Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I am beginning to be convinced that all the good advertisers are jumping ship and leaving Google in droves rather than putting up with the waste of their money.
I don't beleive they are simply opting out of the content network as I have also seen MFA's in the serp ads beating out good companies for placement.
I actually killed off a ringtone ad! Has nothing to do with my sector....grrrr..
End of rant
An
There are many small businesses in many niches that are on tight budgets. Many of them are the very advertisers I like to see advertising on my site.
I would be a large amount of work for me - but I would be delighted to do it.
Could be something one could turn on and off.
If an advertiser is too often rejected, then they should be kicked out of the publisher's network.
At the moment, I get 20 hits on my ads for $2 on average, or 150 on $15. If I were to only get 7.5 for $15 I would soon be out of AdWords.
Whats more AdWords comeptitors would suck up all the lower bids.
Not economicaly viable for AdWords, AdSense, or small business, I'm afraid.
I'm talking about being able to set the price for MY SITES, period. You want to see your ad on my site? $2 a click. That's a completely different scenario than the chaos that is currently in place.
[edited by: Play_Bach at 2:45 pm (utc) on June 21, 2006]
Please note that this is my opinion, and I know that there were counter arguments (most importantly, that MFAs will be able to set the minimum price themselves which again may affect the whole ecosystem).
The solution is not our being able to filter out an endless number of jerks. It's up to Google.
I want to pick and choose my advertisers.
========================================
I can tell you from personal experience that is exactly what I have done. I will not pay to support click fraud.
For example, if your site maintains at least 5000 page impressions a day, you can set a minimum price of $0.50. If your site maintains at least 10,000 page impressions a day, you are allowed to set a minimum price of $1.00. And so on...
This is somewhat similar (not exactly) to affiliate program policies. If you use affiliate ads, most of them won't allow you to display their ads if your site doesn't meet certain criteria (usually it has to have a certain number of pageviews/month)
Either way, if an MFA can't pay my minimum, they won't be advertising on my site. I'm allowed to pick which affiliate advertisers I want advertising on my site. I should be able to pick which Google advertisers as well.
Either that, or be able to weed out the MFA's by setting a minimum price.
You choose to be in it, so accept it for what it is. Although it is good to pass comments/suggestions, at the end of the day we agree to accept how it is, rather than how we want it to be.
Maybe, but so what?
Few people can afford to live in Beverly Hills because the real estate prices price out all but the most affluent. As it is now in AdSense land, anybody can live anywhere - and cheap.
That is the reason where things go into vanish .... :P
Try looking at your sites and figuring it out.
Some sites just are never going to get $5.00 clicks. If you seem to be stuck in the 5 and 10 cent click line, figure out how to make a living with them.
It's certainly possible, and a lot more fun that whining about mfas all day.
You choose to be in it, so accept it for what it is. Although it is good to pass comments/suggestions, at the end of the day we agree to accept how it is, rather than how we want it to be.
Well, as an advertiser, I don't have to accept it, so guess what? You won't see my ads on the content network, and you won't see my ads on your sites, and the truth is that there are a lot of advertisers who have opted out of the whole thing.
So, yeah, you may accept that it's how the world IS, but MFA's are a major problem, for both advertisers and publishers.
If you haven't been hit much yet, you will be unless google does something.
Contrary to what the anti-mfa crowd seems to think, it's not the mfas fault that your sites don't attract higher paying ads.
We have a large amount of data to look at over time. It's pretty clear you are wrong about our sites.
We had a very good CPM/CPC. It's dropped a fair amount over the months while at the same time MFA's have tripled or quaded.
We blocked the major MFA sites. Guess what? Our CPM/CPC has absolutely soared. It's consistent, and the improvement is stable.
I understand some people can't understand, also that the issue isn't ONLY money right now, but the health of the entire industry over time. Yeah, I want the money, but the MFA trend is destroying the CPC text ad industry, just as the banner industry was destroyed by all the crap ads.
Maybe you don't care about that, but many of us who have been around for a long time DO care.
That is exactly my point. You chose not to partake, because you don't accept the current conditions.
I choose to partake because I think that AS is an excellent media platform for my sites.
There are also different levels of AS advertisers. Those who do it for a bit of pocket money, those who do it to make a living, and those who do it to make a killing!
They do - but that doesn't mean that cheap junk ads don't get shown in the same block as well and therein lies the problem. In the real world, you don't see a million dollar house next to a $50,000 house next to a million dollar house next to a slum - you see a row of million dollar houses, a row of $50,000 houses and slums. Like with like.
[edited by: Play_Bach at 3:54 pm (utc) on June 21, 2006]
You choose to be in it, so accept it for what it is. Although it is good to pass comments/suggestions, at the end of the day we agree to accept how it is, rather than how we want it to be.
IMO, that's like saying an employer is allowed to treat you any way they wish, and if you don't like it -- find another job.
In those types of relationships, it's about giving and taking, and anti-mfa folks simply want Google to give a little more (by halting the growth of MFA's)
There is no way I would ever believe that Google anticipated MFA's, or the constant MFA problem... when it first came up with the idea of Adsense. I'm sure they did studies and beta tests, but did they anticipate all of this?
