Forum Moderators: martinibuster
So starting Monday morning I am going to opt in to have my ads shown on content partner sites (Adsense).
Shall be doing this with a totally open mind, and will report back 7 days later with results.
My tech taem have been busy writing technology to be able to dig deep into the results of all clicks and conversions.
Worth a try in my opinion.
Should anyone want to sponsor me for this excercise: cash, credit cards and T-Shirts are accepted.
Shak
[edited by: Shak at 7:24 am (utc) on Nov. 14, 2003]
How will those numbers be affected if Google continues to make "content ad" distribution deals with big news and entertainment sites? For maximum effectiveness, contextual ads need to be targeted to both the content of the page and the audience. That's why, in the offline world, niche advertisers buy ads in special-interest publications.
Let's say you're a small camera retailer and you're buying Google content ads. Do you want those ads to run on a site like Steve's Digicams or Popular Photography, or do you want them to run on a newspaper page that happens to discuss digital cameras?
Or, if you're selling luxury cruises, do you want your content ads to appear on cruising sites (or maybe on a site for rich people like Robb Report) or on a cruise-related page at Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel on MSNBC.com?
As the number of impressions served by big general-interest sites continues to grow, both ROI and quality of leads are likely to drop. In other words, the biggest challenge to AdSense may not be autogenerated, SEO-driven ersatz "content sites," even though such sites may make mainstream advertisers leery of PPC advertising. No; the biggest problem is likely to be a shift from "niche ads for niche audiences" to "niche ads for general-interest audiences."
Such a shift will be more of a problem in consumer categories than in B2B categories, but it could make Google's content ads less attractive to both ROI-sensitive advertisers and the traditional mainstream advertisers or direct marketers who are looking for quality leads.
Is there a solution? The most obvious one is to give more control to advertisers--whether they're affiliate sites that are trying to sell widgets to widget seekers or traditional marketers that want to target a certain demographic or special-interest group.
ROFL
As the number of impressions served by big general-interest sites continues to grow, both ROI and quality of leads are likely to drop. In other words, the biggest challenge to AdSense may not be autogenerated, SEO-driven ersatz "content sites," even though such sites may make mainstream advertisers leery of PPC advertising. No; the biggest problem is likely to be a shift from "niche ads for niche audiences" to "niche ads for general-interest audiences."
Durant, allthough i agree that wish wash traffic is useless and a broader audience dilutes the targeting, i believe that AdSense ads *are* targeted even though they are displayed on general interest sites. Since AdSense is context based, the ads are - in an ideal world - always relevant to the page theme. In other words: you can profit from the niche audience that reads a niche article at a general interest site and may be interested in your niche ad.
It's sad but i also believe that's the reason why i think that content spam isn't a really big issue - neither for google nor for the advertizers. I'm impatient and can't wait to see Shak's test results [webmasterworld.com]. If the topic isn't super fraud friendly, i doubt we'll see big changes in roi / ctr of his ads if they are displayed on content pages (thus more general interest pages).
Since AdSense is context based, the ads are - in an ideal world - always relevant to the page theme. In other words: you can profit from the niche audience that reads a niche article at a general interest site and may be interested in your niche ad.
As in so many things, it depends. Media buyers don't just buy eyeballs; they buy specific audiences (unless, of course, they're selling products or services that everyone can use).
Let's say I'm a cruise line or a travel agency that's selling $1,000-a-day luxury cruises. In the print world, I wouldn't be advertising in the NEW YORK POST or ARTHUR FROMMER'S BUDGET TRAVEL. I'd be advertising in upscale publications like CONDE NAST TRAVELER, TRAVEL & LEISURE, and THE ROBB REPORT. Similarly, if I were selling upscale expedition cruises, my target audience would be people who read NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC or SMITHSONIAN.
In PPC, there's such a thing as "waste circulation" just as there is in the CPM advertising marketplace. Only instead of being wasted impressions, it consists of worthless or low-quality clickthroughs. For example, if John Q. Public sees an ad for Antartica expedition cruises on a "spring cruise roundup" page in an Antarctica science article at NewYorkPost.com, he may click on it because it sounds interesting--even though it's unlikely that he can afford $10,000 for a cruise that involves looking at penguins. If I'm the person who sells expedition cruises, do I even want people like John Q. Public seeing my PPC ad? Probably not.
