Forum Moderators: martinibuster
If you place Adsense ads on your bookstore pages, you'll get almost only ads for other bookstores, thus you make it easy for potential buyers to go to another bookstore (and buy the books there!).
I have to disagree with this. This may occur if you have generic/fiction type of books. If you want to, it is easy to filter out affiliate ads to amazon.com or bn.com.
Otherwise I find that amazon pages pulls in really good adsense ads on most non-general subjects.
Make sure that you have the editorial and user reviews in the page. They are fantastic adsense fodder. However you will get occasional adsense blunders where they focus on a few particular phrases.
Any comments on whether you are allowed to put adsense on amazon book store pages?
Make sure that you have the editorial and user reviews in the page. They are fantastic adsense fodder
As a matter of interest, I added a specific channel to monitor the performance of those kind of pages.
The return from AdSense is a miniscule fraction of all other pages. And the review content is totally on topic with my other content pages. Here I'm referring to a CPM basis, in my opinion the only way to make true comparisons.
I would have to disagree and say disappointing results to say the least.
To answer the original question?
Yes, and I sought AdSense approval in advance [as I always do] of adding it to my book review pages.
Adsense TOS is very clear about no affiliate pages. I also have download each book cover graphic and while I do not have a review, I do have author, date, and pages of books I hand picked and hand coded into the page. But, each book goes to my affiliate account, and except for my normal menu, these are the only links on the page. To me, this is a clear violation of Adsense TOS, but I could be wrong.
I could only find this text:
"We do allow affiliate or limited-text links."
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
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(G), at least to my thinking, wants their ads to be ‘top notch’. So they would not want them on some of the pages we have all strayed into, where it is just listings of affiliate banners. It makes (G’s) ads look trashy. Most of their rules are written very vague so that THEY can interpret them, not so WE can. Ads on the book pages is not in the spirit of their ‘Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:’ is it?
When I did have the ads on my amazon page, I wasn’t making any money on them anyway, but they were causing the advertisers in adwords to waste impressions w/o clicks. If too many of their advertisers keep getting their adwords KW’s suspended because of pages that display adsense ads w/o getting a return, then it is bad for them and their advertisers.
Common sense says that if you are doing something that is bad for their advertisers, then it is bad for them, and they could put a stop to it. Personally, based on the return I was getting on the ads on the book pages vs the return on the other pages where I have ads, I am not taking the chance based on the ‘Avoid’ statement and the 'no original content' statement.
If you are getting clicks on the book pages, then by all means leave them there, but I can assume that if someone is looking for a book it is for self-help, at least in my industry, and would not be purchasing services from the advertisers unless the advertiser were book retailers, and I never saw that.
I have seen sites use a portion of the Amazon products feed (say electronics, or cameras) to generate web sites. The ads on these sites are pretty well targetted, perhaps even better than most.
Ads on book pages I could see being a problem... just because someone is looking for a book on VCR repair doesn't mean that want to buy a VCR -- unless their repair goes badly ;)
In any case your recommendation on only putting AdSense ads on sites you feel confident about is a good idea.
In any case, I think that a whole site built around an affiliate datafeed clearly exists "specifically for the purpose of showing ads", and that is definitely prohibited by the Program Policies.
>>but they are not part of the AdSense TOS
Your right, it was not in the TOS, however, just above the ‘affiliate programs with little or no original content.’ it said ’Avoid hidden text or hidden links’, and I think we all know what happens to sites that get caught doing that.
You may be correct where there are places where it would work well for the adwords customers and the adsense publishers, but I just never saw it with the books. In my industry most of the ads are for training, well if someone is looking for a book, blah, blah, blah. I think we can both agree that (G) would have the proverbial cow if one were to put adsense ads on a page with a bunch of other affiliate banners only. There is another thread about how much content one needs to have on a page that the (G) rep made a statement on it’s here.
[webmasterworld.com...]
Since I have done adwords in the past and I’m the kind of person that really believes in due unto others … it cost the adwords people time to make changes to their accounts to make up for exposures w/o clicks and that is a big problem for some sites. A bigger problem is clicks that yield no return because the person purchased a book anyway. The bottom line may be if you are exposing a lot of ads on an affiliate page w/o any clicks on the ads, people will not be happy with it and you aren’t making any money anyway so why do it.
If that's still the case, then Jim's point about overexposure is nothing but good for the advertiser because they get a minor branding impact for future ads.
Like I said, I do not think it is (G) vision to have adwords running on sites that only has a payout of a few dollars a month with lots of exposures, or that contain 100's or at least x number of affiliate only ads and little to no content, and may be indeed part of the reason (G) created channels. So that publishers can help advertisers get clicks. The advertisers are where (G)'s revenues come from and good companies always try to protect or help their customers where they can economically. It's just good business.
