The big news of the week, covered by MSNBC and the Wall Street Journal among others, is Yahoo!'s overhaul of the Yahoo! Publishers Network. This is one of the crown jewels of Yahoo!. There are a lot of changes, many welcome new abilities, and some changes not welcomed, such as the dropping of suspect sites that host the ads that might be using click fraud to collect money from Yahoo!, and also putting Yahoo! in a compromising situation.
A round up of responses to the new design from some who've gotten a sneak peek, and some who're reading the general press release:
- Marc Poirier of One Degree points out that Yahoo! is offering geo-targeting, and comments on Yahoo!'s new quality focus on the ads. He also highlights the ability to see ads go live instantly, and likes the forecasting tools.
- The Search Engine Journal's Loren Baker regards the overhaul as positive thanks to no more waiting periods, the geo-targeting again, and dayparting (only having your ads show at a certain time of day).
- Eric Giguere focuses in on Yahoo!'s changing the way in which ads are served up and ranked via clickthroughs, which he thinks the biggest piece of news. He points out that they will be moving to a more Google-like way of determining what ads should be shown the most. He thinks it will lead to better payout rates to both Yahoo! and the sites serving up Yahoo!'s ads.
- Om Malik wonders if Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! chasing the same ad dollars hard will lead to a dilution in the money that websites earn from using their ads.
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