Forget stats, just let me decide what to display

Display only ads for clicks that generate at least $X

[Oetzi]

Apparently most of us here want statistics, at least per domain statistics, so that we can optimize our pages to increase our revenue. Fair enough. I have a different, drastically simpler opinion. Why don’t we just ask for a feature like “Display only ads for clicks that generate at least $X”.

Here is the rationale. In addition to Adsense, my sites generate revenue from a couple of affiliates. Some times I could make more money from the affiliates than from Adsense if the visitor was going to click on the affiliate link rather than on an Adsense ad. If I could serve Adsense ads only when I have a chance to make more money from Adsense than from affiliates, I would be very happy. I pretty much know what my CPM and EPCs are for both Adsense and the affiliates, so it would be pretty easy to decide what X should be.

It would also save me time from messing around with page optimization. If I had this feature today, perhaps I would not even bother to read my statistics, when they will be available.

This approach solves another problem, which is the affiliate spam, pages full of content spam that are just a layer between the searcher and the actual manufacturer’s product pages. These affiliates buy keywords in Adwords or similar program, but to make their business model work, cannot pay more than the minimum amount. The real product manufacturer ends up to have to pay these affiliates for traffic than have been taken away by them in the first place. Note that I do not have any problem with affiliates that make money by writing their own original reviews, as they contribute somehow to the manufacturer success.

If I could decide to display only the Adsense ads that generate me more than X, the product manufacturer would win because affiliates ads would not appear among my ads, the searcher would not waste his/her time going though a load of spam content and I would make more money. This is a triple win situation.

[jomaxx]

If they both pay reasonably well, why not just show both affiliate ads AND AdSense? That way users can click on the ad or ads that meet their needs.

[swa66]

If you look at adsense/adwords as a market place where google brings advertisers and publishers together (and even sets prices based on a sort of auctioning) for the advertisers,
it would be very realistic just like they allow the advertisers a maximum price, to allow the publishers a minimum price.

I really do not want the $ 0.01 clicks, I'd rather keep the visitor than send them away for that little.

If advertisers want the space to show their ads for free, tough. Otherwise they pay some reasonable amount for the space/visitor, no matter how much more banners I might run, any lost visitor is lost.

If they give me the minimum price and some decent stats on the inventory they would have sold if I didn't have the minimum I'd be all happy.
If the minimum price can be set per page that would be best.

Now surely some peopel out there will find a way to abuse the system, but google should just send them the appropriate email.