AdMoolah News and Views

In December Yahoo announced a major reorganization, and part of that reorganization was the creation of the Advertiser & Publisher Group(APG), which is where there Yahoo Publisher Network now belongs.

Susan Decker, Yahoo’s CFO recently sent an email to all Yahoo employees, which got leaked and published at TechCrunch. Here is the part of the memo that talks about YPN:

Yahoo! Publisher Network (Supply Channels). Our publishing customers are a critical component of the ad network ecosystem, and we are committed to driving and expanding monetization opportunities for this important customer segment. I have asked Hilary Schneider to lead the Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN) organization. I also want to thank David Karnstedt, who stepped in to lead this group while also leading direct search sales, and enhancing the overall connection and strategy of this group to be more aligned with advertising customer objectives. This team will be instrumental in developing and executing our global strategy of becoming the leading search, display and listings-based ad network by securing ad inventory on off-Yahoo! publisher sites. This off-Yahoo! inventory will complement the Yahoo! network inventory and enable our demand channels to offer our advertising customers not only the broadest array of marketing products but also the most robust and high quality audiences as well. As part of his responsibilities for the online channel, Rich Riley will drive the strategy around customer acquisition and retention of small publishers, supporting Hilary in this capacity.

I’ll try to break this down a little to see what it means for YPN publishers.

We’ll I’m glad they want to “committed to driving and expanding monetization opportunities” for publishers, but that really sounds like a lot of corporate-speak that means absolutely nothing to anyone. The whole memo was full of generic business terms that really did not shed any light onto what is going on. I think someone needs to give a copy of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (aff link) to Yahoo executives if they want to have any chance of actually communicating something.

The next part that might say something interesting is the “global strategy of becoming the leading search, display and listings-based ad network by securing ad inventory on off-Yahoo! publisher sites.” Obviously Google’s AdSense is the current leader and Yahoo wants to try and make a dent in this. It’s good news for YPN publishers and those wanting to become publishers that Yahoo is serious about this and sees it as a real opportunity for growth. I would assume they want to grow by getting more publishers signed up, and getting existing publisher to display more ads. The best way to do that is to make sure the program pays well.

The next bit I found interesting was “offer our advertising customers … the most robust and high quality audiences as well“. Yahoo’s current strategy for getting the “highest quality audiences” is to restrict publishers to show the ads to mostly US based users. Obviously this restriction gets in their way of their global strategy of becoming the leading ad network. Their going to have to figure out how to monetize those international clicks somehow.

Overall it seems like good news, they seem dedicated to making the YPN program work. But I think the reorganization is probably bad news for people still waiting for YPN to come out of beta. Switching people around will only delay getting things into top shape over there.