Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Worries go that with introduction of more likewise programs by Y! and others, there might be a dilution or even devaluation of AdSense soon.
My hope is tough that the two major impact areas will offset one another:
- advertisers will distribute their advertising dollars across a broader program base, thus ad fees will drop (for contextual ads providers to be competitive and build advertiser base)
- publishers will naturally tend towards programs with the better payout, so to ensure a firm publisher base contextual ads providers need to keep them happy, thus they might raise the percentage of payout (their operations run smoother and more automated after introduction so they could handle that quite well)
On top, in order to keep advertisers happy AND publishers in the boat some contextual ads providers might consider rewarding sites with better CTR and/or high traffic.
Would be interesting to develop a future strategy to address either of those scenarios...
Your take?
Jens
Will competition increase or destroy value of contextual advertising?
Depends.
Making a contextual match between content and advertisers is the easy part. It's what you do after that which makes or breaks the program.
I have seen much worse implementations of contextual advertising which can hurt the business as a whole but I have also seen much better implementations which will help.
The bottom line is has to work for the advertiser so I am more nervous about threads that talk about how to increase CTR than I am about whether there are alternatives to AdSense.
JAG
The bottom line is has to work for the advertiser so I am more nervous about threads that talk about how to increase CTR than I am about whether there are alternatives to AdSense.
BINGO!
Shak
publishers will naturally tend towards programs with the better payout...
I can only speak for myself, but everything else being equal I evaluate based on effective CPM. However I would (and already do) actually chose a lower CPM solution for some or all of my ad space if the products/services advertised were more relevant, gave users a better perception of my sites and the advertising service required significantly less of my time to manage.
I consider competition to be inherently good so I look forward to more options for publishers and advertisers.
We all have seen some decline in income from AS.
Have we? Granted I've only been with AdSense for a few months, but although my traffic has remained the same, my CTR and payouts have risen.
Is it generally true that AdSense income has declined for most publishers?
...at least there were way more reports on this than on the opposite...
looking at my own stats its difficult to tell
but after taking into account xmas shopping frenzy November and December and associated increase in bid price
i think about the same re: october to current so no major trends here
steve
General statements like this is dangerous -- because not everyone experiences the same thing as you do.
Our revenue from Adsense is on the upward trend and continues to climb month after month as we add content, improve our ad layout and deploy adsense codes in as many pages as possible.
You have to figure war, holiday shopping, election year, very high unemployment and a stagnent economy as well as a slowly recovery tech sector into the mix.
IF or WHEN google goes IPO i would assume adsense could explode. More companies will realize the marketing channels that google offers since they will be a public company playing on the same field as others.
I think google needs to advertise adwords on TV and let adsense grow as a grass roots effort. I see more promotions and such for adsense on websites i visit then i do adwords. I believe google should focus on building its inventory and let us focus on serving it rather then flooding the market with a bunch of ads that don't get anyone anywhere.
I think google needs to advertise adwords on TV and let adsense grow as a grass roots effort.
You know.... this is a good idea, maybe not TV, but how about 1/4 page ads in business sections all over the US. Enough information for the typical business owner to understand it, and links to more info on the web if they want to go deeper.
Slogan #1:
<<You spent thousands on a Website that is not producing?>>
<<Do your customers even know that you have a website?>>
<<It is time to advertise using 21st Century technology>>
<<Google Adwords, The ultimate marketing tool>>
Maybe we can get half a dozen competitors of Shak to sign on ;)
IF or WHEN google goes IPO i would assume adsense could explode. More companies will realize the marketing channels that google offers since they will be a public company playing on the same field as others. I think google needs to advertise adwords on TV and let adsense grow as a grass roots effort.
Depends on Google's strategy.
Does Google want AdSense to be the new eBay, with revenues coming from mom-and-pop businesses such as affiliate sites, home-based direct-mail businesses, and B&Bs?
Or does it want AdSense to become a leading direct-response medium for mainstream advertisers and their agencies?
Or is it possible that AdSense will go after both markets by having different levels of AdSense (e.g., the current AdSense, where advertisers take potluck with their ads, and an "AdSense Select" network where advertisers have more control and/or a selection of human-vetted sites at a higher price)?
I see more promotions and such for adsense on websites i visit then i do adwords. I believe google should focus on building its inventory and let us focus on serving it rather then flooding the market with a bunch of ads that don't get anyone anywhere.
