Complete rundown of the Yahoo Publisher Network Terms & Conditions changes

March 20, 2006

Well, this is the first time that Yahoo! Publisher Network has updated their terms and conditions since the YPN launch, and as I have done with Google AdSense, I will be doing detailed breakdowns of all the YPN changes as well. I will note that I did receive permission from YPN to do the changes, as those who know the T&Cs well will know that this is covered under the confidential part of the agreement.

First things first, some publishers received a 404 error when viewing the changed terms & conditions. You can find the page here.

Now, on to the changes
4. Implementation
This clause has been added:

You agree that you will not distribute from or promote on Your Sites or Your RSS Feeds any software application that is (or may reasonably be construed as) spyware, adware or trackware.

No real surprise here. I was actally surprised that this was something that wasn’t included in the terms and conditions originally. I had heard of a few isolated cases of ads being shown in some various software based programs, so this was definitely needed to have an official reason to not allow it.

9. Your Representations, Warranties and Ongoing Obligations.

A new clause has been added to this section “As of the date that you enter into this Agreement and for as long as you participate in the Beta Program, you represent warrant and covenant that: ”

if you are a sole proprietor, you are not an employee of Yahoo! Search Marketing; if you are an entity, you are not owned by an employee(s) of Yahoo! Search Marketing.

This is an interesting addition, and likely to prevent any suspicion about employees using inside knowledge learned from Yahoo Search Marketing / Yahoo Publisher Network to game the system to earn as much money as possible from YPN, or even though YSM/YPN click arbitrage. I do notice a couple of employee blogs using YPN still, however I expect there will be some exceptions to the rule
That’s all folks Just those two small changes were made to the agreement this time. And neither of these changes will affect most publishers, unless you happen to be running ads within software or happen to work for YSM/YPN.

Posted in Yahoo! Publisher Network