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
Oh please, that part of the Adsense TOS is so broadly written it's laughable. Prove that any new page you add Adsense to wasn't "Made for Adsense", go ahead, prove it.
At least tell us how you go about proving such a thing.
It's about time we start thinking opportunities rather than problems. And preferably opportunities that will help the majority of the system, and not just the position of us evergreen content publishing folks.
There is Google, there is publishers, and there is the advertisers. We are all in the game, and that includes "MFA's".
MFA's (since that appears to be the current label for people advertising sites with ads) make Google loads of money. And therefore they are here to stay.
MFA's even make us publishers loads of money. There are thousands upon thousands of publishers. Their number is growing every day.
For the sake of the argument, let's assume that MFA's bring us low paying clicks.
Do you really think that if all MFA's would disappear, all of us would suddenly get $5 clicks all day long? Of course not. There are simply not enough advertisers to pay for the publishers' endless appetite for high paying clicks.
So instead of complaining about MFA's, we should be happy they advertise at all cause otherwise most of us would very likely end up serving PSA's, earning zero cash.
If you don't accept opportunity as your starting point for the future of Adsense, any attempt to debate is useless. We must think of how we all could benefit from the system without getting rid of Googles cashcow. If we don't, we will regret to bite the hand that feeds us.
And concerning the "crappy" user experience caused by MFA's: Most folks in the real world have no clue to what an MFA is. They just click ads and don't care if they happen to end up on a page with some more ads. After a couple of clicks they will find what they need anayway. All it takes is a few seconds more.
Pages with links to pages with more links have been here for ages, that was how the Internet exploded over a decade ago making it the number one information source for millions. Then it was considered quality if you had links on your site. Even if they were links to pages with more links.
At least tell us how you go about proving such a thing.
How about amount of space taken up by original content vs. ads? If I see a page with 90% of its layout filled with ads, that's an MFA page. If 90% of its content is an original article (not automatically cut-and-pasted nonsense), then it's legit.
There are other tests you could come up with. Whether any of them would provide proof in the legal sense is unlikely, but to me beside the point.
[edited by: hunderdown at 5:43 pm (utc) on June 21, 2006]
If advertisers had to pay $2 a click to have their ads show on my sites vs. a few cents
Then even more of them would abandon the content network and just stick with advertising in the Google SERPs.
I don't get to bid separately on what I'll pay for your website for a CPC ad, so you're effectively asking me to pay $2/click for a bunch of crap publishers (unless I can track them all down and block them -- what fun) just to advertise with you.
Many of these issues are classic middleman problems. If I could bid separately on just your website, I might pay $2/click and you might be happy. But to do that, I'm going to want to track the ROI coming from your website, distinct from all others. And if those abilities result in both you and me making significant cash, then it eventually becomes foolish to retain Google as the middleman.
Google must try to keep advertisers and publishers at arm's length in order to avoid losing many of the more profitable advertisers to private advertising arrangements. But that information barrier Google erects leads to inefficiencies, such as paying publishers with lousy ROIs the same as publishers who give advertisers great ROIs. Google struggles with an algorithm like SmartPricing, when advertisers could easily and directly weed out bad publishers if the Google information barrier did not exist.
It's also a very big schema change with scalability challenges to switch from the current AdWords/AdSense design to one that allows per-advertiser actions on a per-publisher basis. Heck, they can't even offer per-domain actions at the moment, keeping everything grouped by account for the most part. So, it's possible that Google doesn't fear increased advertiser/publisher multiplexing, and is only held back by the technical challenges.
No I'm not. Your ad doesn't show on MY site unless Google matches it my site and meets my minimum price, whatever that might be. Should I wind up getting fewer ads on MY site because of a high price point, then so be it - that's the way the world works and I can react accordingly - whether that means lowering my price to attract more advertisers or finding an alternative program.
[edited by: Play_Bach at 5:46 pm (utc) on June 21, 2006]
You are not imagining the Advertisers Jumping Ship phenomenon.. I believe it's quite real. AdWords ROI has been diminishing for us for some time now. For us, I'm ready to dust off our tradeshow booth and get back on the show circuit.. something I stopped doing several years ago thanks to AdWords' early effectiveness.
