Forum Moderators: martinibuster
My theory here is that most advertisers are going to try and replicate surfers behaviour to see what they are likely to find on search results. I think it's likely that advertisers will think of a handful of keywords or phrases that their ads will be targetted at, whack them into Google and see what the results are. Then they will look at the top page of results and select sites on their search results that a) have adsense on, b) are participating, and c) they like the look of.
Therefore, I'm thinking that if you are on the top page of your keyword search, you are more likely to have advertisers wanting to use the link. I think if you don't do well in the serps the effects of this on your site are going to be limited. What do others think?
From my point of view as a publisher, I think that it could work well for me. BUT.... and it's a VERY BIG BUT, I do need to know where my adsense revenue comes from. I don't mean that I want to know what advertisers are spending what, but just have earnings through clicks from content and cpm reported separately. Otherwise you get a number of clicks and an amount that is a mixture of earnings from clicks / cpm. Therefore you can't work out if the feature works for you or not.
In my view this issue needs resolving IMMEDIATELY - before they implement the feature in fact. Without some reporting of how it's working, I have a feeling most publishers will opt out. For a feature that's clearly meant to bring more advertisers into content, and freeze out the scammers that's an ABSOLUTE DISASTER.
There are times that we can put up with Google's misplaced paranoia about telling publishers anything - not even the time of day. However, I think here we have a feature that has the potential to be very positive, and will only work if Google share information on how it works for us. It will be dead in the water otherwise.
To this note I'd like to see some sort of tracker for the amount of clicks on the advertise on this site link and the amount of sales through it (and whether the person who's signed up to adwords thanks to a site has then gone through and advertised on it).
I think site owners should at least try it before slamming it.
How can you try something which doesn't have any reported results?
You could run it for a few weeks and whether your income goes up, or down, or stays the same, there would be no way to tell if had anything to do with this feature or not.
I'm happy to test things on my site where I can measure the effect. Google have chosen not to give us any way to measure this, so they have made it impossible for us to test it.
How can you try something which doesn't have any reported results?
The same way folks tried Google Adsense when it first came out with no reported results and no hint of how much you can earn ;)
Therefore, I'm thinking that if you are on the top page of your keyword search, you are more likely to have advertisers wanting to use the link.
Yes, I would agree with that, it's certainly what I would do as an advertiser.
I have signed up and customised the landing page and it will be interesting to see the reaction. I'm fortunate in that all my web sites are trade widget related and I have no worries about anyone associating the Landing Page name with any of the other sites.
We do need some decent analysis of what is happpening though Google.
One other question which I have not seen asked is this.
What about the scrapers?
Google "says" it's trying to get rid of them...what if they start displaying "Advertise Here" links?
Will someone at Google be checking the validity of the actual sites displaying Adsense?
For that matter, when did Google ever say (or "say") they were trying to get rid of them? Out of the SERPs, yes. But I've never heard Google say anything about their participation in AdSense.
Why on earth would any advertiser *want* to advertise on a scraper?
I have definitely read posts here from advertisers who actually "like" the scraper sites. I can't remember who but they certainly did write so.
when did Google ever say (or "say") they were trying to get rid of them?
Once again I do remember reading a suggestion that they were trying to do something about it. Maybe it was my interpretation of it...
Certainly if the scraper sites were removed then the EPC theoretically should go up? Or am I the only one who see it that way?
I would get an email saying who it was, how much the campaign would net me and the option to opt out of advertising for that particular website before the flight date.
This was a great feature! Why can't Google do this?
Google was my best target flight and netted me the most money at the time :)
Ann
The same way folks tried Google Adsense when it first came out with no reported results and no hint of how much you can earn ;)
I'll phrase it more clearly: you cannot tell what effect this Adwords promotion has on your existing revenue, when it is not seperately reported. When you first start running Adsense you do get reports, that's the difference.
Revenue goes up/down/sideways every day for many reasons, so there is no way to see "if it works" - any increase/decrease could be unrelated, and without it at the very least being available on channels you can't even do a split test.
There is simply no reason to run this Adwords promotion when Google won't pay for the new Adwords leads, won't tell you how many sign up as a result of the ad, and won't tell you if it makes any difference to your revenue.
Unless I misunderstand this feature, because this is a "account wide" deal, and because Adsense uses a "approved primary site" and lets publishers add any other site they want, it's entirely possible that an advertizer could click the "Advertize on this site" link on a publishers "approved site", sign up, and suddenly find their ads running on a "wide variety" of sites.
At any rate, I opted out.
Unless I misunderstand this feature, because this is a "account wide" deal, and because Adsense uses a "approved primary site" and lets publishers add any other site they want, it's entirely possible that an advertizer could click the "Advertize on this site" link on a publishers "approved site", sign up, and suddenly find their ads running on a "wide variety" of sites.
I'm pretty sure that although on the publisher side, the customization features for this are "account wide", on the advertiser side, the site targeting is specifically "site wide", so, as an advertiser, if you site target siteX for CPM ads, your CPM ads won't also show on a "wide variety" of the same publisher's sites.
Does not opting out have legal/ethical implications?
Is this thoroughly thought about?
...on the advertiser side, the site targeting is specifically "site wide"...
I hope you're right. That would be a lot better.
[Note: "pcrapers" in my earlier post should have been "scrapers", obviously, and it's too late to edit it. I'm going to blame that on jet lag since I just got off the plane from Las Vegas. Forget that I have the attention span of a cranky two year old and spelling skills to match. :) ]
However, I've made the decision to opt out until we get reporting. I don't think it's acceptable to have a business partner that won't reveal necessary information, won't answer genuine concerns and above all you can't trust.
I also don't want to p*ss off advertisers that may want to advertise with me by having their ads on site for a couple of weeks, then suddenly stopping their directly targetted campaigns.
If Google introduce reporting then I'll consider using it, but not until. I'd also like to point out that my site is number one im serps for my keyword - prime real estate for this feature. Seems like this feature has backfired before it starts. It didn't need to - all they had to do was have reporting.
Hope that clarifies!
Or if your site is spread across several domains for say, bandwidth reasons?
Quite concievably you will get cpm ads adverising say coal supplies on the pages about weddings! That will be bad for everyone!
It HAS to be by page to work properly, then it would be extremely welcome!
They do lots of other things to try to neutralize (i.e., kill) us but that's another story.
Yes, more reporting would probably be good but, personally, I don't spend much time looking at the existing reports. Our site covers so many topics and changes so fast that for us to match ads to content would be a nightmare. Besides, we don't want advertising considerations to color our editorial decisions. I realize this may be heresy in this forum, but there you have it.
We treat the Google spaces as though they were CPM banners: we put the code up and forget about it, checking a few times a week to see how Google, TribalFusion, et. al. are doing in each section of our site. We never get down to analyzing individual pages. Life's too short.
I would hope that Google gets a premium out of advertisers who target specific sites. As long as they do, I'm fine with it.
