Yahoo! talks to publishers about managing multiple sales channels

Yahoo!’s Professional Services team is everywhere these days. Last week we blogged about several events Yahoo! would be participating in, an IAB Professional Development class about Managing Multiple Sales Channels being one of them. The class, led by Marc Grabowski, senior director of network sales, and Jeanne Hwang, director of consulting, helped publishers and networks set up their sales teams to develop ad packages that cross sales channels and maximize their inventory. Luckily for me the class was in San Francisco: No travel required!

Within the first few minutes we heard why attendees had given up three hours of their day to be there. The reasons the attendees gave ranged from getting a handle on yield management to developing streams of new ad revenue to dealing with channel conflict. With this industry changing as quickly as it is, I understood where these people were coming from. Luckily, Jeanne and Marc had a few tricks up their sleeves to deal with these issues. The three biggest takeaways were:

Times, they are a changin’
The industry is undergoing a dramatic shift. Marketers are becoming savvier; they have fewer ad dollars to spend but have more metrics at their fingers than ever before, and they want results. Over the last few years we’ve seen a shift in ad dollars from brand to performance. Roll in agencies’ demand for more transparency, and you can see how this is causing a pain point that publishers and networks must address. Bottom line:Publishers and networks must become savvy sellers of performance advertising.

Just say no
Successful sales teams work with marketers to identify the goals of a campaign but, more importantly, they help determine if the campaign is likely to see success on their site or network.  Is the marketer looking for clicks or conversions, and what are those worth? Who is their target audience?Does the creative have a clear call to action?Is the conversion path short?Does it require minimal registration information that is easily provided (Such as a zip code as opposed to a social security number)?Bottom line:If the answers to the previous questions point to a bad campaign, sales teams must learn to just say no.

Differentiate to survive
How do you avoid conflict among channels that are selling the exact same inventory?You don’t—it’s inevitable. If marketers are able to access the same inventory from multiple sales outlets, they can take the lowest price, ultimately degrading the value of your inventory. You can fight slipping CPMs by allowing different channels to sell different slices of inventory determined by targeting, frequencies, properties, and so on.  Bottom line:Differentiate what sales channels are able to sell to help avoid conflict.  

—Megan Bergtholdt, Engagement Manager

7 ways to help you get more relevant YPN ads

Everybody wants relevant ads on their pages—the more relevant they are, the more they’re clicked and the more you’re paid. But how can you ensure that the ads on the page are as relevant as they can be?  Here are some tips to help get more relevant and targeted ads .

Use YPN ad targeting
Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) has a targeting feature unique to the YPN platform called ad targeting.  With this, you can specify the targeting category in which your page or site fits best.  There are 20 categories and 127 subcategories to choose from.  You can target an entire site, a directory, even selecting specific pages.  You are limited to 50 targeting sites/directories/pages in your Ad Categories section.  It is worth noting that you don’t have to specifically use the targeting for the page content, you can also target based on your user’s interests.  So if your blog is about blogging, you could decide to use the “Office Electronics” category since you assume many of those who are learning about blogging may also be interested in office gadgets and electronics.

 And best of all, if you don’t feel any of the options are best for you, you can explore new categories and subcategories.

Optimize your titles
Yes, there are still people who have just their site name as the title tag on every page of their site.  (What? You?) So make sure you have an appropriate title for each page on your site.  Not only will this help with ad targeting, but it will also be a huge benefit in the search index too.  If someone sees your page in the search results, it might be the perfect page for what they are looking for, but if all they see in the title tag is “My Site Name at MySiteName.com”, changes are extremely high they will go onto the next result where the title tells them the page is what they are looking for and not just the generic site name.

