Forum Moderators: martinibuster
1. I fill out an application for Google's AdSense Gold Program.
2. I pay a moderate fee, say $30-50 or even up to a hundred, depending on the success of the program.
3. Google sends someone to hand check every one of my sites with AdSense to check for the slightest infringment of their rules, any spam at all. If G says no, it means no. Cannot re-apply for six months.
4. Google checks my stats record to ensure I have had at least 6 months of "clean" AdSense usage (no new participants allowed...must have six months in basic adsense first)
5. I am not allowed to add code to ANY other site unless G have confirmed its acceptability. Any infringment of this at all and I go back to basic adsense.
6. Participation in AdSense Gold means:
- customised ad-formats
- direct debit payments possible
- helper words for ad targetting
- payment in euros and pounds possible
- suspicion of fraudulent clicks results in account freeze for seven days, hand review of site, then re-commencement. No monies withheld.
7. New AdWords category added "show ads on AdSense Gold sites" for ad publishers. Possibly even divided into 10/12 basic categories: Education, News, Technology, Sports, Entertainment, etc, etc
am I dreaming?
Also most of my AS money is coming from sites that have only been sending traffic for 2 months or so. If these people had such a problem with it my money would be going down not up. It is not because of the area because I cover a lot of very different areas. There are lots of camps out there. I don't think either one has a majority.
EV your views do not represent a majority of advertisers. If it did then people like me would look for something else to do. I'm not saying that you are in a minority or there are not that many people just not an overwhelming majority or even a simple majority. There is a large section out there that does not know enough to think one way or the other. As long as the "ignorant" and the "spam lovers" add up to a majority people like me will survive and prosper.
Again, AdSense is a first-generation product. If you don't think we'll see major product improvements and extensions, that's your privilege. But as I've said before, I find it hard to believe that Google is willing to leave billions of dollars on the table for competitors to grab.
Companies who don't want to be associated with SPAM sites do so for branding issues. They don't want their brand associated with the content of a specific site. They don't want people to think "Brand X" supports SPAM.
However, advertising is a different animal. The purpose of advertising is to bring in customers.
There are companies using Adsense for both purposes, so there are going to be some who want to keep their ads on only clean, relevant sites and other companies who want their ad shown in as many places as possible.
This argument has been going on for quite some time now, and there will never be a resolution because companies use Adwords for different purposes.
The fact that Google continues to allow Adsense on these spammy sites is evidence that *some* advertisers find them acceptable.
Companies who don't want to be associated with SPAM sites do so for branding issues.
Of course. But that doesn't mean they engage only in brand advertising. They don't want their direct-response advertising associated with questionable sites, either, because they want to protect the integrity of their brands in everything they do.
So if its not a branding campaign why should the Advertisers care the ad appears in nyt.com or my-spam-site.com as long as it provides a good enough ROI!
Paid Search and contextual advertising are more or less ROI senstive direct advertising and i dont think Google or for that matter an other SE will try to convert it to a brand building vehicle ...
Nobody has suggested that.
So if its not a branding campaign why should the Advertisers care the ad appears in nyt.com or my-spam-site.com as long as it provides a good enough ROI!
See my previous posts. Or ask an E.V.P.-Media in a Top 100 advertising agency.
And by the way, there's no way for an advertising agency to track ROI if it's unwilling to try the medium in the first place. :-)
Policing is not the job of Google ,Instead it should provide a good tracking mechanism per site or atleast per publisher ....With this right tools let the advertisers decide where they want their ads to appear ...Who are me and you or for that matter google to dictate what is good for them?
IMHO Internet is not the place for the fat old offline Ad executive whoose media buying decisions are based more on his arogance/ beliefs /contacts than his clients bottomline! .
The WASHINGTON POST pointed out in an article today: "With Yahoo and others catching up and competing hard, growth in [Google's] advertising revenue is slowing."
The problem Google faces right now is that the perceived and real quality of its content network is declining at a time when it needs to reach beyond the finite pool of existing e-commerce and affiliate advertisers. IMHO, this simple fact is likely to spawn a number of product extensions, such as the "AdSense Gold" concept that started this thread and an "AdMedia" variant that provides contextual advertising on editorial sites. It may also lead to greater advertiser controls, such as the ability to block or include specific sites or whole categories such as DomainPark and Gmail.
