With the recent beta launch of Yahoo!'s contextual advertising program for small publishers, there's been a lot of buzz lately over which will end up being the better system: YPN or AdSense?

Barry Swartz has shared that while he sees some issues with relevancy, he's not complaining over the payment. Discussion going on at forums like Webmaster World and Search Engine Watch feature mixed reviews. Some publishers are happy to be taking part in the beta testing, others are unhappy with relevancy issues.

We're part of the beta testing team ourselves and while we can't share many specifics, we can say that we're interested to see how things progress. Much like with AdSense, there are several options when it comes to the size and look of the ads. You can setup custom palettes that you want to use for your ads and you plug them into place with the same style of code that AdSense users have.

The tracking tools are pretty handy and site owners still have the ability to block certain domains from displaying ads on their site. We're a little concerned with relevancy ourselves, but again, the program is new and it's going to take time to work out the kinks. Overall, both Robert and I think that the industry can only be helped by a little bit of healthy competition.