Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Any other AdSense-in-mail sightings?
Your thoughts?
Then send an email to all my subscribers with a pure static link and when clicked presents the newsletter in a browser and displays the adsense.
Given the problems with newsletters and emails and aol I think its time I send an email with just a pure text link to a web page and then I can display my adsense also.
This I beleive is the best way around it.
The page is indexed by Google, plus everyone can read it properly and it's in line with the TOS of Adsnese as the page in question is just an ordinary content page.
Any thoughts?
I wonder what happens with all those people on dialup who download their email then disconnect and read it offline
I imagine it would not be clickable. I haven't seen the AdSense ads yet but if they do it like TCLA does with newsletters and RSS, and make them images, then they will still be viewable offline.
JAG
But, with broadband, this is the way to go.
ASA?
Thanks,
Mark.
Here is a rundown of how the AdSense-in-email-newsletters actually works. Sorry, no URLs are allowed in this case, since it is a commercial site, so I have described it in pretty minute detail ;)
First of all, it appears that the publisher is actually a premium publisher, judging by how the publisher ID is written (name vs number). Google appears to be tracking the success of the newsletter alone, rather than tracking it with the site as well.
I have disected the code, and it seems that is isn't as straightforward as simply adding the code, as what people originally had believed when the news of ads in email began spreading, and what many thought .
It is a leaderboard style ad at the very top of the newsletter, with the little "Ads by Google" logo, as would normally appear with a regular publisher's leaderboard, but it shows up in the top left corner rather than the lower right. No border, background matches newsletter, blue link, black text and green URL. It is at the very top of the newsletter
What makes this AdSense the most unusual is that these ads are hardcoded into the html as part of an AdSense HTML block code. It is not the standard premium or regular publisher's javascript that is inserted into the html code of the email itself.
Instead, the ads are displayed as a leaderboard-size image, and the four ads are then coded in image map style (using the coords= in the a href) so that clicking on the part of the image over each ad would then lead to the appropriate advertisers site.
The URL is coded for each of the four is tracking based on the ad position, including the newsletter's issue number. The image and corresponding links could be changed on-the-fly.
This is definitely something to watch.
Jenstar, I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on this. Did you notice any aspects of the newsletter that might trigger spam filters to treat the e-mail as 'suspect'? For instance, might the image map cause a red flag, since I've seen many spam e-mails using these, too?
Incidently, my highly-trained POPfile filter did NOT mark the e-mail as spam, but I'm betting that AOL and Hotmail systems are perhaps quite a bit more aggressive and less-targeted in their filtering :(
But, neither flagged it as being spam, or sent of too some hard-to-find spam folder, but the content was not something that would usually trigger a spam alert. I suspect if the content had been on something like prescription drugs, it might have been flagged.
Still, I think many publishers would jump at the chance of using AdSense in newsletters, even on a beta program basis.
RESULTS:
- Hotmail: Looked fine, just as it did in my Outlook
- Yahoo: Reduced to plain text, and not just the ad, but the entire mail
In neither case did the mail appear in the Bulk (spam) folder.
I'm guessing that the problem with regards to the Yahoo treatment had to do with the forwarding, not the e-mail itself. It'd be interesting to know whether it would have been correctly displayed had it been sent directly to my Yahoo mail account.
Again, fairly targeted ads, and completely different ads from the ones that appeared in the previous newsletter I saw. It also was coded with what appears to be an issue number, so the ads could be changed as needed, while still be on topic for the individual newsletter.
From the appearance of how this works, I would suspect that AdSense will be doing this on a limited beta release, because of the potential for fraud. I am guessing right now that there is some manual work needed for each issue, because of the way they are served.
I will be watching this closely, as I know many are anxious to know if/when this will be widely available to publishers.
I will be watching this closely, as I know many are anxious to know if/when this will be widely available to publishers.
I hope it doesn't become widely available, because the resulting flood of AdSense spam would reduce the effectiveness of AdSense ads on legitimate Web sites.
People that are the most annoyed about spam would report everyone that shows in the spam, whether the advertiser knows about it or not.
If Google makes this something that is possible, then they better make it an option to the Adwords advertiser. I can see lots of non-targeted clicks by people poking around trying to figure out where the spam came from, or even by people that know it costs the advertiser money to drive up the costs.
Even if used by legitimate targeted newsletters people will report it and click with no intention of buying what's at the other end.
