5 Questions with David Zito of Yahoo Publisher Network
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Written By Reprise Media | August 24, 2005 | Share This
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As part of our ongoing “5 Questions” series, SearchViews recently talked with David Zito, Sr. Manager, Development for Yahoo! Publisher Network Online.
David oversees the technology and development team for the Yahoo! Publisher Network Online publisher systems. He’s an experienced entrepreneur having aided the start-up of five successful technology related ventures over the past eight years - idealab!, Goto.com (now Yahoo! Search Marketing), Tickets.com, PayMyBills.com (now Paytrust, a bill management service of Intuit), and The Enchanted Lighting Company, LLC.
1. Your service differs from Google in that it employs human editorial judgment rather than technology in the selection of ads for content pages. Can you tell us a little more about how this works and how you arrived at the decision to use human rather than computer editors?
I’m not sure where this rumor got started, but it’s actually somewhat inaccurate. We do use computer-based algorithms to extract the meaning of pages and map the meaning to a subset of relevant topics. Those topics are then used to help determine which ads to serve.
That said we are introducing a feature called ad targeting that allows the publisher to influence the ads that are delivered by telling us what ad categories would be well received by their audience.
Additionally, there several other things that we think will separate us from the competition - a high-quality network, offering more control to the publisher, access to other Yahoo content and services, and a top-notch customer service team which provides both phone and email support.
2. The YPN beta has a number of integrated features, including Y!Q, Yahoo Maps, and RSS feeds. What challenges, if any, does this type of integration pose and how are you overcoming them?
From a technical perspective, one of the keys to enabling faster and broader integration is by embracing web services (open APIs between applications). By investing and embracing these APIs for all of our network properties, integration and re-distribution has become much easier, allowing us to bake these types of features into the YPN beta.
3. Spam has been a big problem with your competitors - scraper sites and such. What is your strategy for preventing its negative effects?
Click-through protection has been a top priority for Yahoo! since we pioneered the space in 1998. We’ve continually refined our systems and have built up numerous layers of defense against unwanted clicks.
The beta participants we are initially inviting have been pre-screened for content and site quality. In addition, we have built proprietary quality systems and processes to monitor offensive and inappropriate sites. We will continue to monitor and enhance these systems and processes during the beta period to develop a full set of quality criteria to be used when we open the program to all interested publishers.
4. Google was the first out the gate with AdSense. What can Yahoo learn from AdSense (both in terms of successes and mistakes) that it can apply to the YPN product?
To be honest, we view our self-serve publisher platform as much more than just contextual ads for small publishers - it will enable publishers to leverage the full breadth of advertising and content on the Yahoo! network.
Based on feedback we’ve received from publisher themselves, some of whom do use competitive products, we’ve learned that they would like more control, better customer service, and additional content. I already mentioned these things above, but I can’t emphasize them enough.
We really have worked to build a new platform and learn from our ongoing dialogues with the community to deliver a publishing experience that can leverage the full breadth of the Yahoo! network.
5. You were recently quoted in the WSJ as saying that Yahoo will eventually provide content and ads to YPN partner sites. Can you tell us anything more?
I wish I could tell you more but our PR team would not be happy with me. What I can say is that Yahoo! is the only portal that offers such a broad array of content like - shopping, travel, music, reviews, video feeds, etc. We are excited about the opportunity to offer publishers access to this type of content, which in turn will make for a more compelling user experience for their users. I’ll be sure to let you know when we do start to offer these things.
Topics: Interviews |