Google Adsense vs. Yahoo Publisher: Battle of the Content Networks

It’s been about a year since the release of Yahoo’s publisher program for businesses who wish to publish Yahoo’s contextual advertising. Yes, Yahoo’s content network is nothing new, however offering it to a wider distribution is. Google on the other hand is known for its Adsense revenue sharing program and its supporter’s worldwide. In fact, it seems like a day doesn’t go by that you don’t visit a website without “Ads by Google.”

As an online internet marketer, I have always been a little reserved of websites monetizing with search engine ads mainly due to its weaker user execution. Nevertheless, search engine content ads are popular among many websites, big and small. Does your website strategy incorporate contextual ads? Have you experienced any trade offs?

For myself, I firmly believe there is a right and a wrong time to use them. As a general rule of thumb, if the advertising is emphasized over its content, then it becomes annoying to the reader. Nothing aggravates me more than landing on a site with a splash page of advertising or a site covered in what seems to be more ads than articles.

Nonetheless, I’m not an opponent to websites earning money via contextual SE advertising, nor do I deny the fact that without advertising, most websites wouldn’t be feasible. However, a fine line does exists between enhancing a site with advertising and making it perpetual versus shaking visitors for lost change. Enough said.

Earlier this year, we decided to try Yahoo!’s new publisher ads. Like Google Adsense, signing up is easy and rather straightforward. Besides the normal tax id information and where to send the checks info, is your ad size set-up, targeting, and category selection. Unlike Google however, Yahoo relies heavily on categories to deliver its ads vs. Google’s automated ad delivery system.

This can both be a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that you can virtually place search engine text ads on any page, including ones that are very image heavy with a better relevance standing. On the other hand, the ads are rather random and may not match your content as well as you would like them to. Regardless, Yahoo offers enough categories (and releasing more all the time) to keep your ads and site inline with one another.

Reporting isn’t as real-time as Google’s and is only updated a few times a day. Impressions and clicks can be separated by Website URL and/or ad unit allowing for a good understanding into how your ads are performing.

Ad units vary in size, but do follow typical contextual advertising size standards: banner, leaderboard, skyscraper, etc. Colors of its ad units can also be changed to better match your websites theme or you can select from several defaults.

Performance
So how does Yahoo!’s advertising perform vs. Google’s? I chose to develop a ranking system and rate each one based on a scale of 1 to 10:
Yahoo! Publisher | Google Adsense
Ad relevance 5 | 8
Ad delivering 6 | 8
Ad revenue 7 | 4
Ad set-up 5 | 9
Reporting 7 | 8
Totals 30 | 37

Ad relevance
Its pretty hard to deny the fact that Google’s relevance is superb. Let us not forget that this is how they built their entire empire. However, it does rely on the content that the ads are served upon which isn’t always prime. Moreover, Google sometimes serves ads that aren’t contextual or advertisements for themselves. (Grrrr…)

Yahoo! on the other hand, serves ads based on categories, but generall fails to hit the mark. Additionally, many of the categories seem to blend together or don’t seem to be dramatically different. On the other hand, Yahoo!’s ads don’t rely on content so in some cases they are a better alternative, but these instances are typically far and few.

Ad Delivering
This was a category apparently Yahoo! needs work in. In many cases, Yahoo!’s ad delivery system cant deliver multiple ads at a time. For instance, a skyscraper ad unit which should typically return 4 advertisers at a time, can vary between 1 and 4. I’m not sure if this is intentional or not, but it does make for poor ad delivery consistency. In addition, delivery on multiple content topics may make set-up can be a tedious.

Google’s Adsense doesn’t come away with flying colors either, but is much more reliable than Yahoo! in my book. The main problem is that Google seems to struggle with its “corner style”, which doesn’t always execute correctly. I know I’m splitting hairs here, but a company with so much $$$ should have this system down 100%, especially when you consider how market tested the system is. Nevertheless, Google always delivered an ad in which it was intended which makes them a clear winner in this case.

Revenue
Question- Which is better, relevance or revenue? LOL, what a loaded question for a search marketer to ask! But seriously, this is a question you need to ask yourself when choosing one of these two programs.

Yahoo!’s publisher program only provides revenue for clicks, while Google’s system can also work on a CPM. What seems like a major advantage, is quickly diluted by Yahoo!’s earning power. Yahoo! click revenue for our test averaged around $.50 a click easily. In some cases, we received as high as $10 to $12 per click. However, clicks didn’t come as often as Google’s mainly due to its less relevant ad targeting. Torn apart, Yahoo for our test earned about 2x more than Google. Not a bad reason to stay in Yahoo! town.

Ad Set-up
This is one area in my opinion that Google dominates. Firstly, outside of just contextual search engine ads, Google offers text link and referral ads (aka, Pay Per Action.) More options to me, means more relevance opportunities. In addition, Google offers the ability to include image and video ads in its contextual units thus further enriching the advertising experience to the user.

Both Google’s and Yahoo!’s ad units can be categorized so that you can easily get sense out of which ads are performing better. When you boil down just the basic cut and paste ad scripts, Yahoo!’s system still relies on its category ad delivery system, which i mentioned before can be a pain if you have many different content themes.

Reporting
In the case of reporting, both seem to do a good job in providing valueable interpretable information. Formats differ slightly, but the overall data integrity remains the same. Personally, I gave Google a higher mark in this category only because its system gives more real-time reporting throughout the day. However, neither are truly real-time. Nevertheless, both systems are robust and give valuable insight and revenue information that will help you make better placement decisions.

And the winner is…
Based upon sheer numbers, Google appears to have the upper hand. But I wouldn’t base your choice based solely on my personal experience from this test. Yahoo!’s publisher network is a strong contender and offers much higher earning potential if you have the time and patience to set it up correctly. Additionally, its ad targeting ability isn’t completely nil and offers benefits over Google’s content ad delivery system. For myself however, Google's autopilot relevance outweighs revenue due to its ability to compliment our sites content. But as they say, money talks, so try experimenting and let me know how it works out!

[tags] google adsense, yahoo publisher, contextual advertising, content networks, revenue sharing [/tags]