As you probably already know, our self-service publisher program, the Yahoo! Publisher Network Online (YPNO) was closed effective April 30, 2010.

Accordingly, the YPN blog—this blog—will be shut down in about a week.

The most pertinent content over the last four years has already been shifted to the Yahoo! Advertising blog. You can find it under the Publisher tab. After we shut the YPN blog down the YPNblog.com URL will automatically redirect to the Yahoo! Advertising blog,

Since our very first post, the YPN blog’s authors and editors have strived to serve the interests not just of Yahoo! Publisher Network partners but publishers everywhere, with helpful tips and tricks on how you can be better and more profitable at what you do. And we will continue to serve your interests on the Yahoo! Advertising blog. (And let’s face it, the line between publishers and advertisers is disappearing, so it makes sense to treat both in a single space.)

After the YPN blog is closed down and the URL redirected to the Yahoo! Advertising blog, publishers wanting look back at our content will be able to do so from a link on the Yahoo! Advertising blog Publisher page.

To all of our publishers and partners, past and present, we wish peace, love and sock monkeys!

— The Team

As we shared in February, Yahoo! and Microsoft have formed a search alliance that we believe will help provide more rapid innovation and better monetization to our partners. Innovating search and search advertising is essential to Yahoo!’s strategy and will help deliver more value to partners like you.

Over the last several months, we’ve been working closely with Microsoft to develop a high-quality transition experience for our partners. While there’s nothing you need to do at this time, we did want to let you know that your Yahoo! account manager will be in touch in the coming weeks to provide you with a detailed overview and to answer any questions that you may have.

Transition timing
Our priority is to make this transition as seamless as possible for you. We know how important the holiday selling season is to both our advertisers and partners. That’s why our aim is to complete the transition in the U.S. and Canada before the start of the 2010 holiday season.

Next steps and resources
Please note there are several resources to help you stay up to date on the transition:

Transition Center – The Yahoo! Transition Center includes articles, downloadable materials.
YPN Blog – The Yahoo! Publisher Network blog will post regularly about the transition.
Updates – We’ll send you updates via email, and your account managers will reach out to you directly, so you won’t miss a thing.

We are committed to making this transition as seamless and beneficial for you as possible. We appreciate your business, and look forward to bringing you the benefits of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance.

— The Team

Earlier today, Yahoo! emailed a small group of publishers participating in the Yahoo! Publisher Network self-service beta program (also known as “YPNO” or “Yahoo Publisher Network Online”), to inform them that we have decided to close the program effective April 30, 2010. This only affects our self-service platform for small publishers who syndicate our Content Match (contextual) listings.

No change for large partners/affiliate network
This decision does not affect nor impact our relationship with large direct publishers and partners in any way. As Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz has stated previously, our publisher (or affiliate) network is an important part of our business, and Yahoo! will continue to invest and innovate to ensure that our publishers realize the best value possible from our partnership.

No change to Content Match ads
Publishers participating in the self-service beta program displayed our advertisers’ Content Match ads (or text-based ads), but this made up only a small amount of total impression volume. Advertisers’ Content Match ads will continue to be displayed on our large, direct partners’ sites, as well as across relevant content on Yahoo! sites. Sponsored Search ads are not affected by this announcement at all.

Publishers with questions regarding this announcement are welcome to contact us through the YPN portal.

— The Team

By all accounts, 2009 was pretty rough year: economic meltdowns, persistent war, piracy on the high seas, fires and floods. You name it, we endured it.

But not all the news was bad. This year saw airline Captain “Sully” Sullenberger save the lives of 155 people by successfully ditching hos plane in the Hudson; a new world land speed record for a steam-powered car; America’s first commercial Zeppelin—yeah, you heard that right: Zeppelin—service took off into the wild blue yonder over the San Francisco Bay Area; NASA enjoyed a flawless Space Shuttle record and discovered water on the moon; the Large Hadron Collider set a world record in accelerating protons to near light speed and, here at Yahoo!, we announced a dazzling new brand relaunch that promises to be a boon for both our users and advertisers.

Yahoo!’s been crunching the Year in Review numbers since 2001. What we discovered in 2009 is that people all over are coping—and escaping, dealing with the big-footprint issues of the day while seeking comfort in what was good.

This year, you can share your own experience in 140 characters or fewer by Tweeting it on Yahoo’s 2009 Year in Review site, or view the 2009 Rewind video.

—The Team

What’s behind a high bounce rate?
Users “bounce”—that is, click away and say goodbye to your website—when they find your homepage less than interesting. Search Marketing Standard’s Rebecca Appleton gives four reasons why users bounce and tells you what you can do about it. She’s also kind enough to offer tips on how to optimize your landing page for PPC. All that for free. There’s a reason we like her.

Tweet all about it!
Unless you live in L.A. or have an expense account fat enough for your company to fly you there, you’re probably missing the 140 Character Conference (#140), yesterday and today. Well, never fear, Twitter is here. Follow the Tweets by conference-goers, including our own Jeff Sweat. Good stuff for the aspiring publisher to know.

Viral marketing…with Bunnies!
Publishers are always looking for little ways to get big returns. Here’s a quick case study on how to make your viral marketing breed like rabbits: At the recent premier of “Rabbit Fever,” a funny documentary about competitive bunny breeders, the producers gave out bunny ears to everyone in the theater, and took photos. Then they put the photos on Flickr, knowing that everyone in the audience on Facebook or Twitter or with a blog would post about it (like we are right now). Talk about cheap, effective viral marketing. (Full disclosure: The author of this post was in that audience. See if you can find him in his rabbit ears on Flickr.)

