Forum Moderators: skibum
Really? They have 3 days to do it.
I bet it will be like most of the ETA's on the web. If they say Jan it will be March/April.
Anyone care to share thoughts on this?
Often there are huge issues between the folks in marketing and the those in engineering. Bad marketers often set eta's as way to try to goad engineers. sometimes c-level types make promises to external partners without checking in-house resources.
Other times engineers do not properly work with the sys admins. Under time pressures they often build inefficiently and then find out their aps don't scale on the available servers.
People who have just been exposed to google and overture products (and of course the ones I released managed) are spoiled. It just ain't that easy.
Is there some magical thread somewhere outlining why anyone would use AdSonar over AdSense? I would love to see it.
JAG
AdSense, while it has it's untested and early ups and downs, is after all by Google, which is the biggest se in the world. They pay on time and no matter what small problems we have with it, one has to admit that it works well.
When I first heard of AdSonar I was interested, thinking let's give it a try. The more I think of it though I wonder whether it really is worth it.
They will definitely get a lot of users and many will be here telling us how good/bad they are so I may opt simply to analyse these pages rather than change code to test a new product from a company I do not know half as well as Google.
For me AdSense has done an awful lot, it has helped me refocus on Advertising as a revenue source and am now in the process of adding to the sales team.
I am sure AdSonar will be a great product but anything it does G can match if not beat in an instant if it wanted, so while I was going to test it I very much doubt I will now.
Not necessarily "over', but certainly as well as.
Maybe you have several sites all on page 1 of SERPs and want to offer the visitor something different if they get to the lower ranked sites.
Adsonar may out perform Google on occassions, having the option to display choices is a good thing, manipulate those choices and use them to your maximum advantage.
Most good affiliates sign up with several competing merchants selling the same type of product....no reason why publishers shouldn't sign up with several contexual ad providers and select the most appropriate for a particular site.
I'm not saying that AdSonar will be any better and if all they do is offer contextual advertising as we know it then they surely are doomed to failure.
You have to remember also that just as Google is enforcing it's look and feel of an ad a competitor can enforce their underlying code as intellectual property so not all features would be an option to Google and vice versa. This could lead to huge differences in systems that others cannot infringe upon so then what?
The point is this is all just starting so watch and choose only when and if you are ready but also keep an eye on what's out there. I guess that's more of what I meant when I said why not try them.
JAG
I hope AdSonar launches soon because it will really heat things up if it's as good as they say it is. Just like the SE wars starting. The contexual market is about to explode!
Sites offering contextual ads such as G and AdSonar, and the hundreds of others that will pop up, will all have to compete, and that can only be a good thing for publishers.
Just in the past few weeks we have seen advertisers on AdSense on our site that we would never have dreamed of.
But like any auction style practice most newcomers will push the price up, especially if they want to be in the top two. I would therefore expect for many that EPC will increase but this all depends on how much each company feels they can get away with before lowering the %.
The contexual market is about to explode!
No doubt about that :-) And it will change. Remember that right now folks like Google are only doing one thing. They serve text ads on a cpc and a lot of folks compare just that when talking about contextually advertising so it's hard to see a competitor rising above.
Doing things this way is fine but it can leave money on the table. One thing that's been tested and released from a competitor is the equivalent to an online catalog that aggregates ads in any form such as cpl, cpm and cps. On some of the tests where the content could lead to multiple purchases such as a trip, the payout is much higher than straight cpc. This is because with just cpc the site owner may get the one cpc to an airline site but if it's changed to a cps the content site earns x times more. If the catalog also contains a hotel and it is a cps then the site owner can earn from that booking as well. Maybe there is also an ad for luggage.....and so on. This take the simple cpc earnings that would normally be less than a dollar to the total earnings being several dollars.
There are several ways to increase the value of an ad so we'll just have to watch and see what happens. But I can say it will change way beyond the current vanilla scheme it is today.
JAG
The introduction of Adsonar is a bit of a joke. There was a thread here sometime ago saying they were going to launch mid-Jan. I rubbished it then (somehow that thread seems to have disappeared, I can't even find it with Google) and still do. I don't see it launching today - the last day in Jan. Adsonar haven't learnt to reply to customers. They don't even send you an autoresponder to say thanks for filling in our form and we'll get back to you shortly. Someone needs to tell them it's polite to reply when people fill in your form, someone needs to show them how to use an autoresponder. Someone needs to explain to them how the web works.
And these guys are launching a ...what program?!
If you are then I'd like to know what changes in ADSENSE you'd like to see (apart from being able to sell multiple/package items to one visitor and getting paid more as a result)
Sure.
I'll only mention a few of the features I know already exist in at least one other contextual solution and remember I look at things from the advertisers point of view first. It has to work for them.
Allow a content site to provide helper words or phrases. Prevent the content site from showings 'travel' ads on a 'game' site by using the spider to make sure there is the possibility of 'travel' ads being there not just delivering what the site owner thinks are money words.
Allow any size ad.
Allow multiple ad blocks that have different ads and/or ad types in each ad block.
Allow ads that have cpc, cpl, cpm and cps.
Allow the content site to specify minimum amount per action that they will accept.
Allow a search box, that the content site gets credit for, to appear in ad block in case the ad is close but the consumer wants to search on a different item or nothing but a PSA could be matched.
Allow the content site to specify the amount of ads shown.
Allow ads to contain more than just text since the customer is on a content page already. Things like longer text that actually describes a product or images or video.
Treat each ad campaign and each content site differently when looking at the effectiveness of an ad. If an advertiser will pay up to $1.00 and makes $10.00 per action after the click site 'A' might send 10 customers and 1 converts so the ROI was $0 so the campaign didn't really fail. If site 'B' sends 20 customers and 1 converts then the campaign failed. The advertiser goes away and site 'A' has lower payouts because of site 'B'. If both sites were added together then the campaign as a whole failed. So, give site 'A' the $1.00 but site 'B' $0.50 and the campaign doesn't fail.
Allow the advertiser to specify campaign success parameters such as ROI.
Have the system learn what a customer is interested in as a whole instead of assuming from the content of one page and make changes to the ads. In other words, use content matching to get the ball rolling and not just be the end result.
Have the system learn what ads work where and when and make the inventory shift. This includes many things such as dayparts. A pizza ad works better in the day and evening than 5:00 AM in the morning.
The catalog deserves a mention again because content sites get paid for 1 action only now. The user leaves the site for $1.00 and books their airline ticket. Do they go back to the content site for their hotel or luggage or anything else? Nope. They go to their favorite search engine (Google hopes they are the one) and click from there. Catalogs offer much more information to the consumer which leads to a better pre qualified click when one occurs and also much more revenue opportunity to the content site.
There's more but you get the idea. The system can and should be much smarter. Especially in the advertiser control and campaign success areas.
JAG
