Yahoo! has just introduced it’s fresh contextual PPC advertising program with Media.net, and this collaboration is called as the Yahoo! Bing Network Contextual Ads program. In this review article, we’ll be looking on several aspects of this advertising program including comparisons with other programs in the market, pros & cons and more.

After shutting down it’s Publisher Network (YPN) in 2010, Yahoo is back again with contextual ads this time, and people on web are hoping much more from it and expecting new concept, good support, and of course, a lot of money.

What is Media.net?

Well, Media.net is a contextual advertising company that is right now powering the Yahoo! Bing Network to serve ads and handle the publisher side. They claim to be one of the largest teams worldwide in the contextual advertising business. Read more about them here.

Yahoo! Bing ad Network

Yahoo itself handles the advertiser side. The money flow between Yahoo and Media.net is something like this: Advertisers pay Yahoo to advertise on the network as well as on the Yahoo/Bing search results, Yahoo pays Media.net to run ads on the network, and Media.net pays the publishers for displaying the ads.

Yahoo! Bing Contextual Ad Network: Features

  • Huge advertisers pool: Although Yahoo has not been into competition from the past 1-2 years, it has a huge advertiser base. It is one of the biggest marketplaces for keyword-targeted advertisers. By this fact, it is clear that the program doesn’t seem to drown very soon among the other competitors in the market. But it is yet to see whether people are gonna like it or not, and this completely depends on how good the program pays.
  • Robust ad targeting and optimization: Media.net provide a page-level precision targeting. In simple words, they analyze each page before serving ads, and render highly relevant ads that are best for that specific page. As per the service, they have excellent algorithms that extract and classify the concepts from pages and return ads matching the extract.
    They also analyze publishers’ sites constantly to serve better, relevant and more paying ads.
  • Superb ad customization: The program provides an excellent customization support for ads. The ad-appearance, color and style customization and presets are lot better than AdSense. Take a look at the below screen capture of Media.net ad customization options:
    Media.net ad customization
    You may pick your preferred ad size from more than 15 available sizes. The program supports all IAB sizes including some non-standard sizes added to custom publisher needs.
  • Greater Publisher control: Media.net algos are impressive to feed relevant and targeted ads, but alongside, they provide a Sales Representative or Ad specialist to each of their publisher, who will assist you to set up ads on your site, alert you from time-to-time about updates, answer your queries and help you with any sort of problem you are having with the program.
    It’s really nice to have such representative in touch and this adds to the extra support we generally miss with other ad networks.
  • Mobile ads support: Awesome mobile ad support, you just need to check an option, and mobile ads will be shown on your site automatically whenever a mobile device is detected. You don’t even have to put any additional coding. Now, that is fantastic! The mobile ads are supported on all major mobile / handheld devices. And all that with uninterrupted browsing experience.
  • Real-time stats: Track your ad reports in real time. Their reporting interface allows users to view earnings with drill-downs by sites, ad tags, and date range. You can monitor your stats even from your iPhone or iPad. (Update: No all real-time stats! It shows revenue and RPM data at the end of the day, while you can track daily as well as hourly ad impressions.)

Payment Methods

The program pays publishers on a net 30 or monthly basis on a threshold amount of $100 or more in earnings. Payments are made via wire transfer or PayPal.

Pros and Cons of the Network

Yahoo! Bing network has a good number of pros and a few cons as well:

Pros
  • Excellent Customer support
  • More clickable ads with superb customizations support with vibrant skins and schemes
  • Advertising control through their representatives and algos
  • Wide range of ad types and sizes
  • Great payment options, pays via Bank Wire or PayPal
  • Decent earnings, good RPM than other ad programs, even AdSense is behind (as far as I read and heard)
Cons
  • Like every other PPC program, CTR and CPC are not stable, so no fixed earnings
  • You can’t see the CPC, CTR and other stats in the reports other than RPM, impressions and earnings
  • Unlike AdSense, they approve each of your sites manually.
  • You can’t get paid via check (cheque), as the program is centered in US only and pays in USDs
  • Update: NO all real-time stats, you can’t see the revenue and RPM data in real time. They only show daily and hourly impressions in real-time in reports.

AdSense vs Media.net & Yahoo! Bing Network

Who’s the king between the two? Can one put AdSense and Yahoo! Bing ads on the same page? See Yahoo! Bing ads vs AdSense to get the answers of these questions.

My experience with Yahoo! Bing ad Network

TechAbly was approved by the network pretty soon, I was contacted by a Sales Representative from Media.net to setup ads, and to ask queries if any. I am currently in communication with the representative and liking the network so far due to the helpful approach from them. As far as the earning is concerned, I am yet to put their ads on the site, but I will make an update about all that very soon.

Update: It’s almost a week with Yahoo! Bing ads on my site. Earnings are quite low for me right now due to constantly decreasing RPM. I can’t see clicks, CPC eCPM and other data in reports, but still I think I can’t say much about the REVENUE, I know some guys who are doing good with them and I suppose I need to wait to see more from them, whatever works.