Forum Moderators: martinibuster
After becoming painfully aware of the technical limitations, it occured to me that as Google is the leader in contextual field, why not we explore the possibility of suggesting a new adsense feature on these lines. For example, their bots can potentially serve related content in adsense units from the site itself.
In the past I have read some discussions in this forum wherein webmasters have tried something similar as alternative ads, but of course they were not contextually targeted. I am thinking on a feature wherein adsense advertisers can be provided with:
1. Ability to opt for related contextual links to their own website pages instead of PSAs or alternative links.
2. Some space in every adunit for contextually targeted (determined by Google algo) links to the website.
After some serious thoughts on this idea, I think there can be few positive and significant fallouts of having such a feature in adsense. Here are some I can think of (these are only thoughts, nothing is based on any evidence):
Reduced Banner Blindness, more CTR
It can potentially minimize banner blindness as users might get in a habit to scan adunits to see if they can find something relevant to what they are looking for. To avoid confusion, and not to appear as if Google is tricking the visitors into clicking on ads, such content can be clearly labeled as "related links" (like it is done in Gmail).
Enhanced filtering of traffic, better smartpricing
As the contextual targeting is supposedly superior than conventional navigation (success of adsense vs. conventional affiliate links could be possible evidence to this fact), the page views for publisher's website might increase with more [u]targeted[/u] traffic to more relevant areas. It can translate into more quality filetring of traffic. This Butterfly Effect [en.wikipedia.org] can potentially send more valid leads to advertisers and force the smart price working in favour of the publishers. It could be a win-win situation of all four parties (user, advertiser, publisher and google; strictly in this order of significance :-))
Increased value of adsense units for users, preventing lost impressions
In Google's own words [adwords.blogspot.com], contextual ads are something that add to the value of a page for a visitor. This feature can potentially add to the value of the adunit itself. The section of visitors who have their javascripts turned off and adblocking fans will realise that they are missing on some valuable parts of the page (i.e. potential relevant navigational links). Google's philosophy is to facilitate discovery of relevant information, and this could be one more way of doing it.
Recovering lost revenue, disruptive approach
There is an entire industry of smaller online advertising agencies that is exploiting the market for "alternative ad space" in Google adsense. Depending upon a site's quality, the alternative ad space can be anywhere from 1% to more than 50% of total ad impressions. Given the size of adsense program as a whole, the lost revenue from such feature might run into millions of dollars. Although Google is providing us with this feature, it is not earning anything from it. It can be understood as a goodwill gesture towards webmasters. May be the engineers at googleplex are trying to capitalize on such "lost space" by further improvements in ad targeting (so that PSAs impressions are minimized) or hoping that the current boom in online advertising will increase eventually enable their inventory to fill in the blanks. There is nothing wrong in these two traditional approaches except the fact that they can minimize the problem rather than solving it. Implementing intrasite contextual links might solve "this problem of lost revenue" from in an unconventional and disruptive way.
Navigation by proxy, providing valid exit links in MFAs
On first thoughts, it seemed that such a feature will also work to the advantage for MFAs. But after mental visualization of some possible scenarios, I think that some MFAs might eventually loose in such a system. A common strategy used by many MFAs is to have a highly SEOed page with little content, four aunits and NO navigation at all. This system could supply "navigation by proxy" to such websites, thereby reducing the eventual CTR (at least theoritically).
Seducing Fence Sitters, more conversions
An efficient search in website can always deliver relevant content to visitors. But the fact remains that searching still requires more ACTION on a visitor's part than a a simple click on a link. If one looks closely, searching (seeking) and displaying navigational links (seducing) are fundamentally different things. A person who is searching is looking for a needle in a haystack and he is not even sure about the existence of the needle itself! Whereas in such a contextual navigation model all needles from the haystack are displayed upfront. It could potentially convert the fence sitters (a typical person who lands via a search result, doesn't find exactly what is being sought, hit the back button to return to serps) into VALID traffic to relevant pages in a website. For a serious webmaster, it means converting an accidental drop-in into a regular visitor.
I am posting this idea here for open discussion and further brainstorming. I am not saying that it is a winning model. It is just a hypothesis, which is open to constructive discussion and criticism by the experienced webmaster community we have here :-) . I can be totally off the target in many of the arguments above and if you feel so, please do add your counter arguments and theories over the concept rather than side tracking the thread by flaming on limitations of a single human brain (mine!).
1. Isn't this just hyperlinking? How can Google be expected to link within your own site more intelligently than you the author and webmaster can?
2. I don't think this really has any connection to the Butterfly Effect. Or to put it another way, ANYTHING ANYWHERE could cause some unknowable Butterfly Effect. I mention this not to pick nits but because I saw it referenced in a questionable context in a different thread just yesterday.
