At 8:44 PM tonight I received this email from CJ Wire, CJ.com’s e-mail service, informing me of a recent Yahoo update (which actually occurred awhile back as I will show you)…
Yahoo! Search Marketing Becomes More Publisher Friendly
After more than six months in the making and much customer feedback and testing, we are pleased to announce that Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) has recently updated its editorial policies and will now allow U.S. publishers to direct link to their advertisers. In the past, YSM’s editorial policy prevented publishers from linking directly to their advertiser partners and required that traffic be sent first to the publisher’s Web site. The new policy eliminates this restriction and opens a much broader search marketing opportunity for publishers.
This YSM policy change is the result of a strong relationship between Commission Junction and YSM. We have spent more than six months working with YSM to enact the new editorial policy and are very pleased that this effort has resulted in changes that are sure to create opportunities for our publishers and advertisers.
We find this policy change exciting on several levels. First, this is a significant shift for YSM and could be a great opportunity for your search marketing campaigns. Second, you heard it here first – YSM has asked us to communicate this change to the affiliate community. Third, the work we’ve done with YSM on this policy change is just another example of our commitment to listening to and speaking up for our publishers.
So, if you’re running search marketing campaigns but have left YSM out of your marketing mix, now is a great time to expand your efforts.
Now Here is an email I actually received on February 7th from a smaller CPA network who informed me of this change…
Take note of the interesting terms they use….search arbitrage?….just sounds blackhat to me.
Anyways…
Hi Trevor – I wanted to let you know that Yahoo claims they have adjusted their affiliate marketing restrictions so that affiliates NO longer need to create an interstitial page to do search advertising on Yahoo. They can buy key terms and promote them directly to 3rd party websites.
Search arbitrage is on! This change was made Feb 1st without any public announcement.
Now thanks to gmail archiving all of my mail, I went back and found the actual date of the email I received from Yahoo notifying me of the upcoming changes they were going to be making to their terms of service…
Here is the email which was from December 4th, 2007:
============================================================
Yahoo! Search Marketing
==============================
Dear Advertiser,
Our advertiser Terms and Conditions and Program Terms have been
modified to reflect recent enhancements to our products and
services. Please review the new version via the link below, as
your continued use of Yahoo! Search Marketing products after
December 19, 2007 constitutes acceptance of the modified Terms and
Conditions and Program Terms.
http://ysm.yahoo-email.com/a
Also, please note that certain Program Terms within the new Terms
and Conditions will not apply to you if you have not enrolled in
those Programs.
If you have any questions about this notice, please use the Support
Request Form, which may be found at the upper-right corner of each
page once you are logged in to your account at:
https://login12.marketingsoluti
Sincerely,
Your Partners at Yahoo! Search Marketing
Isn’t it amazing how long it takes for information to get to certain end users and how THEY decide to relay that message across to everyone? Not only that, but wow it really took CJ a long time to get to me as their affiliate to inform me of this. Thanks, months after, when everyone has already planned and executed picking up all of this possible prime ad space.
Maybe this shows something…maybe this means cj.com is behind the pack. Yeah, I know, I am going to hear it about this one, but come on CJ does not care about their affiliates unless you are making a SUBSTANCIAL amount. The payouts are also quite low so it is extremely hard for anyone who would be a beginner to come into the market and produce much of a profit promoting cj products through ppc.
I don’t know….but I do know one thing. I didn’t make a substancial increase in my earnings until I moved my focus from commission junction over to some of the CPA networks.
I kind of went off on a bit of a seperate topic there, however, I do want to get one thing out to all of you. Apparantly this information about Yahoo’s TOS doesn’t concern people, or they aren’t aware of it. You should definately be taking advantage of this!
You can now direct link at Yahoo with no problems whatsoever or having to worry about your keywords or ads getting declined!
There I said it, so now if you don’t take advantage of this information…then you aren’t built to be in this game. 
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