Optimize your meta tags
Since meta tags have faded as a regular search optimization technique, many of us have gotten lazy about doing them at all.  But adding metas can help for ad targeting, and still give you some benefits in the search index.  And if you have forgotten how to do them, or never learned, here are samples:

<META name=”description” content=”A very short blurb about what the page is about.”> 
<META name=”keywords” content=”keyword1, keyword2, etc”>

Excessive keywords
Sure, someone told you mesothelioma ads pay really well, but adding the word mesothelioma 100 times in tiny text at the bottom won’t help your ad targeting, nor will the search engines like it very much.  So while having a good keyword density will help target your ads, going overboard won’t help… especially if your site is about cooking and nothing to do with mesothelioma!  Just make sure you have the appropriate keywords in your content, but not so repetitive that it seems odd to anyone reading it.

Block non-relevant ads
Sometimes you may see ads that don’t fit the context of your page—maybe it’s confusion over things such as “apple” vs. “Apple.” In this case, take advantage of the YPN ad blocking feature.  Just block the URL of the advertiser to prevent the ad from appearing.  If you keep seeing these ads on particular page, consider changing the suspect keywords if they aren’t key to your search engine optimization of that page.

Great content
Yes, this should be a given, but not many people remember this, judging by some of the sites I have seen out there.  Good, quality content tends to have the best targeted ads. The content of the site, combined with other factors (many of which are listed in this article), drive the types of ads placed on your site.  The advertisers who are willing to place ads on your site do so based on matching the content of your site to their ads as closely as possible. And, of course, you will be giving your users the best experience available.  Don’t forget that if someone lands on a site with really bad content, they are much more likely to quickly hit the back button than they ever are to actually click one of the ads you have on the page.

Clean up your sidebars
Sidebars are a great spot to put all kinds of miscellaneous stuff, along with navigation, especially for those who are running YPN on a blog.  But all that extra text, such as links to memes, blogrolls and widgets can contribute to your ad targeting.  So if you are finding the ads are too general to the site (especially if you have an extensive navigation system) and not specific enough to the individual pages, all the “extras” on the page could be the culprit.

If you are having problems with your ad targeting, these tips will likely help solve some, if not all, of your targeting issues.  And when you have great targeting, you will end up with a much higher click-through rate, meaning more revenue in your pocket.

—Jennifer Slegg

Jennifer Slegg is a well known expert in contextual advertising and content monetization and blogs frequently on both JenSense.com and JenniferSlegg.com. She is a regular speaker at industry conferences including Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo and ADSPACE. You can also follow her on Twitter at jenstar.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user David Evers.

How treating a web page like a research paper can help you in search listings

You should always keep your audience in mind when you’re writing landing page text. But what do you when you’re optimizing pages for search engines and your audience isn’t even human?

According to search engine optimization expert Jessica Bowman of SEM Inhouse, it may help to think of search engines as your college professor. Jessica recently gave a workshop at Yahoo! on search engine optimization, and she pointed out that search engines read your web pages an awful lot like professors read a college research paper.

They’re alike? Really?
Before the comparison brings sweaty visions of the worst part of college to your head, it doesn’t mean your web copy should be 20 pages long. In fact, it shouldn’t be anywhere near that. But, Jessica says, professors are like search engines in that they have to read a lot of papers, which means they have to make some of their judgment calls by scanning. These are some of the elements that both look for:

• Title: Both of them need to know at a glance what the document is about.
• Headlines, emphasized words and lists: Anything called out with headlines, bold or italicized words, or bullets is likely to be important. Call headlines in your web copy out with tags like <H1>, <H2> and <H3>.
• Conclusion: A good conclusion restates the theme of the opening paragraph, which drives the argument home for your professor and confirms what your page is about for the search engine.
• Sources cited: Professors like to know that you researched the paper, and search engines like to see that you’re linked to other websites.

How to get on the bad sides of professors and search engines
There are a few of the things that both of them hate:

• Plagiarism: You know that little research paper-buying incident that got your frat brother thrown out junior year? Turns out that search engines don’t like it when you steal other sites’ content either. And given that they’re searching the web, they might notice when 15 copies of something show up.
• Too many quotes: Original thinking is important. Just as you wouldn’t devote most of your research paper to huge quotation blocks, you don’t want to rely too heavily on syndicated content.
• Bad writing: Search engines are more liable to penalize your page in results when you stuff your copy with unrelated keywords, strand important content at the bottom of your page, and rely too much on headlines and lists.

