the Boston chapter of the National Space Society. Over the years I built up the online readership.

One of the things that set SpaceViews apart was the long-form feature articles on various space topics that were difficult to find elsewhere. There’s a lot of space news online, but few feature articles.

Eventually I spun off SpaceViews and sold it to a start-up company in the late 1990s.
I thought in the years after SpaceViews that a new online publication devoted exclusively to these feature articles on space topics, as opposed to news, could find a niche in the market.

M2: So what “pushed you over the edge,” so to speak, to launch (pun intended) The Space Review?
Jeff: It was the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy in February 2003. It was clear to me that a publication like this was needed now more than ever before, given all the attention that was being given to the future of the space program, and space exploration and space development in general. With that motivation, it didn’t take much time for The Space Review to get up and running.

M2: What had changed that allowed you to publish online so fast?

Read the rest of this entry »

Reggie Davis, our VP of Network Quality, cuts the ribbon

Editors Note: We thought it important for our publishers to know what’s happening in the advertiser space, so this missive has been cross-posted from the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog. We think it contains information valuable to you. 

To help us build the highest quality ad network possible and combat the industry-wide issue of click fraud, today we unveil our new Traffic Quality Center. At the Traffic Quality Center, you will be able to:

• Learn how to submit a click investigation request
• Get the latest news on traffic quality
• Access tips and tools that can help you detect click fraud
• Read articles on best practices to help protect your search marketing investment

In addition, you will also find industry articles that shed light on traffic quality issues from many different perspectives.

Our commitment to traffic quality is not new. In fact, since 1998, our Click Protection System has been up and running 24/7 with the goal of filtering out bad clicks—helping to ensure that you’re only billed for the clicks that count. Like all such systems, it continues to evolve with the marketplace.

I hope you’ll take advantage of this valuable new resource and work with us toward our common goals.

—Reggie Davis, VP, Network Quality

Photo Credit: dcfox, via Flickr

News You Can Use from the Blogosphere

Search marketing and contextual advertising maven Jenn Slegg has posted an excellent short piece about how to choose anchor text for your incoming links. It’s vital stuff for driving traffic. Read on »

Boy, that Cat Seda’s got all the answers. My inbox this morning was graced by another of her useful posts—I’m a subscriber to her monthly newsletter, you see—this one offering several tips on using Yahoo! Answers to drive traffic. We’ve touched on this topic elsewhere, but Cat offers some fresh insight. Check out Cat’s blog for details »

Some of you may have noticed the new Search Suggest feature on the Yahoo! home page. This tricky bit of magic from the eggheads up at Yahoo! Search automatically offers search suggestions as you type your query. It’s actually kind of eerie, how accurate it is. I mean, I’ve got some pretty obscure interests (clean ones, OK?) and this thing picks them up right away. Read more about it on the Y! Search Blog and see what Barry Schwartz has to say over at Search Engine Land.

Finally, the Yahoo! Developer Network last week announced the release of a cool new open source tool that can help you troubleshoot and fix slow loading pages. “YSlow” measures web page performance and offers specific recommendations for improving it. Find out more on the YDN blog »

—Michael Mattis, Your NewsGrok Anchorman

PayPal option available to publishers

It’s a weird concept, money. Money used to take the form of tokens of stored value, usually made of stuff that people prized: rare shells or stones, or metals like gold, silver, copper and even iron. Later, it became more convenient to carry a kind of value voucher—made of clay, papyrus, paper, what have you—that wasn’t as heavy as gold or shells.

Today’s currency is about as light as you can get. It’s little more than an idea of value represented by some data that can be shunted from one database to another in the blink of an eye.

So it is with PayPal, which, we wanted to remind you, is now a payment option for publishers in our network. There are a number of bennies to using PayPal:

• Payment requires a minimum balance of just $50, as opposed to $100 for checks
• Same-day payment—whereas check payments are made seven to ten days after we receive the request (payments will still be issued on pre-determined days)
• No-fee transfers to your PayPal account, so you don’t pay more for the convenience

To add PayPal to your account, go to the “Payment Options” page under the Account Information tab, check the PayPal radio button, and click “Submit.”

—The Team