Re Search or Content, we quickly turned off Content Network advertising after trying it for a few days long ago. We were getting zero conversions and sky-high costs.. what I now understand to be likely click fraud.
I'll add that IMHO, Google Corp's imperious stonewall attitude does little to build loyalty with its advertisers.
It's about time we start thinking opportunities rather than problems. And preferably opportunities that will help the majority of the system, and not just the position of us evergreen content publishing folks.
Well right now the MFA's are adequately helping themselves. What we're saying is, Google allows it because it's profitable for them. But in turn, it may hurt our bottomline. If we as publishers start thinking of ways to help the majority of the system, is it possible that MFA advertisers could think the same? Do MFA advertisers currently think they're helping the system?
I don't believe so.
There is Google, there is publishers, and there is the advertisers. We are all in the game, and that includes "MFA's".
I understand the concept that we should all just work together since MFA's are obviously not going anywhere. But I don't think the resolution is to simply devise a way to work better or smarter with MFA's.
Do you really think that if all MFA's would disappear, all of us would suddenly get $5 clicks all day long? Of course not. There are simply not enough advertisers to pay for the publishers' endless appetite for high paying clicks.
I haven't a clue how my legitimate advertisers are out there. If I had to make an observation based on how many legitimates I see advertising on my site, I would say the number is low since MFA's sometimes take those spots. My desire isn't to suck up the highest paying clicks on the web. I simply do not want my visitors, who deem my site 'reputable' -- to click an ad and be taken to trash. When a large brand-name, or reputable business advertises trash, we're up in arms about it. This is what the anti-mfa folks are complaining about.
We must think of how we all could benefit from the system without getting rid of Googles cashcow. If we don't, we will regret to bite the hand that feeds us.
I think this will ultimately be the downfall of Adsense. If not a total downfall, a massive decline in advertisers and publishers. Especially since so many are waiting to see what Yahoo and MSN will do with contextual advertising.
And concerning the "crappy" user experience caused by MFA's: Most folks in the real world have no clue to what an MFA is.
True. This is a term created by webmaster publishers. But I have a different opinion on how a user views that MFA site.
Pages with links to pages with more links have been here for ages, that was how the Internet exploded over a decade ago making it the number one information source for millions. Then it was considered quality if you had links on your site. Even if they were links to pages with more links.
I'm not going to spell out all the details but there is a way (IMHO) to reduce the MFAs that make it to your site.
The thing to keep in mind when writing about something is that some phrases are worth more to an adwords advertiser than other phrases. I'm not saying to 'write the page for adsense'. But definitely write the page for good ranking in the search results. And the key is for which phrases you rank well.
Adsense won't give you the top ads all the time but you'll get them occasionally depending on other factors - such as how the visitor gets to your site and where the visitor is from.
And, with the recent adwords changes it will depend on what time of day and day of the week.
But then again what do I know...
And concerning the "crappy" user experience caused by MFA's: Most folks in the real world have no clue to what an MFA is.
The average Joe may not know what the term MFA stands for, and maybe they do not even realize that they have been clicking an ad to get to that MFA page...
...but what they all have experienced is the utter uselessness of MFAs. They just do not call it that way. They might say "uh, that's strange. The ad said something about getting information on widgets, but where is it? What's wrong?" or "Why are here just ads?" or "Not another one - I hate to see those pages with just (more) ads. What - the - heck - is - this?"
At the end of the day, legit publsihers are very concerned about usability, because end consumers have a VERY good feeling for usability on the web. They ARE linking the landing page with the publisher site, which is no surprise, depending on the degree of blending on the publishers site. And they sense immediately when a site is useless for them. In this case they learn very fast to not click those strange boxes that promise something useful. They have better things to do than to waste their time trying to figure out what this is all about.
-Giving Adsense users the ability to setup a minimum bid.
-Segmenting the content network into regular content network and premium content network, premium status can be determined by traffic, smart pricing, conversions, site age..etc.
If bids continue the bid they are, quality sites will gradually move to YPN or the future MSN partners network, I believe competition in the Adsense sector with YPN and MSN will push google to introduce the above improvements sooner rather then later.
As more people join, the lower the quality of the ads (and the ability to police them). Once quality drops, large advertisers will seek to minimize their association, and thus, move elsewhere. That's been happening for some time now, but it's only over the last 12 months that it has been approaching critical mass.