Search engines and professors love…

• Verbosity: You probably realized this about your professor when you had to analyze three paragraphs in Dante’s Inferno for 15 pages. In the search engine world, verbosity means substantial, relevant, wordy, full-length, original content.
• Reinforcing your stance: Just as professors like it when you repeat and back up your claims, you want your main concepts and keywords to be repeated throughout the page.
• Good writing: For a search engine that means variations on your keywords, including different endings. If only your professor’s definition had been that flexible.

—Jeff Sweat, Blog Editor

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Nic McPhee

Five guidelines to help keep you in YPN compliance

When reviewing YPN publisher sites for guideline compliance, I see the same “problem areas” over and over that prevent sites from passing the guidelines. Here are a few things to avoid in order to keep your site in compliance with YPN.

1. Competing Ads
Be sure that Yahoo! ads do not appear on the same page as contextual ads from other companies. It’s okay to rotate these ads along with Yahoo! ads as long as they don’t appear at the same time.

2. Unsupported Languages
Pages where YPN ads appear must be in either English or Spanish. Some publishers may manage quite a few web pages, and may only have a few pages in unsupported languages. It’s important to identify these pages and remove them.

3. Ad Targeting
When choosing to target ads, make sure that these ads actually match the content of the page. For example, the best quality traffic for a page about classic cars will probably result from auto-related advertisements rather than medical product ads or real estate ads.

4. Excessive Ad Units
We don’t allow more than three YPN ad units (the box containing the ads) on the page. Don’t clutter your page with too many ads. 

5. Page Functionality
To ensure a good user experience for our users, we require that the back button be functional, and that the page does not spawn any more than one partial pop-up/pop-under window.

Hopefully, these tips will help keep your site in compliance. If you would like more detailed information, you can always find it by taking a look at the Yahoo! Publisher Network Program Policies, and Terms and Conditions.

If you have more questions, contact our Customer Support Team. You can reach them online or by calling them at 866-785-2636.

— Marc Gibson, Yahoo! Publisher Network

Open Search’s Graham Mudd discusses the benefits of Yahoo!’s new open search platform 

Earlier in the year, we ran an article about Open Search, a.k.a “SearchMonkey,” on our Search Marketing Blog. As a follow-up, we recently chatted with Product Marketing Manager Graham Mudd on how Open Search can impact publishers.

YPN Blog: What exactly is SearchMonkey, and what’s the goal of it?

Mudd: SearchMonkey is Yahoo! Search’s open platform. Our goal with SearchMonkey is to allow site owners, publishers and third-party developers to build applications that enhance the functionality and appearance of Yahoo! search results. These applications can be added by users from the Search Gallery, promoted by site owners and developers using a badge.

YPN Blog: How do publishers use it?

Mudd: They should visit http://developer.yahoo.com/searchmonkey to get an overview of the program. Once folks learn the basics, we have full documentation and developer tools available for them to use.

YPN Blog: Sounds good. Here’s an obvious question: how much does it cost?

Mudd: Nothing. It’s free to all.

YPN Blog: How does it benefit publishers who are members of the Yahoo! Publisher Network?

Mudd: Well, we believe that SearchMonkey benefits all of the participants involved—publishers, users (searchers) and Yahoo!. By building more useful and attractive search results for their sites, publishers can see an increase in the quantity and quality of traffic from Yahoo! Search. And users, of course, benefit from a better search experience. This will likely increase user loyalty, which is a good thing for Yahoo!, too.

YPN Blog: So what does SearchMonkey mean for the industry as a whole?

Mudd: Semantic mark-up (RDF, microformats, etc.) is one of the primary technologies behind SearchMonkey. These technologies have existed for some time, and many agree they have the potential to make the web far more useful. Many site owners, however, have been reluctant to implement semantic markup because they haven’t seen a direct benefit in doing so.

YPN Blog: How do I qualify for Open Search?

Mudd: SearchMonkey is open to all sites and third-party developers.

YPN Blog: Sounds good. So, what do our readers need to do to get started?

