I just noticed one of my country's biggest newspaper use adsense..

[I Will Make It]

The most common norwegian newspaper, or at least their internet version, which is also extremely large, uses adsense on their "discussion/forum" pages, isn't this a little odd?

I didn't think authority sites like the one I'm talking about used programs like adsense to generate revenue.. OK, it's normal to see some ads for the biggest phone company, or some great tourist attraction.. but a paper that reaches out to all the people in norway shows ads like "buy pearls from my small pearlshop" and "visit our site for new car tires"

Don't get me wrong, It's all ok with me, but it's just showing how BIG the google adsense program has become, when newspapers use it to earn some "extra pocket money" -
Just thought it was a little bit funny!

[Hobbs]

Not strange at all, Newspapers run tiny classifieds advertising at small payment level, and scale up to multi million contracts, so AdSense is totally at home there.

That extra pocket money could be millions per month, a newspaper is the ultimate publisher, daily fresh content, high search engine ranking, good topical coverage for contextual advertising, an army of professional writers, high potential for visitor created content, loyal visitors, local interest hence excellent targeting..

The only thing holding them back was the fear of loosing daily circulation revenue to online, but most are setting foot here since they are loosing advertising potential anyway. It only takes a change in management from old school for the evolution to take place.

[I Will Make It]

Aha.. I didn't think of it that way ;)

But I can see the benefits!

Wish I owned a newspaper.. sigh..

[rkhare]

[adwords.google.com ]

check this and you'll find many more leading media sites displaying adsense. whats wrong in this?

[crick]

I don't think newspaper sites do very well on adsense actually. People go to get their news not particluarly looking to buy things or spend money.

[digitalghost]

Um yeah Crick. And newspapers get their revenue from where? Ah yeah, advertisers. ; ) Take that one step further, to glossies, and the stand price doesn't cover the production price. It's all about the ad revenue.

[Hobbs]

You are probably thinking of the political news, expand to sports, automobiles, events, entertainment and glamour, cosmetics sections.. and there you have it, excellent opportunities for advertisers.

[europeforvisitors]

"Big media" sites tend to sandwich in every kind of advertising they can sell. (I've seen display ads for dating services on THE WASHINGTON POST's Web site, for example.) Certainly there's nothing unusual about major newspaper sites using AdSense, though it probably doesn't perform very well on their most highly-read pages. But then again, what does? As someone else pointed out, users who are reading about politics, wars, and crime probably aren't researching ways to spend their money at that moment in time.

[moTi]

i think they just discovered, that adsense frequently brings the best payout. i see big sites experimenting with their top spot ad blocks, alternating between various affiliate banners and adsense. guess what? most of them seem to converge towards adsense more and more..
what we have been experimenting with from day one out of sheer survival instinct seems to now have arrived at the operators of the big media sites.

whats wrong in this?

they steal my money ;)

[TheFlipguy]

All major newspaper in India use Adsense on their website and this includes the Newspaper with the largest readership in the world (yes you heard that right!), the Times of India.

And not just newspaper, all major websites use it including ISPs, Popular Portals and TV networks. In fact adsense is used so much by these that I will find it odd if I saw a major Indian website *without* adsense on it.

Flip

/msn.co.in of course is an exception ;) (or is it?)

[Gian04]

Internet versions of almost all media companies (broadsheets and TV stations) in the Philippines uses Adsense too.

[OptiRex]

All major newspaper in India use Adsense on their website

Damn...you got there before me...I've been out for a beer, surprise, surprise.

What actually surprises me about the Indian newspaper websites is how badly constructed most of them are and that they have too many AdSense links thereby diluting their possible earnings.

And people do click their ads since I do when I see an ad of interest which just happens to be quite often...and normally I don't click on AdSense ads!

Strange that?

[Garry4Ads]

Hi OptiRex,

Some Indian news paper sites are decent and attractive. I think only IT guys read the Indian news Online in India/Abroad. They do not know much about AdSense and they do spend good money for purchase online too. So, Indian news papers are surely making good money with AdSense! :)

[Alioc]

it's just showing how BIG the google adsense program has become

Google + AdSense is something that revolutionize the way earth spins.

[celgins]

I'm too lazy to do the research, but I think most of the American news giants use some type of contextual advertising (either Google of Yahoo)

CNN uses lots of Yahoo(Overture) ads and I'm sure they're very profitable.

[digitalghost]

Kind of comes down to distribution channels eh? Authority sites.

[crick]

India is probably the only country where broadsheets are much more popular than tabloids.

[The_Hat]

I work at a newspaper owned by a quite large communications company, we were heavily advised not to use adsence due to the fact that it would send local advertisers away to google. We have since went with a product called adsonar from Quigo that enables our advertisers to go to our websites, sign up to display text based ads on our website, right there, and be up and showing ads within hours if not minutes.

[malachite]

One of the UK's online "broadsheet" papers has Adsense. I've seen quite a few online papers from all over the globe using it.