Is YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network) really closing?

YES! Yahoo issued a notice that they would stop operations April 30.

Yahoo! continuously evaluates and prioritizes our products and services, in alignment with business goals and our continued commitment to deliver the best consumer and advertiser experiences. After conducting an extensive review of the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta program, we have decided to close the program effective April 30, 2010.

They recommend that publishers remove the code before the 30th

Because our content will no longer be delivered to your ad unit spaces after April 30, 2010, we recommend removing all YPN ad code from your pages by that date.

Interestingly, they recommend that publishers turn to Chitika for their contextual advertising needs.

For the opportunity to continue earning revenue, we suggest using Chitika, a leading advertising network that syndicates Yahoo! Content Match and Sponsored Search ads. Chitika has set up a special process for YPN beta publishers to participate in its platform.

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Answer by quadratic (73)

Although I have not heard of many publishers for whom YPN outperformed Google AdSense, I think this is a sad day because the marketplace needs as much competition as possible - the loss of a key player in the already-small contextual-advertising world is a significant loss.

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Answer by mangosteen (272)

Counterintuitively, I think that Google is not too excited by this news. They dominate in a few different markets that they are close to being labeled monopolists (which can bring on additional regulatory scrutiny). They probably prefer for there to be several (decidedly weak) competitors.

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Answer by calcutta (168)

Well, now this puts us in the very unenviable position of having to root for MSN ads.

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Reply by Krabi (112):
The people working at Bing and at Microsoft PubCenter are actually quite good guys. It is the OS and Office departments that act with so much hubris. Microsoft is such a sprawling company, that they actually have different subcultures within the different departments. add a comment

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Answer by Tolbukhin (78)

Wow, that is really surprising. I tried YPN on one of my sites a year or two ago, and it wasn't too good, but they must have been making some money on it. Strange.

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Answer by andaman (240)

So now Yahoo is only going to be able to sell ads on its own sites - doesn't this make Yahoo less attractive for ad buyers since ads will have less reach than they do with YPN in place?

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Reply by Sikkim (65):
Yes, but Yahoo can vouch for the quality of its own sites much more than then it can for a vast network of publishers. They did this to compete with AdSense but were never able to get it to work well for any of the players involved. add a comment

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Answer by SriLanka (264)

Google is becoming more and more of a monopoly not just by acquisition, but now because their closest competitors are closing up shop. this is a sad day.

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