Google is now a public company, which means it's answerable to stockholders. Do you seriously believe that investors will allow Google to ignore the larger advertising market because of disdain for "fat old offline Ad executives"? :-)
I see this same argument in many business columns and surprised by it ...The problem with search/contextual advertising is not the limitation of the number of advertisers but rather the limited inventory available!.
So the only way Google can enjoy a fast growth in paid search is not by attracting more advertisers but by increasing the ad inventory .This is the reason they developed adsense /gmail advertisement etc thats to go beyond the search traffic!...
Now they are public they may also try to increase the inventory by increasing the number of top sponsored listings etc!
So the bottomline is they dont need the fat old offline Ad executive unless they enter into the CPM based banner/interstial space!
So the only way Google can enjoy a fast growth in paid search is not by attracting more advertisers but by increasing the ad inventory .This is the reason they developed adsense /gmail advertisement etc thats to go beyond the search traffic!...
Yes, but junk traffic doesn't lead to higher net bids ("net bid" meaning what the advertiser pays after "smart pricing" discounts). It also tends to drive away the kinds of advertisers who can afford to pay higher bids for high-quality leads. (Contrary to what many WW members seem to believe, PPC advertising isn't only about e-commerce transactions and ROI tracking; it's also about harvesting leads for companies that sell big-ticket goods and services.)
If you'll read my previous posts more carefully, you'll note that I don't advocate dumping run-of-network traffic (which is essentially what AdSense, DomainPark, and Gmail are delivering now). Rather, I'm talking about product extensions such as the aforementioned "AdSense Gold" and "AdMedia," which would expand the pool of advertisers and drive up bids for ads on qualifying sites. That would achieve several things:
1) It would make it easier for Google to recruit and retain sites that attract mainstream advertisers, thereby expanding inventory for such advertisers.
2) It would allow Google to continue offering the existing AdSense/DomainPark/Gmail product to advertisers who are happy with run-of-network traffic on everything from Top 10 portals to scraper sites.
3) Above all, it would increase profits for Google.
It's hard to imagine Google being satisfied with the status quo when it can so easily use its contextual ad-matching technology as a platform for multiple product offerings that will allow it to reach different segments of the advertising and direct-response marketplace. It's no different from Google's using its search technology for the main Google search index, "search appliances," Froogle, Google News, and other product extensions. It's like "Windows Everywhere" or using Linux on everything from servers to cell phones. IMHO, AdSense as we know it is merely the first generation of a platform that will spawn many contextual advertising products from Google.
It's a "good" thing that Internet and Adsense biz is a low-barrier of entry business, but you can't combat the spam, once Google lets spam-sites in the program.
For comparison, even if one were able to outsource content writing in the most cheap-labor country of the world (forget about quality for a second) one still can't beat the software that will create 100,000 machine generated pages in 10min.
I've left my own Adsense test-site on auto-pilot for the last 2 months or so (as EPC of a few cents doesn't justify the time investment), but I suggested Adsense to 3 others who have Websites which I consider "quality" ones.
Last week I spoke with one of those people I introduced to Adsense. His site I imagined had the best chances of the 3 for being a profitable Adsense site: ~1000 visitors/day and a good subject (investment stuff). He told me earnings were very low and he's pullinbg AS off his pages.
At this point, I don't know WHO actually gets good results from Adsense, but I would guess it's mostly SEOs (an euphemism for someone who will just create 100s of spam directories and SEO them, but anyway) rather than CONTENT-experts. I say "mostly" not "only".
I know that it's extremely difficult for Google to do quality control on its content network, but as I wrote above, spam sites simple skew the supply/demand.
The problem with AS on some sites is that the ads are on topic if you provide enough info on that topic then why would they leave.
Maybe because they want to buy what's being advertised?
Seriously, that's the whole idea behind AdSense: to provide contextual advertising, not to give visitors a means of escape if they land on a worthless page. A good example would be someone who reads an article on a product or service, thinks "I'd like to buy that," and clicks on an ad. That kind of click is far more likely to convert than a click from a user who lands on a spam page, thinks "How the heck do I get out of here?" and clicks on an ad disguised as a navigation link.
dhatz wrote:
At this point, I don't know WHO actually gets good results from Adsense, but I would guess it's mostly SEOs (an euphemism for someone who will just create 100s of spam directories and SEO them, but anyway) rather than CONTENT-experts. I say "mostly" not "only".
