Over the past couple of weeks, a few YieldBuild pubs alerted us about intrusive anti-virus ads loading on their sites. The ads would prompt users to click on “anti-virus” software and subsequently load malware onto victims’ machines. Because there wasn’t a massive outbreak of these ads across the YieldBuild publisher network, it was very difficult to track down the cause of the particular instances. When something like this occurs, it goes against the wishes of both advertisers and publishers, website developers, programers, and of course, users.  And what is most difficult: detecting the culprit.

It has now been confirmed that over the past two weeks, both DoubleClick and MSN were victims of what is known as a “drive by download,” an attack engineered by hackers resulting in the unintended download of computer software.

The preferred vehicles for these annoyances are actually banner ads (though they can also load via e-mail or pop-ups) that do not require a click to initiate downloads. Instead,  the user’s browser tries to (and thinks it is!) load an advertisement but is in fact already downloading malware onto the computer.

What can we do to arm ourselves against these villainous creatures? Unfortunately, very little. Most of these viruses are deposited in the form of JavaScript, which many legitimate websites also use. But, all hope is not lost! Here are some tips for how to quickly detect malware and rid your computer of “malvertising”:

*Triple check domain names: According to Wayne Huang, chief technology officer at Armorize Technologies (a web security firm): “A domain name that is registered too recently – which also bears a suspicious resemblance to one that an ad network already uses – is a red flag,”

*Try and equip your machine with a Malware detection program and anti-virus protection software

*Report suspicious ads to YieldBuild support! The more detail you have about the advertisement (including a firebug shot of the corresponding code), the faster we can work with our ad partners to figure out both (a) which network has been impersonated and (b) blacklist the faulty domains from serving again.

For more information regarding the technical details of the DoubleClick/MSN attack and the threats that it posed, check out Huang’s blog post.

I’m frequently asked by publishers about YieldBuild reporting data and how it affects gross revenue. There are a couple of things to keep in mind about reporting that may answer a lot of these questions!

1. Delays – there can be delays in reporting from some of our ad networks if:

-You just created an account. It can take at least 3-4 days from when a site goes live for anyone to be able to track the progress
-You are signed up with multiple ad networks. Some of our ad partners are slower than others in reporting data – this is usually a 24 hour lag.
-It was just the weekend. As you can expect, some of our ad partners wait until Monday to report weekend progress. By Tuesday these reports should be up and accurate.

2. The PERFORMANCE and NETWORKS tabs are what reflect actual numbers.

Sometimes pubs get concerned because data under the PAGES or SITES tab does not match data under the PERFORMANCE and NETWORKS tabs. Keep in mind that the latter two are what reflect the actual numbers and the former two are merely YieldBuild’s internal estimates, which can be slightly inaccurate sometimes.

Google’s a company that trusts numbers over instinct or aesthetics. As you might expect with a company that touts its algorithm as the secret to its success, optimization of results is the Big G’s bread and butter.

It should then come as no surprise that Google’s prime real estate, its search results Sponsored Results, should be open to optimization, as well. Most of us recognize these results, at least the ones at the top, as being shaded in a pale blue. But recently, we found a couple of differently-colored variants – one pinkish, one peachy – that suggests that Google means it when they suggest that publishers test, test and test again their AdSense ad unit background colors, since they can have an impact on clickthrough.

YieldBuild automatically tests background color on text ads (either AdSense or Premium Text Ad Program), but if you’re flying solo, then you’ll want to test and measure, and test and measure.

Just two years ago, Yahoo made another one of its expensive acquisitions by buying display ad network BlueLithium for $300 million. With a stated intent to marry rich analytical data with behavioral targeting, the ad network, founded just three years prior, was the fifth-largest in the US and the second-largest in the UK, with a reach of around 145 million monthly uniques.

Today—two short years later—it’s impossible to find it.

Google Blue Lithium or BlueLithium and the first page of results point to various news releases about the acquisition or stale company profile pages like on CrunchBase. There’s no link to a rebranding “BlueLithium is now Yahoo Web Advertising” or something similar that you’d expect. In fact, there’s no link to a yahoo.com URL whatsoever. (And just in case Google was gaming the SERP for its competitor, a quick look at Yahoo’s SERP shows similarly vacant results.)

Even worse: typing in bluelithium.com goes nowhere. As in a persistent time-out error. No 301 to Yahoo advertising.

This is beyond bizarre. Among publishers and advertisers, BlueLithium had developed a bit of a brand for itself; it was a name that was recognized. Branded searches (over 50,000 in August alone according to the Google keyword tool) and direct type-ins have undoubtedly continued. The ad network still exists (YieldBuild, in fact, supports it).

Doesn’t it strike anyone as strange that the network seems to have stonewalled any interest among publishers or advertisers that might be potential customers of Yahoo advertising? I mean, isn’t that Yahoo’s business?