Meaning, we were intially accepting Adsense for what it was. Now, it has changed into something different and Google (and some who don't agree with anti-mfa folks) expect us to stop complaining and just continue to accept it.
Check this out: If the NY Times started showing graphic pornography on its front page, would people simply stop reading the Times altogether; only ignore the front page; or begin calling the NY Times to complain about it?
Google is not your employer. Neither is it Master of the Universe!
There are numerous advertising campaign companies, and like in any good business decision, you choose the one that best fits your criteria.
Google cannot possibly meet the demands of every single advertiser. They do a damned good job in providing a solution to meet most peoples needs.
I'm afraid that I am on the 'stop whining' side of things, and accept or decline. Make your point [people in gerneral] by all means, but don't keep complaining if things don't go your way. After all, we aren't a union fighting the employer!
I'm afraid that I am on the 'stop whining' side of things, and accept or decline. Make your point [people in gerneral] by all means, but don't keep complaining if things don't go your way. After all, we aren't a union fighting the employer!
Good would be an attitude inbetween the extremes.
[edited by: mattg3 at 4:20 pm (utc) on June 21, 2006]
Google is not your employer. Neither is it Master of the Universe!
LOL I never said Google was my employer. But they are the medium for providing advertising, which means we have to work with their system. Is it not fair that their system should also work with us?
Google cannot possibly meet the demands of every single advertiser. They do a damned good job in providing a solution to meet most peoples needs.
Not expecting Google to make every publisher (or advertiser) happy. But I think they could do a better job of filtering MFA sites and raising the bar for who is allowed to create ads on the Adwords side.
I'm afraid that I am on the 'stop whining' side of things, and accept or decline. Make your point [people in gerneral] by all means, but don't keep complaining if things don't go your way. After all, we aren't a union fighting the employer!
Guess I should have never used the "job-employer" analogy. LOL I'm just saying that my complaint has nothing to do with things going my way. I just don't want my customer base exposed to MFA's and junky advertisers. If I could control it, I would - but Google's network doesn't allow us to control it.
I don't think it's whining to expect that google will ENFORCE its own policies.
I play by the rules. I expect not to have to compete against people who clearly break those rules.
I suppose it depends on your content.
My presumption is that content remains the most important factor in success on the web and there will always be ways to diversify for those with a modicum of creativity and initiative.
Then there is always the L.C.D. approach for those who prefer volume to quality, and that is a direction I prefer not to venture into.
Another vote for that proposal Mzanzig.
Also a minimum click value doesn't have to be set at 50cents - 1 dollar or above. As little as 15 cents would wipe out most of the 3-5 cent MFA bottom feeders.
Far from it. Unfortunately, it took a lawsuit against Yahoo! to get it to enforce it's TOS not too long ago by a woman wanting nude drawings of her removed from her ex-boyfriends Yahoo! account. If my memory serves me, cost Yahoo! something like $4 million too.
I see the opposite trend. I see many very good advertisers switching from traditional modes to AS due the time it takes them to manage payments to multiple advertising sources and their ability to monitor traffic.
That's probably true. Figure it this way, though. There's an outflow of advertisers on the content network. We don't know if the inflow, as you describe, is going to advertise on the content network, OR, if they will continue to do so, as its reputation drops, or they simply realize it's not very smart to advertise on junk sites.
They'll figure it out if they are paying attention, and they will probably continue to advertise on google itself, but NOT on content.
We did a little experiment to see what would happen if we site-targeted some of the MFA (i.e. sites with no content), sites for our adwords ads.
We took a look at what people who came from those MFA sites did on OUR sites. Guess what? The traffic was worthless, because the huge majority of people coming in from those sites stayed on our sites for ZERO or ONE SECOND, and didn't look at any other pages (obviously they didn't look at ANY pages). Not infrequently, they didn't even stay long enough to register a hit.
So, we killed all our content network ads.
Nicely put!... and I apologise if I went OTT with you, but it wasn't intended :-)
Iguess I don't suffer much from MFA's, and it must depend on content type as to who gets hit hardest :-)
My analysis of traffic on my sites have found more and more reputable advertisers on my pages. The best pages of content - the best articles - often produce the best advertisers.
I know that my pages are badly designed or cover an obscure topic if the ads are not related and default to a reflection of site content. But then, like all content, some appeals to more than others and I don't expect to get paid for obscure stuff - there is no sense of entitlement here! The key is that specific content seems to get more and more specific results for me from quality advertisers.
When you have a site for which there are many competing keywords, any search advertising would seem to me to get lost in the endless list in the search results.
... and I apologise if I went OTT with you, but it wasn't intended :-)
Not a problem. No offense taken at all. Just a simple debate about a never-ending topic!
Believe it or not, I understand the "stop whining" mentality as I follow that say mindset for every other aspect of my life. Besides that, I don't like complaining about Adsense because I like the program; and I really can't say that I suffer greatly because of MFA's.
But the few MFA's that creep in may cost me a few customers -- and that, to me, is more valuable than anything.
