Rafael Sosa’s Weblog

In an attempt to compete with rival Google Adsense, Yahoo has answered with a similar offering of smart pricing and they are calling it – “Quality-Based Pricing”. Although this is a double edged sword for publishers, advertisers stand to benefit greatly. In the end, happy advertisers means we get more marketing spending transfered to the Internet, which in theory would go back to benefit publishers. Yahoo outlines three main features:

• We’ll evaluate the quality of traffic from our distribution partner’s sites
• Your click charges can be discounted based on the value of the traffic
• Discounts will automatically be applied to your account

Yahoo claims, “Quality is calculated based on conversion rates and other measurements of the ability to deliver more interested and valuable customers to you from particular distribution partner sites.”

3rd party contextual advertisers have had a tough time dealing with the plague of irrelevant websites being created solely to trick visitors into clicking such ads. Just last month, Google responded to this issue by terminating arbitrage accounts that were serving ads through such websites, also know as MFAs (Made for Adsense). Advertisers have been complaining that their online advertising costs are rising due to rampant rises in fraud and the MFAs.