For the longest time Google Adsense only gave you the capability of serving either contextual based text ads or image based ads. Now they have recently started delivering Youtube videos!

This is great news, because it not only is a new way of generating revenue for your site but automatically adds videos as content for your site too. If you choose this option, it will randomly play top rated videos, or top rated from a specific genre you choose. Of course the player also will display ads as it is playing.

Adsense also offers the capability of making the videos contextual, which means the ad will display videos based on what your site is generally displaying. The viewer still has the options of controlling the video, stopping it, playing, fast forward and rewind. And any ads clicked on will open in a new advertiser window.

Viewers will have the benefit of minimizing the videos if they don’t interest them. Publishers wishing to have their videos displayed to earn money opt into the Adsense program.

Adsense or YPN?

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Perhaps the two most popular advertising publishers are Google’s Adsense and Yahoo’s Publisher Network, known as YPN for short. The most asked question by webmasters is which is most profitable, and my answer would have to be “it varies”.

I believe Adsense is the more stable networks of the 2 right now and their contextual advertising is much more accurate. On the other hand, most publishers report that they generally make more per click with YPN than with Adsense. And to make it even more confusing, most report that they garner a higher click through rate with Adsense.

So which do you use? My advice is to apply for both networks and try them both. Both advertisers forbid using them on the same page so you will need to try them at separate times to see which performs best for you. You want to try various ad placements and colors as well. Find which combination works best for you and go from there.

Here you can find a forum for both Google Adsense and YPN with many experts posting there with some great tips, and many are more than willing to answer any questions you may have.