The Fed Chief Ben Bernanke claims we’re emerging from a recession, real estate prices are stabilizing, and now even the moribund online ad sector is poised for a healthy rebound in the coming year. WPP’s GroupM is projecting 11% growth in online advertising in 2010 to hit $65 billion worldwide (across 36 countries), with online capturing 14.6% of tracked media.

United States in 2010:

• 7% growth to $24.4 billion
• 17% of overall ad spend (15.4% in 2009)
• search (including contextual) and video biggest drivers; display weak  (mirroring global trends: display will grow 5% next year compared to search’s 12%)
• strong weakness in traditional media (esp. newspapers) also a huge driver

The report gives a nod to behavioral targeting (“intentional marketing”) and the growing nexus between search advertising and socnets’ social graphs.

Mobile advertising gets notable attention: in 2010, it will account for 6% of total digital ad spend (or $3.3 billion), representing a 19% increase over 2009. In the U.S.:

• those accessing the news on their phones every day has doubled to 22 million in 2009
• those accessing socnets on their phones daily has quadrupled to 9 million this year

You read that right!

We’re excited to announce that we have cut our ad optimization fee to zero. If you’re a current publisher, you will see the current 3% fee reduced to 0%, and new publishers will not be assessed a fee. We have been very pleased with the performance gains that our publishers have been enjoying, and want YieldBuild’s ad revenue maximization solution to reach as many new publishers as possible. Spread the word!

Not a YieldBuild publisher? Sign up today—YieldBuild is free to try and use!

Current YieldBuild publisher? The fee drop from 3% to 0% is effective September 3, 2009. Thank you for continuing to use YieldBuild!

Analytics firm ComScore has released a study that claims over 20% of all display ads in the US are being served onto social networks, the lion’s share on heavyweights MySpace and Facebook. Interestingly, those spending on socnets have names that are surprisingly familiar: AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and Microsoft.

What about the infamous advertiser skittishness with social networks?  Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeff Lindsay, when asked if advertisers are sensitive about what kind of content can be juxtaposed against their ads on social network sites, said:

“They are sensitive to some extent [to suggestive or offensive content], but nowhere near to the extent you might think.”

Seems to be the case for a certain type of advertiser. The top 10 advertisers fall into buckets that make sense if your target audience is younger people (i.e. those that won’t be put off by curse words, party shots and textese): cell phone companies (AT&T, Sprint and Verizon), online degree promoters (Apollo Group, Experian) and games and quizzes (Pangea, Zynga, GameVance). And Microsoft might be trying to raise its sexiness among younger people charmed by edgier Apple and Google.

As the general population becomes as comfortable with social network content as the Millennials, we might see a broader spectrum of advertisers penetrate the medium.

I was curious how our CPM per minute on a site we own and operate called HubPages compares to TV.  I created a formula to calculate our revenue per 1000 visitors and divided that by the number of minutes spent on the site per visitor.  The calculation yields about $5.15 CPM for each visitor per minute.

I was curious how this compares to TV.  There are about 16 minutes of commercials per hour on TV, and most commercials are thirty seconds long.   That means one person sees about 32 commercials per hour.  I used an estimated CPM of $10.25 for TV.  If a person watches sixty minutes of TV, that’s an effective CPM of $328 per viewer.  If you divide that by sixty minutes, that’s $5.47 CPM per minute for a viewer.

By this analysis, HubPages has a CPM per minute 6% lower than broadcast TV. The next thing you know TV is going to be clamoring for online ad budgets!  I was a bit surprised to see the CPM per minute be so close, given the rough industry numbers are 20% of media consumption by time is online, but only 10% of the ad spend is.

HubPages is largely monetized by AdSense, which leads me to believe that search must be a much higher effective CPM per minute than TV (a relatively passive medium for transmitting advertising messaging).  Certain content sites that are effective at selling brand ads must be better monetized per minute than TV.  But there must be segments that are way underperforming.  From the data we see, social networking sites have much lower than average CPMs and much higher average visitor sessions, so they are underperforming, but social networking is only 10-15% of total time spent online.  Other categories like instant messaging must be underperforming as well.

What’s your CPM for visitors per minute?

YieldBuild will be exhibiting at, sponsoring, and attending a number of upcoming events. Please contact us if you’d like to set up an appointment to meet.

Affiliate Summit – New York City

August 10-11

Exhibiting: Merchant Mart Table T119

Paul Edmondson (CEO) – Fawntia Fowler (HubPages)

.

Search Engine Strategies (SES) – San Jose

August 11-12

Exhibiting: Booth 516

Jason Menayan (YieldBuild) – Ryan Hupfer (HubPages)

.

AdMonsters Publisher Forum US XXI – Portland

August 17-18

Sponsoring

Paul Edmondson (CEO)

.

BlogWorld and New Media Expo – Las Vegas

October 15-17

Exhibiting: Booth 415

Jason Menayan (YieldBuild) – Ryan Hupfer (HubPages)