In short: YieldBuild is a free ad optimization service for publishers. We help publishers make more money from ad networks like Google AdSense, Microsoft pubCenter, and ValueClick. Since 2007, we  have helped almost 1,000 publishers make their ads perform better.

How does it work? YieldBuild uses a proprietary algorithm to figure out which ad (across available ad networks, and their formatting options) that perform best to maximize your ad revenue. So YieldBuild will determine, for instance, if a specific ad spot should be filled with a white-background text ad from AdSense, or a display ad from Advertising.com, or a gray-background contextual ad from Microsoft pubCenter, in order to make the most money from that piece of real estate.

The process is relatively simple:

1. You set up an account with YieldBuild, and associate any ad network accounts that you’d like to use (we support many*)
2. You follow our step-by-step installation guide that helps you embed YieldBuild ad tags into the spots on your site where you want ads to run
3. YieldBuild will test a wide variation of ad layout permutations to train the algorithm for your site
4. Once trained, YieldBuild will serve up the best-performing ads on your site, occasionally testing new layout variants that might work better (in case your traffic patterns change or in case ad blindness sets in)

Here are some answers to common questions (more are answered here in our FAQ):

• Do you charge a fee?
  No, YieldBuild optimization is free. We used to charge a 3% impressions-based fee, but we phased that out in September 2009.
• Are there any potential conflicts with the ad networks I work with?
  No. We have optimized AdSense and other networks for two years and have never had a publisher lose their ad network account simply for using YieldBuild. (We can not prevent you from getting banned for other reasons, however, like click fraud.)
• Do you work with WordPress (Blogger, etc.)?
  Yes. We can work with any site or blogging/CMS platform. We do offer a step-by-step installation guide (our express install option) for  WordPress, Blogger, TypePad and vbForum.
• What sites do you work with?
  We accept sites of any size, and any type (with the exception of adult, gambling, and other excluded site types).
• What kind of improvement can I expect to see?
  That is entirely dependent on how well you had optimized your ads before using us, how much latitude you’ve given YieldBuild to optimize your site’s inventory, and the number of optimization options you’ve taken advantage of. An improvement of 20-50% is possible given the results we’ve seen among our top clients. (See some YieldBuild success stories.)

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?

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

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!

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.

For these reasons, YieldBuild was excited to launch its Premium Text Ad Program to offer Web publishers an ad source that consistently delivers outstanding contextual relevance and high publisher value. Across sites dedicated to topics as varied as automobiles, wine and product reviews, both large and small, publishers have seen impressive improvements to their overall online ad revenue without compromising user experience nor fully cannibalizing their revenue from their other ad networks like AdSense.

Most publishers using the Premium Text Ad Program see an immediate improvement to their revenue by simply adding an additional ad spot to their page, giving YieldBuild the opportunity to serve up an additional Premium Text Ad unit alongside AdSense. Three publishers, PrimaryGames, RateMyTeachers and HubPages, have all added the YieldBuild Premium Text Ad Program to their ad network mix, and all have seen strong revenue enhancement through the addition of a superior ad source as an adjunct to other ad networks they work with.

PrimaryGames

PrimaryGames.com, an educational gaming site popular with elementary-school children, came to YieldBuild with plenty of ad experience under their belt. Having tried a wide range of ad formats and networks, they knew what worked for their site’s traffic and what didn’t, but were open to working with YieldBuild to optimize their current ads and to try out the YieldBuild Premium Text Ad Program.

“It’s clear to us that no single ad network can fill all of our ad real estate, so we turned to YieldBuild to most effectively manage our inventory and identify those networks that perform best for each open ad spot,” says Susan Beasley, creator of PrimaryGames.com. “I’ve been pleased with the YieldBuild Premium Text Ad Program’s ability to deliver high-performance text and image ads which appeal to our younger viewer base. And, importantly, the ads are high quality, important since parents and teachers are frequent users of the site, as well.”

The Premium Text Ad Program now comprises slightly more than half of the text ad revenue PrimaryGames is generating through YieldBuild.

