Ads make your site look legitimate

from a Harvard report on phishing

[dhiggerdhigger]

An interesting report (pdf) [people.deas.harvard.edu] has been published by authors Dhamija, Tygar and Hearst entitled "Why Phishing Works". Apart from being interesting reading in itself, the authors note that if websites contained professional-looking ads, they were more likely to assume the site was legitimate (this also applied to other page elements).

The relevance of this to Adsense users?

It is sometimes a concern that putting ads on a (legitimate!) site will reduce the perceived quality of a site--that somehow the site has been hijacked by the webmaster who wants to make a quick buck. (Whereas we're innocently just monetizing our websites, of course!) But this research seems to indicate that with careful page design and intelligent use of ads, the perceived authenticity or authority of our page content may actually increase.

Interesting, huh?

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

This looks interesting. I just printed it out to read over lunch.

Regarding the credibility of sites, there has long been an opinion held by many of us here that the "ads by Goooooooogle" text on Adsense makes a site look cheap and nasty (perhaps even like phishing!). As far as I know there has never been a valid explanation for them doing this.

The folks at Google need to think out of the box at times and realise that not everyone knows what Adsense is. To those who are not familiar with website advertising techniques, i.e. the vast majority of the general public, this does cheapen and damage credibility on a site. It would be much better if they used more formal text or allow people to select their own.

[briggidere]

i agree with you completely bee.

i think when it was talking about advertising, it was not referring to adsense, but to banner and scraper ads. if google changed the way you could display the ads you may see an increase.

briggidere

[hyperkik]

Google is no doubt aware that professionally formatted ads can make certain sites look more authoritative, which is why it gives its highest traffic customers much more ability to customize the appearance of ads and the keywords that trigger them. It can be difficult to achieve a professional presentation with Google's standard ad units, and often the site which strives to maintain a professional appearance must bend to accommodate the ads.

[ineedmoney]

where does the "ads by google" text link to anyhow? I've never had the "marbles" to check it out

[jomaxx]

I don't think it's relevant at all. This is an paper about how people protect themselves (or don't) against phishing attempts.

The potential victims already know exactly what the real site looks like, so if there are ads then the phishers have to include the same ads on the page; if there are no ads then they won't put ads on the page.

[celgins]

It is sometimes a concern that putting ads on a (legitimate!) site will reduce the perceived quality of a site--that somehow the site has been hijacked by the webmaster who wants to make a quick buck.

This is sometimes the case, but people are highly influenced by imagery and a professional looking website will often trigger the mind in a positive way.

Yes, there have been many articles written about simple (sometimes ugly) websites that make a million US dollars, but I don't think that's the norm. MySpace isn't ugly. Neither is Yahoo. They are legitimate-looking, which is part of their imagery advertising.

On my site, I've found that a page listing only an article on it, fetches less response than a page with an article and clean, professional looking ads. I have affiliate ads along with Google ads, so when users see Cingular Wireless or Sony Vaio ads, they associate that with quality. Whereas an ugly, flashing ad from an unknown company that says: "CLICK ME FOR A FREE SCOOTER" -- is likely to be ignored.

As far as the "Ads by Goooooooogle" text link goes, it's all about branding and covering their basics. I think Google uses it to help verify the authenticity of clicks -- which may help the website publisher with ROI.

There are many in the Adsense business just to gather low-quality clicks. They don't care what the user thinks or sees when they click -- as long as they click. (This would be someone clicking on an Adsense link because they didn't know it was an outside link; or, they believe the link to be native to your site (blending) and click it because they expect to be led to a page on your site)

By placing the text "Ads by Gooooooogle" near the links, it tells the user: "This is an ad. If you click it willingly, you are aware that you will be taken to another page where you may find items you are interested in."

The latter is better for ROI.

[Brett_Tabke]

key phrase in the study "professional-looking ads". You flip that around, or have too many ads and the opposite works.