Mudd: As a publisher, the most important thing you can do is share your structured data with Yahoo! Search using semantic markup, a data feed or page extraction. To get started, visit our overview page and then check out this overview for site owners.

— The Team

How to get approved on Right Media’s Direct Media Exchange

Yahoo! has a lot of different ways to work with our publishers. One of these, Right Media’s Direct Media Exchange (DMX), is a free web application that allows publishers to auction their ad inventory. 

In a new Right Media blog post, new Right Media blogger Kelly Kitchel posts an interview with, um, Kelly Kitchel about getting approved for DMX. Given that you might want to use DMX—and that some of the concepts of approval are useful in general—here’s an excerpt:

“So imagine that you’ve just created a smoking hot website. The next thing you could do is submit your new website to different advertising partners to be part of their programs. Then you can generate some revenue from your hard-earned, organically grown traffic.

“But then the reality of the approval process sets in. Sometimes you’re accepted. Sometimes you wait forever—and then get accepted. And sometimes you’re just outright denied. How do you make it easier on yourself (and the approvers)?”

Well, for starters, a big DMX guideline is “Be clean and professional in design with quality content.” That means make sure your content doesn’t make any copyright violations and that it’s not also a messy page with too many ads and no original content.

For more, you can read the full piece.

— Roger Park, Manager, Marketing Communications

Steps to help you avoid hiccups in the payment process

One of the most universal questions—after “Are these dishes clean or dirty?”—has to be, “When am I going to get paid?” Well, no need to fret here at the Yahoo! Publisher Network. Here are a few administrative items to keep in mind to help avoid any hiccups in the payment process.

Payment methods

As we noted in a previous blog article, the Yahoo! Publisher Network has three methods of payment available to our publishers: check, direct deposit or PayPal.  Once the method of payment is verified, you can expect to see payments no later than the last day of each month. 

Please note that if you’ve opted to receive payment by check, you should allow approximately seven to 10 business days for mail delivery. If you selected the PayPal payment option, remember that the name on the PayPal account should match the name on the YPN account for purposes of verification.  If they don’t match, the payment would go out by check or other methods you’ve previously selected.

Revenue accrual 

Revenue accrues over the course of the calendar month. Payments for the previous month’s revenue are issued no later than the last day of the following calendar month.  For example, revenue earned in May 2008 will be paid to active publishers no later than June 30, 2008. Revenue will first be transferred to your account balance prior to the payment being issued. If your account balance is at least $100 ($50 for PayPal), payments are issued within one to three business days.  

Lock down period on information changes 

In order to disperse payments before the end of each month, we lock down certain information from change.  From the 19th to the 24th of every month the Yahoo! Publisher Network portal is locked down and no changes are permitted to the account, payment, or tax information sections.   Keep in mind that many changes require a verification process that may take 10-15 business days for verification before changes go into effect.

If you change your method of payment, for example, from check to direct deposit, our process will require that we validate the bank account information.  If the request for the change has not been completed before the lock-down period, payment will be made via the method that was previously verified.  In this example, the payment would go out by check until the following month, when it would go out by direct deposit.

So make your changes on time to make sure you get paid the way you want to get paid.

–The Yahoo! Publisher Network Customer Solutions Team

How to get approved for payment

As a publisher within our network, you probably want to make sure you get paid for participating. Which is definitely a good thing! Well, we want to tell you about some ways to make the payment process easier for you.

Currently you can choose to receive your payments via PayPal, direct deposit or check. Please note that you must select your payment method by the 19th of the month to be paid via that method in the current month. To select or update your payment preferences, go to the Account Information tab.

Here are some helpful tips to help you verify you have provided the correct information to be approved for payment.

By Check
Provide the mailing address so you can receive a payment by check. To add or change your mailing address, click on the Account Information tab and select the Payment Options page within your account. Then, simply update your mailing address in the appropriate fields. Your earnings from the Yahoo! Publisher Network will be sent to this mailing address if you elect to receive checks in the Payment Options page.

