YPN and AdSense Duke it Out

It’s not even out of beta, and Yahoo! has already released RSS functionality for its Yahoo! Publisher Network. Users of either Moveable Type or WordPress can set up the service to insert ads into their blog posts. Publishers can then track results either by feed or by entry.

It’s just another sign of the battle for publishers ongoing between YPN and Google’s AdSense. (Google rolled out a beta of RSS support in May.)

I’m testing out YPN on another blog I write, and actually got a phone call (a voicemail, actually) from a real, live person wanting to talk with me about my YPN account. I called back, and after quite a while on hold, I chatted with “Steve,” who proceeded to grill me about how my YPN experience had been thus far. Was I happy with the set-up process? Was I pleased with my earnings? Did I have any comments or suggestions for Yahoo!? Before we hung up, he told me he’d send an e-mail with the support center’s contact info, and invited me to get back in touch any time with comments or questions. (Oh, I should mention that Steve assured me that the long wait time on hold was an anomaly and shouldn’t have happened given their staffing levels.)

Impressive that Yahoo! has built up this infrastructure to court and manage publishers. It looks like Google, too, has set up its own call center to try to woo back defectors to YPN. Hope they’re using VoIP. Otherwise it looks like they’re both going to be racking up some serious phone bills in coming months.