I get pretty good results from AdSense, mostly because my editorial site is on a topic (travel) that attracts readers who are researching how to spend their vacation budgets. However, I earn a lot more from affiliate sales than I do from AdSense. I regard AdSense as a way to monetize pages about subtopics or destinations that don't generate clicks for my affiliate partners.
Contrary to what many people seem to think, a content site--and, more specifically, an editorial site--can be an extremely valuable source of traffic for advertisers and featured companies. I've had readers and PR directors write me to say that my firsthand reports have resulted in luxury-cruise bookings, language-school enrollments, and other big-ticket purchases. There's nothing new about the idea of displaying ads alongside quality editorial content; it's standard operating procedure in the offline media world. When online contextual advertising can give advertisers the chance to piggyback on quality content, we'll see more mainstream advertisers spend their direct-response dollars online.
Some webmasters are out to maximize revenue, visitors be damned.
Others are out to help the visitors first and whatever cash they can earn in the process is considered a bonus.
It would be interesting to take a poll to see which camp most WW users consider themselves to be in. I think most of them would end up somewhere in the middle.
Contrary to what many people seem to think, a content site--and, more specifically, an editorial site--can be an extremely valuable source of traffic for advertisers and featured companies.
EFV, I agree 100%. Some people will think what SUITS THEM TO BE THINKING.
Truth is most advertisers are VERY sensitive about their brand
To give a concrete example, in your case, to create a travel-related content, you need to actually VISIT the area you'll be writing about (pay the airfares, hotel costs etc) evaluate different hotels, check your facts. To do it, you'd be incurring significant costs.
Then, getting back to your office, you'll spend hours (+ talent + experience) to create good quality content.
And last, you'd have to create the Web stuff (format it in HTML, break it into individual pages properly structured for easy navigation etc etc). Sub-contract the graphics design, or other technical aspects, like SEO.
Now, I could create the equivalent "rival" sewer site in 1-2 hours, taking random content from here and there, add some "keywords" like city names and hotel names, do SEO and get it on the air.
This is what many Adsense "content" sites do and unless Google stops them, I'm refusing to play along any longer, as it makes no financial sense.
It seems advertisers have severely reduced the bids for content. Nowadays I see many of the clicks in the 4-5cent area, whereas it was very rare just 4 months ago... And I'm talking about very very niche industrial B2B advertisers (e.g. metallurgy like rotary furnaces or chemicals, or high-tech equipment like CO2 lasers or the oil-pipe hangers I mentioned a few months ago).
I use ReturnVisitor to keep my website traffic stable and maximize my Adsense revenue. I have used this tool around 2 months. My website traffic grows around 30%. The numbers of clicks jumps around 20%.
I find that around 25-30% of my visitors coming from the ReturnVisitor shortcuts. The actual number is still growing. I think it is an ethical way to boost my Adsense Revenue.
P.S. this software is free. I recommend you to take a look. www.returnvisitor.com
Nowadays I see many of the clicks in the 4-5cent area, whereas it was very rare just 4 months ago... And I'm talking about very very niche industrial B2B advertisers
ogletree answered:
You don't have to worry about me. $0.50 a clcik is the lowest EPC I will tolerate and that is really a low end for me.
My avg EPC is close to what is considered to be rock bottom. Obviously I'm doing something wrong, although I can't imagine what it could be.
So either I'm doing something wrong, or the bids for content ads in less competitive areas (i.e. other than pharma, gambling, webhosting etc) are close to low end, due to low competition between potential advertisers.
Most of the so-called "Made for AdSense" sites target the high pay keywords in the highly competitive niches. In some of these niches, AdWords advertisers are out number of AdSense publishers. That is a reason why the CPCs for the keywords are so inflated. CPC can be as high as $30+ such as in debt consolidation, auto loan, injury lawyers, mesothelioma ... Some advertisers in these niches have devised a way to advertise in the content sites instead of going for the top spot in the search or making a bidding war. The devise is to pay per click from search at a high price and about 1/10 to 1/5 of the cost for the content sites. By doing this, they still get ahead with ROI from the content sites.
AdSense publishers, therefore, have been received the double discount. First, the discount from the Advertisers and second is the smart pricing.
