Calling all publishers! Today we’re excited to announce the launch of APT from Yahoo!, our new advertising platform. What’s in it for you?  APT from Yahoo! is designed to help publishers access more demand and improve yield from their inventory, while simplifying ad management. We’ll keep you posted on the opportunities for Yahoo! Publisher Network publishers to participate in the platform.

In the meantime, our CEO Jerry Yang explains more about the vision of this new product in the following excerpt from a Yodel Ancedotal post.

I started dreaming about this day 18 months ago, when I laid out my vision for our board of directors on how Yahoo! could play a unique role in changing the face of online advertising. In fact, Sue and I called it Nirvana at the time – a platform that would be to 2009 what radio was to 1924, TV to 1947, color TV to 1965, and the Internet to 1993.

Sounds like hype, right? We don’t think so. As Sue posted in April, we listened to all of the pain points that our partners shared about the process of buying and selling ads. Would you believe it takes more than 30 manual operational steps to move from ad strategy concept to launching that ad? It involves faxes (!!) and sometimes weeks in proposal processing. Audiences are now distributed across a sea of web sites and are harder to find, understand, and put a value on. Madison Avenue might think it’s a shame Johnny Walker Red doesn’t flow at the office anymore.

APT looks to change all that. It’s simple. It’s open. It’s fast (like minutes vs. days). It provides a new level of control. It offers cross-selling more easily than ever been before. It will provide large amounts of quality inventory. It will help advertisers customize and target their messages more precisely through advanced targeting. And it will drive results. All this from a single online application. No more cobbled together processes or impressions. No more wasted time.

For more about the new platform, read Jerry’s full blog post.

Our U.S. Customer Solutions team will have Christmas Day and New Years Day off.

They will also enjoy reduced hours December 24 (open 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) and December 31 (also open 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.).

 Happy Holidays.

—The Team

Your Opinion Counts

We’re hosting a survey to find out more about your needs in order to help us build a better blog. All information we gather is secure and strictly confidential.

TAKE THE SURVEY NOW; it’s easy and free.

—The Team

Yahoo! Publisher Network and Adobe Team Up

Adobe Systems and Yahoo! just launched a new service, called Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo! This limited beta program enables online publishers to earn advertising revenue through their Adobe PDF-based content.

For example, let’s say that your website hosts downloadable PDF files, such as instructions, diagrams, forms or other documents that your users can access. Publishers accepted into the limited beta program will be able to place contextual Yahoo! Search Marketing ads next to the content of these PDF files and earn money on a cost-per-click basis, just as they do with web-based ads on their own sites.

For more information, click here.

To apply for this limited beta, click here.

—Michael Mattis

Understanding Your Information Needs  

We’re hosting a survey to find out a little bit more about our readers. It asks you a bit about who you are, about your information needs, what you would like to get out of the blog, and so forth. The purpose of the survey is to help us create content that better serves your needs. And, of course, all information we gather is secure and confidential.

To access the survey, click here.

And thanks for reading and being a part of Yahoo! Publisher Network!

—Michael Mattis

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

Yahoo! closes acquisition of Right Media, Inc.

Back in April of this year, Yahoo! announced plans to buy Right Media Inc.  As of today, the acquisition is official and we wanted to share the news with you.

So, how does an open ad exchange provide value for Yahoo! advertisers, publishers and ad networks?

Well, a little back story might help.

Right Media is the creator of a Direct Media Exchange, a self-service publisher product that allows publishers to sign up for, manage and optimize against multiple advertising networks through one interface. Yahoo! recognized the value of the Direct Media Exchange and knew that Right Media would be the “right fit” for its advertisers and publishers.

For advertisers, an open exchange will provide great inventory and audience options from all of participants in this marketplace. Advertisers will also have increased control and visibility into the buying process.

We believe this will provide great value to publishers as they will be given an opportunity to bundle their own ad inventory with inventory within the exchange.

Advertising networks benefit through the exchange by having the opportunity to compete with the largest players. The open exchange creates transparency and accountability, which should create a more level playing field for advertisers and publishers—all valuable assets that we can say “Right on!” to. 

–Roger Park, Y! Blogeratus

Yahoo! Contest Winners go to that Great Power Lunch in the Sky

You voted in the Yahoo! Ultimate Connection contest and three Yahoo! small business owners yesterday enjoyed a power lunch in the sky and a meeting with entrepreneur Ivanka Trump.

Crooked house builder, Glen Halliday, faerie lady, Melissa Balland, and type-o-phile, Mike Willner, also each got a $25,000 search marketing budget as well as other prizes. For more, check out our post on Yodel Anecdotal along with coverage here and here.

See their stories at the Ultimate Connection web site.

 Congrats to Melissa, Mike and Glen!

—The Team

Introducing Quality-Based Pricing

Web publishing is a circular business. You produce a carefully crafted resource that’s useful and entertaining to your users. You offer contextual ads from a trusted source—that’s us—that strengthen your brand and message and, hopefully, bring you revenue from qualified clicks, which in turn can benefit the advertiser. That’s the formula, and we’ve always thought it a fair one.

In short, we like to think that we provide quality, for you as a publisher, for our advertisers and for the user. It’s a big circle of value. The circle can get warped, however, when users click on ads that don’t meet their needs, which can lead to poor conversions for advertisers.

In our ongoing effort to strengthen our network, we’re introducing a new traffic quality feature called “quality-based pricing.” Under quality-based pricing, the traffic you drive to the advertiser will be priced commensurate with the value that advertisers receive.

It’s an important step that reinforces our overall commitment to deliver long-term success for our publishers, a high-quality experience for users, and high-value traffic to our advertisers.

This may have an impact on your business. When you provide quality traffic to our advertisers, this in turn may lead to better click revenue for you. Conversely, driving poor quality traffic to our advertisers may lead to reduced revenue.

—The Team

Yahoo’s Ultimate Connection Contest is now closed to entries. The deadline to submit essays passed at 11:59 Pacific Time, last night, May 30. The essays are being read and the five finalists will be announced in June. Voting is set to begin June 14.

Good luck to all our participants!

—The Team