I have been thinking some about contextual ads and why some ads show and why some ads do not show. Google shows very relevant ads in its AdSense program. But Yahoo! tends to often show less relevant ads. The thing is, people are very happy with the price per click they are getting from YPN over AdSense. So people think that this is Yahoo!'s strategy, to show higher CPC ads, no matter if they are irrelevant to the page's content. Whereas Google AdSense shows the most relevant ad to the page content, hoping for a higher number of clicks.
I thought this question would make for a good discussion. So I decided to post this question as the first question to be placed in our Contextual Ad forum. I named the thread Should CPC Be Considered in Contextual Ad Placement?
Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.
