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

Publisher-related news items from the blogosphere

The next time you’re stuck for an idea to run an image on your site, you may want to check out new Flickr groups feature for some creative inspiration. Recently, the Flickr blog announced a new groups tool that lets you add up to six photos or videos at a time from your Flickr account to share with friends.

Speaking of Flickr, the next* blog posted a story about a new technology by Yahoo! called BrowserPlus, which powers the PhotoDrop application. This application, which is still in development, allows users on Flickr to drag and drop photos instead of having to upload them. Sounds like a heck of a time-saving tool to me!

According to the next* blog, “The cool thing about the technology is that it will soon be open for anyone to use, so regardless of where you spend your time on the net, the folks who build the websites that you use will be able to make your uploads faster, and let you do a whole lot more right there in your browser.” Check out the prototype and let us know what you think.

Finally, Josh Bernoff at the Groundswell blog (which incorporates Forrester Researcher Charlene Li’s blog) just published “The real business model for Web 2.0: corporate clients.” Bernoff says, “it’s incredibly hard to make money as a Web 2.0 startup aimed at consumers.” He suggests turning the focus on corporate clients. 

— Roger Park, Manager, Marketing Communications

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

A trio of publisher-related news items from the blogosphere

Earlier this week, the Yahoo! Search Team announced changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. According to the Yahoo! Search blog, you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index throughout the transition process, which should be completed soon.

Worried about robots taking over the world? Don’t be. They are our friends—especially the mini-robots mentioned in the MyBlogLog Blog. With the help of mini-robots, it’s really easy to refresh the thumbnail screenshot of your site on MyBlogLog. These new mini-robots take little screenshots of your site and upload it to your MyBlogLog community page. They may sound cute, but don’t underestimate their power. In fact, I for one welcome our new mini-robot overlords, I mean, mini-robot helpers.

Finally, the Yahoo! Developer Blog unveiled a sneak peak of the new BrowserPlus platform this week. The BrowserPlus platform, according to the blog, extends the Web. Among other things, that means you can add or update Web services without even restarting your browser. Some of the features that exist in the platform include:

• Drag-and-drop from the desktop
• Client-side image manipulation (cropping, rotation and filters)
• Desktop notifications

— Roger Park, Manager, Marketing Communications, aka Blog Wrangler, aka mini-robot friend

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

Enter the Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo! Publishing Contest

As if monetizing your PDFs weren’t enough, Yahoo! and Adobe are giving you another great reason to participate in the Ads for Adobe PDF powered by Yahoo! beta: great prizes.

The prizes are for a contest—our attempt to find the best publishers of ad-enabled PDFs out there. To enter, just sign up for the beta and start publishing your ad-enabled PDFs.  The winner will be determined by a combination of success metrics, such as the number of PDFs published, revenue, impressions, and other ingredients in the “secret sauce” we use in the beta. 

Did we mention the great prizes?  For the grand prize winner, we are offering the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection, which helps you to design across media—print, web, interactive, mobile, video, and film—in the most comprehensive, creative environment ever produced.  The grand prize is valued at $2499.  In addition, all publishers who participate will be entered into a raffle for $100 Yahoo! Search Advertising dollars, a great way to start publicizing your PDFs and increase your audience. 

To enter, click over to the sign up page and send us your Ads for Adobe PDF powered by Yahoo! beta application.  To see the official contest rules, click here. 

–Mike McCullough

A Publisher Corral of Blogosphere Tips

You might already know that you can create some cool desktop applications with Yahoo! Widgets SDK. Well, the Yahoo! Flash Blog recently announced that these applications can now be built in Flash.

How many times have you published a blog article and then remembered you forgot something important to put into the entry? On her blog, Jennifer Slegg just published a helpful blogger’s pre- publishing checklist. Jen’s list includes practical and sometimes overlooked tips, such as spellchecking, making sure your links work, and sourcing your sources. I have a similar list before I leave the house, which I check exactly three times.

If you’re also a podcast publisher, Marketing Vox posted an article with ten tips for launching a solid podcast. Pointers include planning your podcast schedule, making it RSS-accessible and keeping it short.

So there you go, folks. Hope these blog posts help make your site more compelling.

— Roger Park, Marketing Communications Manager and blog corral captain

It’s been a busy month here at the YPN Blog, and we’re sure you have also had many things going on. That’s why we thought it would be helpful to give you a short sampling of posts from around the blogosphere.

First off, the folks at MyBlogLog announced that they recently added a script for folks who want to use twitter with their MyBlogLog. Now folks can stay updated with you while you’re on the go!

Do you have a company blog that you have been ignoring? Well, stop ignoring it, and read Jennifer Slegg’s great article on why corporate blogs fail.

For folks who are feeling bombarded by all the information and content streams available today, you might want to read Publishing 2.0’s article on the web conservation movement. The basic premise is producing quality content and not just throwing up stuff on the web because you can.  As a publisher you want to make sure that visitors find your site information relevant and helpful.

Calling all you shutterbugs using Flickr on your sites! The Flickrblog has released this nifty “Share This” button.

Though not exactly a new announcement, it doesn’t hurt to remind you of all the many and powerful publisher tools available in your account.

– The YPN 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