creepychris - 4:43 pm on Apr 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

Newspapers aren't the greatest venue for AdSense

That doesn't have to be the case though: certain sections of the newspaper ought to be a great match--the travel section or the sports section for example. News sections do seem like they would have problems getting proper targeting.

Unfortunately, smartpricing works on an account basis (so we've been told) so the poor performance on news areas might cause poor performance in the travel. And once smartpricing kicks in, the newspaper is open to gaming for the MFA crowd and the legitimate advertisers who are trying to shanghai visitors with misleading titles (legitimate in the sense that they are actually selling something, not in there MO), which *may* lead in turn to more smartpricing.

I think MFAs and the legitimate advertisers who use deceptive titles and ad text can ONLY operate in a regime of low-priced CPC. The question is: Do they help foster the low-priced regime?