Before August 2005, Google Adsense was indisputably the best way to monetize web pages. That was when Yahoo Publisher beta was released to challenge the Google giant.

Recently there have been a lot of people losing their Google Adsense accounts. If you are one of these unfortunates, the Yahoo Publisher ads mean you can get right back into the game. Others are faced with the question…. which is best?

While Google Adsense ads have been paying less over time, Yahoo Publisher ads have been paying very well. They have not been as well contextually targeted, though, and may not perform as well overall with your targeted traffic. I would suggest running a split test to see which is best for your pages.

Get your account at yahoo.publisher.com. See which one is better for your bottom line as that is the most important factor in any business decision.

The back office interfaces of the two are very similar. There is at least one ad group size (125×125 button) missing from the Yahoo listing and no banners option, but colors and tracking work the same and the script for the ads is very similar. Unlike some other optional ad networks, when first looking at it, there is a very short learning curve.

Yahoo Publisher can only get stronger and better with time. Right now they appear to have a limited ad pool to draw on, but that can change and will allow them to better match the ads to the page keywords. With such a strong challenger in the market, Google should get stronger too. Competition is good for the market.

See which one will pay you more and then stick with your particular winner. It’s possible that the result will depend on the type of webpages you have on your site.