Oh, the stories they could tell
Over at Search Engine Land, Ciarán Norris talks about the best (and worst) stories that brands have told via social media. Some solid do’s and do-not’s from history.

Dialing for yodels
OK, most phones don’t actually “ring” anymore. They chirp, ping, buzz, vibrate, and sing “Crazy Train” or just about any other song. But now you can get your phone to actually yodel. Not only that, you can make it yodel in just about any style you want: hip-hop, a cappella, R&B, reggae, bluegrass, what-have-you. To get your own yodel and for info on other Yahoo! innovations this week, click over to Yodel Anecdotal.

Developers, in the words of the late, great Rodney Dangerfield,  ”get no respect.” Except here at Yahoo!

We celebrate the geek every year with Open Hack Day. This time, we did it in New York’s Times Square.  Hackers from all over gathered and submitted their best hacks  for fun and prizes over a 24-hour period.

For all the details, click over to Yodel Anecdotal. Or just watch the movie…

Yahoo! CMO Elisa Steele unveils new global marketing campaign

Yahoo! chief marketing officer Elisa Steele announced our largest branding campaign ever in an IAB Mixx keynote address, telling the Ad Week audience that our message to consumers is: It’s you.

“We’d like to provide consumers more of what they want, and less of what they don’t,” Elisa said. That means bring them the best of their worlds (their friends, families and interests) and the world (news, information, and entertainment).

Elisa pointed to recent launches of our front page, Mail, and mobile apps are good examples of how we’re bringing both together. “Everything needs to be grounded on this concept of personal relevance.”

In the keynote, Elisa unveiled a video and still images that will be part of a global campaign. “The Internet is under new management: Yours,” one ad said. She also played new versions of the Yahoo! yodel.

For more about the keynote and the branding campaign, check back here later today.

For more details on the new Yahoo! branding campaign,  see Elisa’s post on Yodel Anecdotal.

— The Team

Everyone should be allowed to toot their own horns once in a while. For us this is especially true, if those sounds represent products and services that could help, or be of interest to, our publishers.

In recent weeks, some of our fellow Yahoos have taken the lid off of several exciting projects, and we thought we’d share the good news…

Thanking the monkey
The Yahoo! Developer Network just introduced an enhancement to SearchMonkey, our open search platform. The new feature, as described here in the Yahoo! Search blog, enables site owners and developers to embed flash video, games and documents directly into Yahoo! Search results. Publishers can just add a few lines of code to their embedded item, the Yahoo! webcrawler will pick it up, and your listings in Yahoo! SERPs will go bananas with eye-catching images.

The best of the Web, made for TV
You might think that accessing the Internet via a television screen has been tried and failed—and you’d be right. But this is something different: Yahoo!’s TV Widgets is now being built into sets from manufacturers like Samsung and others, enabling users to interact with their favorite Web services while they watch TV. We believe that this intelligent integration is what was lacking from previous attempts at marrying television and the Web. TV Widgets picked up several “Best of CES” awards in January—tune into the details here.

New Demo Targeting and Dayparting
If you do any type of pay-per-click advertising, this is going to be welcome news: Yahoo! Search Marketing just introduced several major enhancements to our Sponsored Search product, including ad scheduling, a dayparting tool for setting the display of ads at different times and days across an entire week; and bid adjustments, which lets you specify a premium bid amount for desired demographic groups and audiences. Take a short hop over to the YSM blog for more details.

Another print newspaper bites the dust
Finally, because there’s still some news outside of Yahoo!, here’s one non-purple item: An interesting article on the continuing struggles of the print media industry. Almost daily, large traditional print publishers are moving resources to their online operations. For Web publishers, does this engender a bit of smugness and pride that you were here first; or cause fear, as you may be faced with a higher level of competition from deep-pocketed corporations?

Yahoo! is helping newspapers make this transition through our APT product serving the Newspaper Consortium, but the continuing exodus of printed papers begs another question: With what will future generations line bird cages and wrap fish?

— Jeff Hecox

You may recall that when we announced our APT advertising platform last year, we said that the first customers to use it were members of our Newspaper Consortium. Well, the Newspaper Consortium is now seeing early successes.  For example, A. H. Belo, the first holding company to have all of its papers on APT, said in its recent earnings call that its partnership with Yahoo! has been one of its financial bright spots.

CEO Robert Decherd didn’t give revenue projections for APT, but said A. H. Belo had made $1.2 million last year beta testing Yahoo!’s behavioral targeting and saw auto ad revenues rise for the Dallas Morning News. In his words:

 ”You’re going to have three newspapers using this tool on our sites, but I don’t want to leave you with the impression that the $1.2 million is the most we expect to realize out of this deal. That was mostly one paper and was a test. We’ve now got APT at all our papers and we’ve got the ability, thanks to Yahoo, to sell behaviorally targeted ads on our own sites. This will make a significant difference for us this year.”

For more information about APT, visit apt.yahoo.com.

— The Team

We’ve worked really hard to make Yahoo! Search a better experience, with interesting new features (and interesting names, to boot) in the past year like SearchMonkey and Search BOSS. So, naturally, we want people to know about it.

Tens of millions of users choose Yahoo! Search every day. But, says Raj Gossain, VP of Marketing for Yahoo! Search in a blog post today, “We don’t think that’s enough. So today we’re launching an integrated, nationwide, on- and offline marketing campaign to remind the rest of the world (or at least everyone in the United States) that it’s time to give Yahoo! Search a try.”

The campaign will include radio ads and display ads like the one below.

To hear one of our radio ads, read Raj’s blog post.

– The Team