Here’s an email I just got from Yahoo. Apparently the YPN is closing down for good after an extensive several year beta test.
Dear Publisher,
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. We expect to deliver final publisher payments for the month ending April 30, 2010 to publishers no later than May 31, 2010. All publishers eligible for 1099s for the 2010 tax year will have those mailed by January 31, 2011.
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.
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 YPNO beta publishers to participate in its platform. Click here for more information.
We thank you for your participation in the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta. If you have any questions regarding this announcement, please contact our Support Team at (866) 785-2636, Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PDT.
Sincerely,
FYI, I applied with Chitika over two months ago and have still not heard back from them. So I re-applied and got this email:
Your email address has been confirmed. We sincerely thank you for choosing Chitika’s ad services to earn you revenue from your website(s).
Important Update! Please be advised that at this time, we are in the process of some major upgrades in our service. As we prepare to transition to an upgraded version of Chitika ads, we are temporarily holding off on approving new domains and accounts.
We would like to personally thank you in advance for your patience as we continue to work on some great new improvements to Chitika’s services which will result in higher quality ads, as well as higher possible revenues for you in the long-run. Your application is on file and will be reviewed once we have finished our upgrades.
We apologize for this inconvenience. You will be notified as soon as your domain(s) have been reviewed by a member of our team.
Worthless - who the hell is going to wait months for approval? See ya Chitika… you lost me as a customer.
Yeah, I just got that email to. We use them for our free Doodlekit websites. Does anyone have any suggestions on an alternative outside of Google? Yahoo! suggests Chitika but I would prefer a more non-bias suggestion. Our free websites have all sorts of different content. We need something like Yahoo! or Google that picks up on the website content and displays appropriate ads based on that. And something that can easily be altered color wise easily to match our many different color themes.
There isn’t really a competitor on the scale of Google AdSense - that is what everyone had hoped for yahoo and Microsoft to produce, but oh well.
Chitika are well respected though, and a pretty decent option. Their technology is in many ways more interesting than AdSense, but they simply don’t have the volume of long tail advertisers. Definitely worth investigating if you are after a non-Google alternative.