This is a variation on the old issue of which comes first, the chicken or the egg. Right now, Google apparently thinks that market share is its first priority: By signing up everyone from personal Website owners to About.com and the WASHINGTON POST, Google achieves near-ubiquity and makes it harder for future competitors to gain a foothold with publishers or advertisers.
I do think Google is vulnerable to competition, but more in specific niches than across the board. In travel, for example, it's conceivable that a large travel vendor with relationships in the hotel market might be able to launch an ad network that replaced commissions with PPC ads. (Who knows? Maybe Google could partner with such vendors or offer private-label OEM services in industries where established vendors have contacts and expertise.)
We all have seen some decline in income from AS.
Actually, I was seeing a substantial increase in AdSense revenues until about a week ago, when my CTR and EPC took a noticeable hit. This may have been the result of Yahoo's transition from Google to non-Google SERPs, which (as someone pointed out to me privately) happened about the same time. Although my overall traffic doesn't seem to have been affected by Yahoo's move, it's possible that that my advertiser mix has changed as a result of changes in traffic. (With several thousand pages on hundreds of subtopics, it's hard to identify subtle changes in patterns.)
Still, even with the drop of a week ago, I'm making more money from AdSense than at any time in the past--including last summer, which was the height of the season for my topic.
Slogan #2:
<<Adsense revenue, you can only predict that it is unpredictable>>
On my site I've seen a steady growth in ads from established B&M companies related to my field.
But the vast, vast, vast majority are still not represented well in the serps or in Adwords/Adsense.
I wonder though, if these businesses don't know about Adwords/adsense, what likelyhood is there that they'll find and use an Adsense/Adwords competitor.
I doubt competition will hurt, at least in my area.
I keep hearing about targeted search environments to become the next logical diversification of that industry. In reference of your pointer to Google's strategy it will be interesting if they continue to serve the entire online community and sort, serve everything to anybody or will go into targeting by splitting up some time.
Jens
There are still too many companies out there that have not invested much into their e-business operations. Heavier investments will ask for better ROI and with 6 billion docs being indexed by Google allone chances are they will go into some kind of AdWord mode to get these visitors in.
On top: as the online world changes from static web page content into applications and dynamically created content and tools SEs will not be able to serve these next generation features with traffic in an intermediate evolution period.
AdWords type promotion will play a vital role in this handover period from the old web to whatever the future will look like.
So, in summary: I believe we ain't seen nothin' yet...
Jens
I think is more of a: "lets increase our reach and the number of advertisers and network to a point that anyone doing a serious online campaign will have to need us more than we need them" kind of strategy.
So far, I will say that with 150,000 advertisers they are more than halfway there. Does it leave them exposed to competition? Of course Will the competition be able to exploit the vulnerability effectively? I doubt it, and if they do it will take a while.
Lots of resources.... Lots of money.... Good technology ... I can think of maybe five companies that can do this. One of those of course is my favorite company in the whole world Microsoft :heart:
I keep hearing about targeted search environments to become the next logical diversification of that industry.
Targeted search environments may work for business and industrial searches. Travel agents, for example, were searching for hotels, airline itineraries, etc. in online databases long before Google or even Yahoo was born.
Things are a bit different in the consumer world, where the average person is likely to rely on general-purpose search tools and won't even be aware of specialized alternatives. Also, one reason for contextual content advertising is to get the attention of prospects (and to harvest their contact information through inquiries) in the early research stages before they're actively searching for vendors. The travel agent who buys AdSense ads for Elbonian canal cruises, for example, has an opportunity to grab readers of cruise reviews early in the game--and if the travel agent is successful in converting lookers to bookers, those readers may never reach the "active vendor search" stage.
On top: as the online world changes from static web page content into applications and dynamically created content and tools SEs will not be able to serve these next generation features with traffic in an intermediate evolution period.
Even now, many large organizations (including some major European tourist offices with multimillion-euro sites) are using the Web primarily as a fulfillment medium--i.e., as the equivalent of brochures that get mailed out when people call a toll-free number after seeing a newspaper or magazine ad. For such organizations and companies, it may be more productive to spend money on AdWords and AdSense than on static content and SEO. And why not? They're used to paying for leads from media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, or TV, and Web "content sites" are just another medium.
InkJet inks and pigments for the textiles market for example, high tech digital textile printing never gets any SEO success due to the heavy load of small sites promoting ink cartridges for consumer type paper inkjet printers that uses the same terminology.
These guys have started to spend some serious money on AdWords and the likes because they cut on SEO and other tweaking.
Jens
