Why would you set up an Internet advertising network, then require it to be somehow limited to just one country? Especially if you’re a large Internet firm that supposedly understands how all this “Net” thing works?
I joined the Yahoo Publisher Network, a beta program through which Yahoo provides text ads in much the same way that Google does. I started running the Yahoo text ads on many of my web sites.
A couple of days ago Yahoo sent me a notice stating they’d revised their Publisher Policy. Item ’11.l’ stated that I will not “display all or part of the Ad Unit to any user located outside the US”. In other words, I can’t allow users outside of the United States to view my pages if there is a Yahoo ad on the page!
This seemed insanely limiting, to say the least, and I wrote Yahoo to clarify this. Here is their reply: […] “In regards to your inquiry, as per section 11.l of the Terms and Conditions, you are in violation if your ads receive traffic from sources outside the United States.”
Um … why? And why would anyone join an ad network of that sort?
Bizarre.