Google AdSense launched today

New content targed ad program for content providers

[eaden]

It's way cool :)

[google.com...]

Not sure if this should be in Google News or adwords. I guess this forum should really be the one for AdSense questions as it's about advertising.

Also, it seems that the site hangs in IE. Mozilla ( as usual ) works perfectly so use that.

Unlike the exising content targed ads you do not need 20 million visitors to put these ads on your site.

[Marcia]

I find this passage from the overview very interesting:

[google.com...]

The award-winning and proprietary Google search technologies are the foundation for AdSense. We go beyond simple keyword matching to understand the context and content of web pages. Based on an algorithm that includes such factors as keyword analysis, word frequency, font size, and the overall link structure of the web, we know what a page is about, and can precisely match Google ads to each page.

I wonder if that will include the context of the individual page in relation to the site as a whole, and/or links on the pages to and from other sites.

[bcc1234]

It's sad.
The new service is great. I use adwords and it's nice to know that my ads will be displayed on many different sites (and I'll probably start spending more on adwords once this program takes off), but I think Google is really getting greedy.

It's pretty much the Microsoft's way of doing things.
Step 1 - gain market share in one sector (search)
Step 2 - using the muscle in the first sector, push yourself into another one (adwords)
Step 3 - using the existing gained market share, push yourself into yet another sector

Gain a share of publishers' space-for-rent - now, how exactly does that relate to "we only concentrate on search, this is what we want to do..."?

What is step 4?

Just like with Microsoft, some ideas will pick up, some won't.
We don't know if froogle will be the main resource for shoppers (also a powerfull market to "own") - imagine the possibilities!

Next thing you know, google will contact the webmasters that have both this program and doubleclick banners on their sites and will make them drop doubleclick. Now, that would really resemble MS and the PC hardware manufacturers :)
Time will tell... it will be sad if it turns out this way.

[Dynamoo]

Is it possible to feed revenues from AdSense into an AdWords account? I'm pretty sure that Kanoodle does this.

A self-sustaining AdWords account could be pretty cool and would ring fence the cost. GG, do you know if this is possible or maybe something under development?

[eaden]

It's sad. The new service is great.

Well that doesn't make much Sense ;)

Google is like the Anti-Microsoft. I really don't think you can compare anti-competitive dirty tactics with innovation.

using the muscle in the first sector, push yourself into another one

There is a huge difference in what google is doing - using it's brand and advertisers to help a new product, and what microsoft does - breaks it's software so it only works with it's own.

If google was like Microsoft, it would only return pages in it's SERPS that were running AdSense ads and PR0 pages that were running ads from the competition.

Is it possible to feed revenues from AdSense into an AdWords account?

Nope. But I agree it would be good.

[killroy]

I have a large Local (national) Directory of companies.

I've long looked for a way to harvest all traffic. I have HIGH rankings on many non-local keywords, because my pages list and rank really well. Unfortunately so far I've had to send "international visitors" away, as I only haev local info. I'd LOVE to be able to serve them with an ad relevant to their own geography, so they didn'T waste their time coming to my site.

i.e. I have comapnies who trade in widgets in widgetsville, but I rank +1 for "widgets". so If a searcher wants to buy widgets in the US he'd see my page, click, but only found ocmpanies selling "widgets" in "widgetsville". He'd be pissed and leave. But now, it seems, I oculd serve him an ad for a website sellign widgets in the US and he could click and be happy.

Am I getting this right? If it's true, I'd be very happy, I've been getting >1 million impressions per month and seem to be on a steep rise. I imminent rebranding and redesign, making the page truly excellent would welcome the addition of AdSense adwords,(space for the format has already been reserved).

Is there a way of getting a test account that I can include sample ads into my beta offline version for testing?

SN

[GoogleGuy]

bcc1234, I think I understand your point, but this is completely about search in my mind. Targeting ads based on page content and context is a *really* hard problem, both conceptually and computationally. Instead of doing a search based on <10 words that the user carefully selects, the entire document is treated like a query. You've got to find the salient keywords and features while discarding the parts of the page that don't matter as much. You're searching over ads instead of over web pages, but it's still a hard matching problem--because you have to analyze an entire document.

So I think it's a natural progression of search technology to analyze larger chunks of data like entire web pages. There's some serious technology and semantic analysis that goes into this problem. I don't mind telling you that the engineers working on this problem were using an incredible number of machines to crunch through their models. And we were fortunate to pick up the smart people at Applied Semantics to pool our brain power on tackling challenges like this.

So I think I see your point, but I hope it makes sense that doing queries using entire documents is a natural extension of our search technology.

vitaplease, that's a good suggestion--I'll pass it on.

Okay, I was staying up late tweaking things and playing for a demo tomorrow, and I got pulled into this fun discussion--but I really shouldn't be up past 4 a.m. That's late to work even for a Googler. :) I'll catch up on this thread tomorrow. G'night!

[bluelook]

GoogleGuy, I found a "typo" on AdSense Faq.

On "5. Can I sign-up if I am already a part of an ad network?" you have:

"If you already you already display Google"

Best Regards,

Nuno

[irock]

Not sure if you guys have noticed yet... a big uncertainty is the percentage of share that Google pays out to a publisher. Google won't disclose it. How can we know?

[jchampliaud]

It looked good to me until I read that the minimum payout is $100 and there is no set click price. So I can’t see this really being good for the little guy like me.

[bluelook]

I guess you just have to be, or not, happy with your monthly check :)
If the % isnīt 1 or 2%, itīs easy for a site with good keywords to make more money than with an ad agency, because there are lots of advertisers on Adwords... no more wasted ad space...