By Direct Deposit
To ensure that you receive your payment correctly using the direct deposit feature, we validate  your bank information based upon the information you entered. If you receive a notice that the information is not valid, please reenter your banking information from the Payment Options screen within your account. Once you have resubmitted your information, we will process the new information to ensure that it is correct. This processing will take approximately ten business days.

Please note that payment processing begins on the 24th of each month and payments are issued within approximately one to three business days after this time. If the ten-day processing period extends beyond the 24th of the month, you will receive your payment by check.

By PayPal
PayPal will verify your email address and Y!PN payee name before allowing the Yahoo! Publisher Network to transfer your earnings. It’s important that your PayPal account is up to date in order to avoid payment delays. Your PayPal name must match exactly the payee name in your Y!PN account. If they do not match, we recommend updating your Paypal account or create a new one to match the payee name in your Y!PN account, or creating a new PayPal account matching again matching the payee name in your Y!PN account.

Please note that your PayPal account type must also match your Y!PN account type. This means if you have selected a Y!PN account type of “Corporation,” then your PayPal account must be a business account. If you have selected a Y!PN account type of “Individual/Sole Proprietor” your Paypal account must be a personal account.

If PayPal is unable to verify your email address or Y!PN Payee name, we will default your Yahoo! Publisher Network payment to direct deposit if you have valid direct deposit information on file. Otherwise, we will default your payment to check.

Following the above tips should help you make sure payment reaches you.

- The Yahoo! Publisher Network Customer Solutions Team

Seven ways to create link-friendly content

Linkbait has nothing to do with hot dog “links” or fish “bait,” but it has everything to do with catching folks’ attention, which can make you shout with glee: “Hot dog!” (Probably not “Fish!”)

Linkbait refers to content or a feature on a website that entices users to place links to it on other websites. Previously, Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org, wrote about linkbaiting on our YPN blog. We thought it would be a great idea to recap Rand’s informative and practical article, in case you missed it.

Linkbaiting is often seen as a form of viral marketing, which encourages users to pass along a message. When using linkbaiting, you may want to consider targeting link-friendly audiences such as bloggers, news sites and social media portals such as Flickr, Facebook and MySpace.

What Can You Use as Linkbait?
Rand explains that linkbait can be anything from a photo to an interactive web-based application to a “Top 10” list. In a nutshell, if your content sparks someone to link to it, it can be defined as linkbait.

The How and Why of Linkbait
Successful linkbait content generates buzz. As it is linked and passed on from site to site, the content gains traction and visibility. For example, let’s say you have a funny video of a dramatic and cute chipmunk on your site. Folks online will want to share this clip, and the next thing you know, it’s a world-wide internet phenomenon. (It’s actually a prairie dog from a Japanese telly show, but it’s still pretty darn funny.)

Rand explains that “Even after the initial buzz from your successful linkbaiting campaign dies down, your site’s traffic may stay on a slight increase due to a “linkbait bump” that keeps users circling back to your site.”

Rand’s Seven Tips for Linkbaiting:
1.  Find appropriate linkbait portals
2.  Understand your audience
3.  Brainstorm effectively
4.  Build beautiful bait
5.  Create a reputation
6.  Grab their attention
7.  Don’t be manipulative—and DON’T SPAM!

You can find more details on each step in Rand’s article.  Then…hot dog!

– Roger Park, Manager, Marketing Communications and office snacker

Editor’s Note: I met Stephanie Agresta last month at the BlogWorld Expo in Vegas—the girl’s got a wicked craps toss, I can tell you—where she spoke on the panel, “Bloggers and Online Merchants: Affiliate Marketing Synergies.” With more than 12 years of experience in online marketing, Stephanie has survived plenty of Cyber Mondays.

As we noted in a previous post, joining an affiliate program and negotiating direct ad sales can be great ways to boost your publishing revenue. Well, I learned that from Stephanie. For you publishers who are combining an affiliate program and direct ads with your Yahoo! Publisher Network ads Stephanie offers up ten survival tips to help get you through the holidays and into the black.