RateMyTeachers

RateMyTeachers.com is the premier online destination for students and parents to connect and share reviews and ratings of middle and high school teachers. Online since 2000, Ratemyteachers.com boasts over 11 million ratings of over 1 million teachers. The content-rich site is a perfect match for contextual ad networks like Google AdSense, and Aaron Altscher, Managing Director, was looking for an additional high-quality contextual ad source to complement them.

“YieldBuild’s Premium Text Ad Program has been a terrific complement to other text ad networks we’re running through YieldBuild on RateMyTeachers,” says Altscher. “The Program has allowed us to serve more highly-relevant ads alongside our content and boost our revenue significantly.”

With a fill rate higher than that of any other network they are optimizing through YieldBuild, the Premium Text Ad Program now comprises almost a fifth of the revenue generated for the site.

HubPages

HubPages is a wildly popular social content network that allows anyone to create rich-media articles on a topic they know and love, and earn ongoing royalties through ads served up on what they’ve published. The site attracts more than 16 million unique monthly visitors, primarily from search engines, and enjoys almost 70 million monthly page views.  85,000 authors have published more than 430,000 articles since the site’s launch in August 2006.

HubPages’s content richness and heavy traffic from search engines has made text-based contextual advertising the ideal monetization vehicle for the site. “In a short time the YieldBuild Premium Text Ad Program has grown to comprise almost a third of our site’s total revenue.  YieldBuild’s ability to automatically allocate the best paying ads for each ad spot has been critical to the implementation,” says Paul Deeds, HubPages’s general manager. “The Premium Text Ad Program serves up highly-relevant text and display ads that complement other ad networks’ ads across our wide range of topical content. We’re also impressed with the Program’s fill rate and revenue per click (CPC), even better than AdSense’s. The YieldBuild Premium Text Ad Program’s ability to deliver great contextual ads beyond the three ad-units of running AdSense alone has really helped us increase our revenue per page.”

Optimizing Premium Text Ads alongside AdSense has allowed HubPages to continue impressive month-over-month revenue gains despite a general softening of the online advertising market. YieldBuild has placed Premium Text Ads alongside the other ads on HubPages, increasing revenue 44% over the revenue generated by all other networks HubPages works with combined.

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Particularly as an adjunct to other networks like AdSense, with which publishers have trusted relationships, YieldBuild’s Premium Text Ad Program delivers a reliable additional revenue stream and highly relevant ads that complement page content. The Premium Text Ad Program draws from a variety of high-quality text ad sources.

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?

Affiliate Summit – New York City

August 10-11

Exhibiting: Merchant Mart Table T119

Paul Edmondson (CEO) – Fawntia Fowler (HubPages)

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Search Engine Strategies (SES) – San Jose

August 11-12

Exhibiting: Booth 516

Jason Menayan (YieldBuild) – Ryan Hupfer (HubPages)

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AdMonsters Publisher Forum US XXI – Portland

August 17-18

Sponsoring

Paul Edmondson (CEO)

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BlogWorld and New Media Expo – Las Vegas

October 15-17

Exhibiting: Booth 415

Jason Menayan (YieldBuild) – Ryan Hupfer (HubPages)

Is there cause for optimism? Although the data from the past decade isn’t granular at the quarter level, the last retraction saw its nadir in 2002, from which a new growth trend was reset. The IAB reported $1.46 billion in Internet ad revenue in Q2 2002, and $1.47 billion in Q3, a similarly flat Q/Q change, and then grew from that point on ($1.5 billion in Q4, $1.63 billion in Q1 2003, and so on).

The unabating focus on performance, ever-increasing publisher inventory, combined with improved efficiency, will probably continue to exert downward pressures on overall spend, but if you’re as “guardedly optimistic” as Obama is about the overall economy, then maybe this would be a good time to call Dave Winer out on his doomsaying.

Is this bad news for the online advertising ecosystem? No. It is a reflection of advertisers’ growing sophistication and understanding of the online marketing universe, which we all know extends beyond advertising. Online traffic isn’t necessarily always bought–online properties can be groomed to receive traffic through search or through cross-channel investments (which can be surprisingly effective). However, advertisers needing scale or granular targeting will always have to reach outside their zone of control and buy. Unless they get too aggressive, budgets dedicated to online advertising will probably continue to be  well spent as long as the gap between time spent online and online advertising spend continues to yawn.