I must have missed that, where does it say that at?
I want to know if I’m wrong and why. Am I’m being too kind to adword advertisers and if so why.
I guess if there is no reply, then I should just consider the source(s)?
Go to the adword page and read the faq. It is common knowledged that adwords CTR is ONLY calculated through it's search traffic.
Back to the original topic. All I can find is:
"You also agree not to display any other text-based or content-targeted advertisement(s) on the same Web page in connection with which an Ad Unit or any Ad is displayed."
A book store with short reviews on each book in no way resembles a text-based ad. I guess my store is content targeted as it has books on the niche topic that the entire site is on. Is that what they have in mind?
Also the book store is only a few pages of a site of a couple of hundred pages mostly with in depth content articles.
I find the bookstore ads do ok and I suspect it's because in a site like mine people are often browsing through the book store and if something else related to the topic interests them they go there. Kind of like how you might buy a mug at a bricks and mortar book store.
I also have Amazon book ads on many of my pages. The books are related to the individual articles. I had a strong impression this is ok. I wish we could hear from someone who could tell us for sure.
No doubt you are OK because of the ‘original content’ you added. I am not due to the fact that I have no original content except for the number of pages in the book and the date published. As long as one is in the ‘spirit’ of the TOS, et. al. I don’t’ see them ruling with an iron hand unless you are border line everywhere and they just want to get rid of you anyway. They would be hurting their advertisers if they start rulling too hard. As long as the advertisers get an occasional sale, I can't see (G) coming down on you.
‘or content-targeted advertisement(s)’ is relative. For example, if I sell auto parts, I don’t know if the (G) ads are going to be other sites selling auto parts or selling autos or auto detailers. How could one possibly know? And there is a big difference between selling parts and the entire enchilada. And what if you are OK with a sample of ads you have seen from (G) and then one day they change their software and all of a sudden your not. Of course they are not going to warn you before they do it.
There maybe better examples. Some sites are very diversified and that could mean (G) ads only it taken literally.
But, hey, then again, what do I know.
I found …
‘Your ad is ranked on the search results and content pages based on a combination of its maximum cost-per-click (CPC) and clickthrough rate (CTR)... The higher your CPC or CTR is, the higher your ad's position will be’
and…
‘Also, expanded-match terms aren't included in our calculations for your minimum CTR requirement; therefore, they don't affect your ad's rank’
and
‘What is the expanded matching feature?
With expanded matching, the Google AdWords system automatically runs your ads on highly relevant keywords, including synonyms, related phrases, and plurals, even if they aren't in your keyword lists. For example, if you're currently running ads on the keyword web hosting, expanded matching may identify the keyword website hosting for you. The expanded matches will change over time as we learn more about which new keywords best suit the true meaning of your ads.
Expanded matching only applies to your broad-matched keywords. This feature doesn't affect keywords you've specified as phrase matches (keywords surrounded by double quotation marks) or exact matches (keywords surrounded by [] brackets). Also, expanded-match terms aren't included in our calculations for your minimum CTR requirement; therefore, they don't affect your ad's rank.’
Is that what you are talking about?
[adwords.google.com...]
I could swear that AdWordsAdvisor has posted about this somewhere, but I can't find it. It came up when I was whining once that a keyword with a 3% CTR got disabled. I got the explanation that, while it might have a 3% CTR over Google AND its search partners, it had too low of a CTR on just Google alone, and so was disabled. There is currently no way to separate Google-only CTR from Google + Other Search Partners CTR, so it's hard to tell.
I have also had email from AdWords support saying the same thing: that disabling ads only happens for CTR based on Google alone, and not AdSense or even Google search partners.
[edit]
I found it!
"However, because we only consider the CTR on Google search pages when evaluating your account and keywords ..."
[adwords.google.com...]
[/edit]
JK
I found the link to their FAQ on their Terms and Conditions page and about half way down on their Editorial Guidelines pages, but not on the help page. Maybe it’s just me, but I would have thought that a link to FAQ should be on the help page.
But never the less, I stand, (well actually sitting), corrected.
I contacted Google and asked them if placing adsense on my amazon shop was allowed. i have never got a reply, so i tried running it for one week. what i have noticed was that in that one week that i had run the amazon shop channel my total revenues dropped down, page impressions and clicks through where as usual.
i pulled adsense off my amazon book store.
If you do hear back from AdSense on the bookstore please let us know here. I'd still like to have the ads in my bookstore if I knew it was OK with AdSense. They don't earn a lot but it's the cumulation of all the ads on a couple of hunderd pages that ads up to something worthwhile.