“Cyber Monday” has come and gone. While many news outlets focused on the “big bang” in sales that this day is supposed to represent (like its offline sister, “Black Friday”), online sales have grown at steady and steep rates each year for a decade. For 2007, initial reports point to even better-than-expected growth in the run-up to the holidays. More money for online advertisers means more revenue for publishers. Time to pop the Veuve Clicquot! 

But as anyone who has been in e-commerce for the last 10 years knows, with all this growth comes more competition and more stress for marketers. Consumer expectations are higher, there are more advertisers to choose from and manage, and—of course—there is significantly more competition (and expense) to secure those precious eyeballs! What is an online publisher to do?

Here are a few quick tips to help you navigate this hectic time. If you can keep these guidelines in mind, you may come out of the holiday season full of good cheer.

10. Speak with your audience and keep them top of mind. It is so easy to get caught up in the holiday hubbub and forget the basics. As a publisher, the most valuable tactic you can use is to stay focused on your readers and ask for their feedback. Start a conversation.

One simple idea is to create a holiday gift guide that suggests great ideas that you think they will love and asks for their product recommendations. If you’re a blogger, comments from readers can be a wealth of information on top-selling products and great content for future posts.

9. It’s all about the data. Set weekly and monthly goals for your affiliate commissions and contextual ad revenue, and run reports more frequently. Look at the numbers more closely and stay in tune with sales trends. Daily review of activity is a necessary component to making the season a success.

8. Stay on top of cultural trends. Who knows more about cultural trends than Oprah? As many of the pundits have pointed out, her annual list drives a huge number of online purchases. Tune into this and other trend-spotters now and throughout the year. If you aren’t already reading the Trend Watching briefings, sign up ASAP!

7. Read More Blogs. Does it sound crazy that, at the busiest time of the year, I am suggesting that you dedicate more time to reading blogs? Well, reading other thought leaders has a way of inspiring me. For online publishers who seek to increase their revenue, immerse yourself in the writings of Shawn Collins, Lisa Picarille, Sam Harrelson and Jim Kukral (in addition to this fabulous Yahoo! Publisher Network blog). You won’t be sorry.

6. Update your website with holiday images. Seems like an obvious one, but it is always a good reminder for busy publishers. Seasonal images help drive sales. Imagine shopping in an offline store that had no decorations up for the holidays. BORING!

5. Reach out to your top advertisers. This is always a tough one for some publishers. As someone who has been on the advertiser side for years, I cherish online publishers who take the time to make personal contact and share specifics about their site and the demographics they work with. It always helps to have a real person to contact with questions, so take time to make sure your top partners know who you are.

4. Try new methods of reaching out. As a follow up to #5, I must remind you that email and IM are so 2006. If you don’t already have a Facebook profile or Twitter account, give it a try. While it may take some getting used to, you will find that many of your colleagues are already there, and communication becomes that much easier.

3. Check your data feeds (if you use them). Another simple reminder—but vital during this busy traffic season—is to make sure that your site is up to par: no broken links to advertiser sites. If you find an advertiser that has not done an update to its data feed in awhile, send a polite note asking them to provide you with the tools you need to sell their products.

2. Don’t forget the long tail. While Top 10 product lists are great, let’s not forget that this is a time of year when individuals go out of their way to find unique and special gifts. Spend time building out lists of keywords (including five-plus word keywords). If you do any online marketing, such as through Yahoo! Search Marketing, use these in your campaigns. Even if you don’t do any online marketing, be sure to sprinkle these keywords throughout your copy to help get your site more visible in organic search rankings.

1. Get in the spirit. Most importantly, take a moment to be thankful for your direct advertising partners, if you have any. Not only is it good karma, but it goes a long way to enhance your working relationship all year long. Snail mail, old-school holiday cards are wonderful, but e-cards or online videos work, too. Give to receive!

Don’t Forget: It’s not too late to still capture the holiday spirit and boost your sales online. Keep in mind that many gift advertisers register about 60 percent of their sales in the fourth quarter, the bulk of which is in December. Plus, January is a big month for most e-retailers—with all those gift cards burning holes in consumer pockets.

—Stephanie Agresta, Stephanie Agresta Consulting