All models of advertising have been phased in and out, this model of advertising is no different, it's just hard to predict when it's going to become a big enough issue to affect all that rely on it.
Also not that it's summer season, so people are advertising less at this time of year because thre are more people taking breaks and spending their money on vacations rather than products.
We have noted before that adsense costs (trafic aquisition costs) include a huge amount of expenses not related tpo paying publishers. This includes overheads, equipment upgrades, staff etc. Quite possible we are seeing the effects of this in our share of the revenues. All that recent growth was funded from somewhere.
So is this a MFA issue or just higher expenses related to lower payouts?
With googles formul for ad displays it factors in both cpc and ctr to choose which ads to display. By blocking the ads that give a high ctr (mfa?) you may actually be displaying higher paying ads but at the expense of ctr. Personnaly I have given up attempting to filter out ads (unless waaaaay off topic) and just allow google to maximize their (and mine) incomes.
I would also like to be able to choose the ads that I place on my site and set a minimum PPC...something on the order of fastclick/valueclick. Preview the ads, see exactly how much the payout is and accept or reject it. Also be able to, at the same level, block all ads from a particular advertiser.
It is not rocket science and it is being done right now on almost everyone out there but Google and "that other one"
Ann
Ann
Found more ringtones and day trading ads masking under my keywords....Oh well---
Ann
If so, I'd curious to know where you're located (I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area)
Does that mean 'yes' you can see it? I know for a fact my sites are losing a lot of traffic to those Froogle links and less traffic equals less revenue from AdSense. If you can see it, then Froogle may well be on it's way nationwide and not just locally here anymore.
Ann
I do searches for my keywords to make sure I still rank on top and sometimes the Froogle links come up and sometimes they don't. I've seen the Froogle links for the past year at least.
For me, it's fine because many times my site is also in the Froogle links along with the number 1 and 2 spots for my keywords. However, if you do not have a site that sells products, then the Froogle links are yet another link that someone may click on.
But that's because you upload your inventory to Froogle right? Froogle doesn't just spider your site and add your listings automatically, or does it?
I'm not really interested in putting my sites in Froogle, though the first time I saw those links, I had a strong feeling that the old Google was probably gone for good - just a matter of time. Google will simply direct more and more shopping searches to Froogle and there won't be anything anybody can do about it - join Froogle (like eBay already is doing) or perish in oblivion. Slick.
You said it. I'll go out on a limb and predict that that will be one of the most common phrases in the lexicon not too far down the road as Webmasters that sell practically anything scramble to figure out how they can still get seen on Google once Froogle starts to really hit.
Hopefully, the new CPA program will give me an opportunity to try out the Content side and actually see results.
So yes, alot of available ad dollars are out there and held back from Content because of quality issues.
I had a situation recently where I wanted to find some old fashioned grapefruit spoons. Couldn't find anything I really liked on eBay, so I typed it into Google. First thing that came up were a couple of Froogle sites - below the top two sponsored listings (in blue) and above the regular SERPS. I went to the first Froogle site, and all it was was a bunch of links to amazon affiliate search boxes for various kitchen stuff, three AS blocks, and the entire page was ringed around on three sides by ads for some adult "looking for sex on the side" matchmaker type sites, complete with explict pictures keyed somehow to my zipcode. Busted the listing to Google who emailed back that they removed it. Once I got over the trauma of recognizing a family member in one of the explicit pictures (! That's how I know it was keyed to my zip code, but ewwwww) it occurred to me what a good scam it was - obviously nobody was really overseeing what goes into Froogle, the Froogle listings go in above the SERPS, and Froogle is free, so you don't even need to spend the money on AdWords. Hopefully Google is paying more attention now.
That's perhaps what is of most concern to me - Google putting the Froogle links in the place where the top SERP usually is!
In doing so, Google is taking advantage of the most coveted position on the page to promote - not the best search result - but Froogle! And as you said, "below the top two sponsored listings (in blue) and above the regular SERPS." What does that mean on a 15" monitor? Ads on top, ads on the right, then the Froogle links and then maybe ONE or two search results! Think such a layout might influence the way average users click? You bet.
