After reading many articles that suggest that the Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN) has a lower Click-through Rate (CTR) than Google AdSense I decided to take it upon myself to test this out on one of my entertainment sites geared towards mature teens. My experience with these two ad publishers did not follow this trend that suggests AdSense has a higher CTR.
Click-through Rate
I’ve found that the average CTR for both YPN and AdSense were relatively similar. There are other factors that may effect these results such as my ad placements or audience but due to YPN’s higher Cost Per Click (CPC) it has been more profitable for me than AdSense. The average CTR was about 300 clicks per 1,000,000 impressions.
Relevance of Content
AdSense delivered better targeted ads but by setting categories for my highest trafficked pages I was able to further increase my CTR with YPN. Also, YPN showed mostly main brand ads my visitors were familiar with (not sure if this is good or not).
Comparative Data
So which made me more money? YPN averaged about $0.50 per click while AdSense averaged about $0.22 per click, and as I mentioned above the CTR was about the same. Below I listed some numbers I got from my comparison of the two ad networks:
Month 1
Earnings - Yahoo! made 38.6% more than Google
Y - Clicks: 308 | Impressions: 1,053,573
G - Clicks: 305 | Impressions: 1,072,797
Month 2
Earnings - Yahoo! made 39.8% more than Google
Y - Clicks: 322 | Impressions: 898,625
G - Clicks: 287 | Impressions: 1,069,110
Month 3
Earnings - Yahoo! made 17.6% more than Google
Y - Clicks: 462 | Impressions: 1,374,128
G - Clicks: 378 | Impressions: 1,212,344
This may not of been the best way to organize this data or compare both companies but it should give you a rough inclination that for the type of website these ads were on YPN was the better choice. Please forgive me if the calculations seem a little off, I feel I posted enough to give you all a general comparison. AdSense could totally work better for some of you than YPN, you’ll just have to try it out for yourself!
Neat little tool to preview how ads from various publishers will look:
Contextual Ads Preview and Comparison Tool
Interesting…
Thanks for posting this.
Thanks for reading.
I’m still not sure what focus I want to give this blog but when people leave comments it gives me an idea of what types of things I should be posting.
thx for posting
Thanks for that! Great info!
Great Post! It’s 4a.m. EST and because I couldn’t sleep, I figured I’d do some research on this little puzzle that you so generously peiced together for me. I took my Goog adsense off my index to generate more leads for myself (real estate) and then after blowing through the engines to the top of Mount Yah, decided it was time to test the waters again. Perfect post…Thanks, I’ll have to look into targeting Yahoooooo!
Yahoo provides us with 70% more revenue based on multiple trials and tests on multiple web pages.
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! mricyzyovjt
great post. too bad i can’t test it myself since YPN is not offered for international webdevs likw me.
Came across your article, nice piece of research, my main site is genealogy based and google revenue has been stagnating lately, so thought I’d give Yahoo a try -aaAARRGHHH ! guess what? - Yahoo Ads are not available in U.K.,
ah well, back to the drawing board.
Vic.
I think YPN is for US publishers. It cant be used for publishers outside UK and US. So google is better as it has no limitations.