Steve Balmer is widely recognized as the insane CEO who repeatedly chanted: “Developers, developers, developers, developers.” This mantra would bode well for Yahoo, and a Micro-Hoo base company. I have been doing online marketing and advertising for nearly 10 years, and it seems like Yahoo just doesn’t spend time developing their advertising platform. It appears that they spend time managing it, but not improving or advancing their advertising platform. Shame on you Yahoo, you let Google get the best of you. I’m not sure why, but I have some guesses.For nearly a decade Yahoo inflated their earnings by charging a minimum of 10 cents a click. It wasn’t till recently did Yahoo finally change this policy, but from reports from other online marketing blogs; little seems to have changed. A lot of talk, but no action Yahoo - typical Yahoo.

Yahoo is like a spoiled little boy that loses interest in his toys, only wanting new ones to satisfy his ego. Purchases like Right Media, Blue Lithium, etc… have cost billions, and will take a decade or more to recoup those investments. It would have made more sense for Yahoo to develop their content network, instead of letting just a handful of employees take years to finally bring it out of beta (ooops, is it still in beta?) Why the 10 cents minimum cost for advertisers still on the network? Why not unleash the gates of publishing and allow more publishers into the network? Quality control? I think not. Lack of employee empowerment, I think so.

Yahoo spends more time thinking about what it’s going to do next, then doing anything at all. For over 3 months Microsoft and Yahoo have been going back and forth about a price tag. Yahoo wants more money so senior execs and large shareholders can make as much as possible. Microsoft isn’t stupid, their not going to pay through the teeth and screw themselves over in the process. Yahoo executives are busy spending their time saving their jobs and their asses; not improving their search technology or advertising platform.

Yahoo has fleeced advertisers for years, delivering shitty, overpriced results that generally result in negative ROI’s for their advertisers. Super affiliates/marketers took the Yahoo publishing network for millions of dollars. Just look at the impressive checks these wise-asses post on their blogs. How were they doing it? They were web masters of online arcade websites and blended YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network) advertisements into their website. The YPN control panel allowed publishers to choose what niche their advertisements were. So why not display realestate development or legal advertisements? They were blended so well, that users of these websites had no idea what they were clicking. Sort of the bizzaro world of “banner blindness”

Yahoo needs to stop fucking around and immediately take action to improve business performance and return shareholder value. Getting rid of Terry Semel was the first step. The second step is to focus on your core competencies. If Microsoft is going to aggressively pursue a purchase of Yahoo by buying up shares on the open market, so be it; and it might cost Microsoft even more then $31-$33 a share. Stop buying display advertising networks. There are only so many publishers, and they already work with all the majors. Start-up display advertising networks are being overvalued. Now that Yahoo has the components to compete with Google; start competing with them! Don’t let your platform continue to languish, COPY GOOGLE ADWORDS. Sorry to say it Yahoo, but there is no shame in copying Google Adwords.

Google Adwords is integrating the entire advertising agency in one simple platform. After just a week of using Google Adwords nearly anyone can figure out how to use it. Empower your users Yahoo! Why cause first time advertisers frustration by requiring them to have certain spend limits before upgrading their upload capabilities? I quote Steve Balmer again Yahoo, “Developers, developers, developers, developers!”

I recently watched this movie preview that was displayed through Google Adwords/Adsense video units:

I’ve tested this advertising product through Google Adwords before and found it to be less effective than text, image, and flash on the Google Content network. Also, AdSense publishers get screwed because CTR is very low, as most users don’t know they can click the ad. Either way, movie studios use them quite extensively to show previews for upcomming films. However, at the end of the preview viewers don’t know that the advertisement is clickable and can take you to the movies website.

The title of this post is: Movie studio Google Adsense video ads will waste your advertising dollars - this is not necessarily true. It will waste the advertising inventory of any website that allows videos ads to be shown. For movie studios this is great - as they get to show a preview to potential customers for free. As they only pay when the video is clicked, and CTR is so horrible, that its basically free advertising. CTR for these types of ads is going to be extremely low because showing a movie preview pretty much says it all, there is no incentive for the viewer to click through, as they just saw everything they wanted to see. If you are a movie studio and interested in advertising your latest films through this method, please contact Banner Blindness at 843-425-3566 as we have a proprietary software device that can maximize your efforts and get your video seen millions of times - very similar to making your video go viral through YouTube.

Google: you need to install a call to action at the end of the video play if you want people to click.

Furthermore, advertisers: you need to have a call to action at the end of the video that tells users to click on the advertisement to view bonus footage on the website.

One of Yahoo’s greatest competitive weaknesses, in comparison to Google, is their contextual advertising platform - though they are still ahead of Microsoft.  AdSense (Google’s contextual advertising system) is hand’s down the most powerful contextual advertising system on the Internet.  With Google’s recent acquisition of Double Click they can now utilize the AdSense contextual network to display CPM priced banners - enhancing their CPM advertising distribution to an unbelievable amount.  Google is the worlds largest display advertising company - bigger than Specific Media, 24/7 Real Media, Platform A (AOL), and any other competitors.  Google has been slowly rolling out their display advertising efforts through the AdSense contextual network.  On this website, as well as other online properties that we own, we have seen these ads and they pay very little.  So we have been forced to turn off image advertisements, and only show text display ads; as CPM payout is worthless.  Back to Yahoo contextual network, it sucks, oh I already mentioned that.  I’m sure many of you have seen these ads before:

They are a perfect example of Yahoo’s terrible contextual network.  There is no revenue optimization system in place - which is clearly evident otherwise Yahoo would be constantly rotating competing ads in order to determine the highest revenue per click advertisements.  I’m certain that the advertisers shown above have a contract with Yahoo for a static price per click, and in return they get premium placement - but this is to the detriment of Yahoo and Yahoo shareholders.  Wake up Yahoo, there is no shame in duplicating Google’s contextual network; what are you waiting for?