Now, good copywriting can discourage casual clicks to some extent. But it's no panacea. There will always be people who want to see how the rich and famous travel, or who think it would be fun to read about a penguin-watching cruise in Antarctica. That's why advertisers need control over the media in which their PPC ads will run.
[keyword] search terms have always done the trick for me, restricting the sites that display my ads through adsense.
i'll be curious to find out how your results are :)
good luck!
Mine are not on "classic" content or information sites. In fact what I think are the good producers are for a good part on some ecom pages that sell stuff and those sites have zero content at all except stuff for sale.
On one site, earnings were good overall which I attributed to that particular site and it was funny to watch competitors ads' who I was surrounded by in the SERPs appear, clicks go way up and then those ads vanishing, replaced by others. Silly them. ;)
That ranking dropped down quite a bit except for one search term so at this point I figure that the clicks were reaching buyers not lookers so it's really no loss to advertisers, who really did remain very steady, they're not paying for clicks from the site if it's not that visible any more.
What's interesting is seeing some other pages that have had the same advertisers all along; now another of the majors competing in that space who I've seen for several years has replaced one. Along with the others, they're all some who I've noticed have relied heavily on all PPC's for several and have not had rankings in the SERPs. I'm the only site with decent rankings in that space running AdSense, so if it's people who always rely on PPC, if they've stuck with it my best guess is that they're getting traffic from motivated buyers or they could easily have dropped out of displaying with AdSense publishers.
In spite of losing rankings for some of the other pages, the earnings are staying up fairly nicely, and though I have no way of knowing, nor would I bother to try to find out, by figuring the average amount per click that I'm seeing, I believe that the bids have gone up for certain keywords. If the same ads are staying, it's probably safe to assume they're satisfied with the ROI or they'd have opted out.
I believe it's partially how much of a margin there is to be made on individual product lines, but when ecom sites have good rankings if there's not a pretty generous profit margin on those goods, there's little loss with sending the traffic off with the AdSense instead of them buying on the site. It's possibly more profitable, since the AdSense earnings are by the click to sites the buying visitors are interested in visiting, and if they're not interested in my stuff it's no loss - it's a gain for everyone.
So all around, I'm 100% in favor of running AdSense on ecom sites unless it's high volume purchasing with a high profit margin. I believe it not only provides relevant content and quality alternatives for site visitors, but can also be an economically feasible choice.
Incidentally, someone we all "know and love" made a remark in the Supporters forum about analyzing the current Google update, and I seldom deign or dare to disagree with that person, but I don't believe it takes a whole lot of research to figure out some of the algo change we're seeing right now. I can actually see it enough to suspect what it is from just looking at my AdSense pages and the few others I've checked so far today.
I'll be putting up some more items and pages on a couple of ecom sites, and I'll for sure put AdSense code on them. That gives the possibility of multiple revenue streams from the same pages - it's win-win, and for the advertisers it's also win-win because if they don't buy from me they'll go back and look more, and if their ads are on my pages that happen to have rankings, they'll be getting traffic and/or sales they might not have had anyway.
I've never done any AdWords but will be for the first time soon, and what I've learned in a short time observing AdSense, I believe it'll be a help in figuring out which options to go for - at least for starters and as a beginning point of learning.
Our research so far has shown that roi on content sites is better than for search sites, .. for certain types of products/services... and more interestingly these are those which didnt work well with PPC in the past, or just have not been tried by certain classes of advertisers.
or it could be that it hasn't been seven days yet.
:) correct...
next monday is when test is up.
Shak
Dave.
:) correct...
Good news - smilying
Shak
Shak, do type fast.
tonight is the end of ramadan, and whilst the rest of family are celebrating, I am waiting for my tech team to give me some figures.
hang tight will ya...
Shak
I am waiting for my tech team to give me some figures
i thought most of us here are one-man jack-of-oll teams
eid mubarak Shak
i thought most of us here are one-man jack-of-oll teams
