Yahoo Shuts Down Content Match In UK

The PPC Hero blog said they received an email from Yahoo that they are shutting down Yahoo’s contextual network ads in the United Kingdom. This product is named Content Match, which allows Yahoo Publisher Network publishers to display Yahoo ads on their sites. Yahoo matches the advertiser’s ads by the contextual relevancy of the page’s […]

Chat with SearchBot

The PPC Hero blog said they received an email from Yahoo that they are shutting down Yahoo’s contextual network ads in the United Kingdom. This product is named Content Match, which allows Yahoo Publisher Network publishers to display Yahoo ads on their sites. Yahoo matches the advertiser’s ads by the contextual relevancy of the page’s content to the keywords the advertisers purchased.

In the email sent to PPC Hero, they said they will close it down officially by March 31st, the same date they are officially closing the Adobe PDF ads. Currently, the UK version of the Content Match product description page, says nothing about being discontinued but I do trust the people at PPC Hero.

Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) really never expanded beyond the United States, but UK Yahoo advertisers were always allow to purchase ads distributed through YPN. Here is the email that was sent to PPC Heros:

As a valued client we are writing to give you advance notice of the closure of our Content Match product in Europe.

The decision to close Content Match underlines our commitment to focus on our Sponsored Search and Display business and to simplify our solutions to deliver a high ROI for our advertisers.

Content Match will close on 31 March 2009, after which the product will no longer be supported.
All Advertisers should therefore opt out of the Content Match marketplace by this date.
Your account manager will be happy to assist you.

Opt-out instructions:
1. Login to your account.
2. Click on the ‘Administration’ tab.
3. Click on the ‘Edit’ button next to ‘Tactic Settings’
4. Set ‘Content Match Status’ to OFF.
5. Click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.

We aim to work with you to propose alternative products.

There are now rumors that Yahoo may shut down the whole Yahoo Publisher Network and discontinue the Content Match program completely. It is a bit surprising, being that Google AdSense and Google’s content network does drive major revenue for Google.

Postscript: This is not just happening in the UK but also in Germany.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.