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Focusing on the Wrong Thing

Written by: Brad Feld

Article Overview: I saw the post A Thousand Hall Monitors from Yahoo this morning and immediately thought "why is YPN focusing on the wrong thing?"

Focusing on the Wrong Thing

I saw the post A Thousand Hall Monitors from Yahoo this morning and immediately thought "why is YPN focusing on the wrong thing?"

YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network) is way behind Google AdSense. They are trying - hard - to catch up - and doing plenty of smart things. They should have three goals - all really simple.


Get their targeting technology to be equal to or better than Google.
Sign up as many advertisers as possible.
Sign up as many publishers as possible.
Duh. Pretty simple. So - why is someone posing as (in their words) the "cross librarian" and telling people to "tattle on publishers that are violating the YPN Terms and Conditions."

I'm a publisher. I'm violating the YPN Terms and Conditions by running YPN ads on my left rails and Google ads on my right rails. When I've talked to people at Google about this, they don't care. Several people from YPN have mentioned it to me - whenever I say "ok - I'll just take the YPN ads down because the Google ones perform better", my friends at YPN say "nah - don't bother - we'll just ignore it."

Google understands goal #3 (actually they understand all three of these.) YPN is struggling with #3 - given that YPN is behind, they should be delighted when a publisher puts them up on their site, especially if it's an existing Google AdSense publisher. If YPN can get #1 and #2 right, then this will help them get to a happier place.

Alternatively - Yahoo should change the game entirely, which is what Google did to them in the first place. The "hall monitor" stuff is - well - the wrong thing. To my friends at Yahoo and YPN - please take this in the spirit it is offered - as constructive feedback. To my friends at Google and AdSense - please don't make me take the YPN ads down.

To all the entrepreneurs out there - "are you focusing on the wrong things?"

Read this article on Brad's blog.

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Article Tags: advertisers, blog, constructive feedback, duh, game, google, google adsense, hall monitor, hall monitors, happier place, librarian, nah, publishers, smart things, spirit, targeting technology, tattle, yahoo, ypn ads



Related Forum Posts
Re: Great start, but no finish - My advise is FOCUS on your business. Focusing is the main factor to succeed on business. If you have a great idea, then follow it only, don't look anywhere else. It is especially essential in an online business. Because there are a lot of mind blowing sales letters promising millions dolllars or overnight success, people find it difficult to concentrate on one business and they lose their energy. Concept is simple. 1- Have a good idea; 2- Build your business on it; 3- Monetize your business; 4- Promote it; 5- Build list of responsive customers; 6- Maintain You Business. Focusing and not fearing from competition (instead you can learn from competitiors) are main tips of billionaires ,BTW. Orxan
Re: Fill in the blank: The best decision I ever made with my bus - Focusing on my Internet Marketing Business
Re: What is your biggest challenge? Today? - Focusing... and finding time to focus! Maybe they are related!
How do you know if you have a good idea? - [quote="orxan":3118uboz]My advise is FOCUS on your business. Focusing is the main factor to succeed on business. If you have a great idea, then follow it only, don't look anywhere else. It is especially essential in an online business. Because there are a lot of mind blowing sales letters promising millions dolllars or overnight success, people find it difficult to concentrate on one business and they lose their energy. Concept is simple. 1- Have a good idea; 2- Build your business on it; 3- Monetize your business; 4- Promote it; 5- Build list of responsive customers; 6- Maintain You Business. Focusing and not fearing from competition (instead you can learn from competitiors) are main tips of billionaires ,BTW. Orxan[/quote:3118uboz] Thanks orxan! But how do you know if you truly have a good idea or not? If we ask ourselves, we may be suffering from tunnel vision. On the other hand, friends/family may try to discourage us from pursuing a small business because of their own fears, while others will simply give us an empty "you can do it!" line.
Re: Why Franchises Fail - [quote="Nana":307g5e63]Another reason franchises can fail is due to lack of effort on the franchisees part. If the franchisee does not give it their 110% and purely imitates rather than innovates they will increase their chance of failure.[/quote:307g5e63] I agree. Sometimes franchisees rely too much on the franchisor. They think the franchisor will run their business. Wrong! The franchisee is responsible for manging day to day operations of his franchise location.


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