Given that Yelp may already be on rocky ground with merchants for upsetting the status quo, it’s easy to see why Yelp might have a hard time selling advertisements to local merchants to promote themselves on Yelp’s site. Furthermore, there are reports from merchants that claim that Yelp sales reps have been offering to shuffle negative reviews to the bottom of a listing, but only if the merchants agree to advertise on the site. Yelp vehemently denies such claims of coersion, but regardless of whether it’s true or not, it speaks more to the fact that merchants don’t value the advertising on Yelp at all, but rather see more value in the actual content on the site.