Optimizing for the Right Thing (Yahoo and Ads)

diegobasch.com

26 points·iamdann··4 comments

I think the point wasn't that Yahoo should show no ads. The point was that the ad was in a place where people were accidentally clicking on it and not knowing why a window kept appearing. This didn't add any value to the user, didn't add any value for the advertiser and over time wouldn't add any value to Yahoo because advertisers will eventually decide that clicks from Yahoo are worth much less because of the high bounce rate.

Yup. I agree with Hilary and Diego. Optimizing for the clickability of the ad is shortsighted. Yahoo is an advertising company.

Optimizing for revenue via delivering valuable clicks to your ad buyers seems more a right choice. That speaks of good placement and excellent targeting (better CTR) combined with an overall good experience (to attract/keep users in the first place).

One remark: there's often a general assumption that b/c Yahoo [or any large company] has been around a while, they have a very good idea what's going on. Might or might not be true - many companies often do surprisingly suboptimal things - beware of falling into the "What is, is efficient" trap.

Anyone notice the ads when you play some of Yahoo Games (like Spades)? You have to wait 4-5 seconds to view a video ad before the game pops up.

Very very annoying, yet I've been tolerating it because there's very few alternatives when I want to play a simple 15 minute game with other people.

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