Forum Moderators: martinibuster
1) Lack of quality
The Adsense system is so full of $§%#! "advertisers" that it is NO WONDER that income is dropping across the board for me, and for several other WW members as well. As long as Google is completely unable/unwilling to clean their house with regards to both advertisers or publishers, prices will continue to drop. Like a rock.
If I were a quality advertiser, I would not want to be associated with (i.e. see my ads running on) some of the sites Adsense is running on. But also I would not be happy with the guys I am sharing the adblock with. The quality of the other ads in an adblock reflects on MY brand as well. And Adsense quality is simply down the drain.
I was running an empty filter list for some time now. Then I had a look at the preview tool again. All the usual suspects were there, grinning at me happily: the guys who are still switching the domain names every other week for their fishy "campaigns", the guys who are removing browser controls, several dozens of parked pages, a handfull of email harvesters. Quality score? User experience? Hah.
WHY DOES GOOGLE ALLOW SHADY ADVERTISERS IN?
WHY DOES GOOGLE ALLOW SHADY PUBLISHERS IN?
I do not get it.
(Of course, I understand. The only possible answer is - money. They need the money, and they do not care how the money comes in.)
2) Lack of information and control
Yeah, this one is a big issue for me since the very first days of Adsense: the absolute lack of information coming from the holy guys in Mountain View. I hate it. Really. I want to be able to control which ads run on my sites, I want to see how they perform click-wise, and I want to see how they perform money-wise. I want to be able to kick out any "advertiser" who does not perform well and/or who does not pass my quality check. But Google is apparently unable to even announce system maintenances in a meaningful way.
WHY IS GOOGLE SO RESTRICTIVE WITH INFORMATION CONCERNING ADSENSE?
WHY IS GOOGLE SO RESTRICTIVE WITH INFORMATION IN GENERAL?
(Duh! Of course, I understand. The only possible answer is money. They are so scared that the information they give out may blow down their house of cards, and all the money with it, that they just do not give out any meaningful information. How they can get away with this is beyond me.)
I am very close to pulling all Adsense blocks from my sites. Yep. Google has finally made it. They might not even notice, but I will have a very good feeling once I do that. I am beyond frustration. I am tired.
Tired of trying to understand Google, tired of reading "optimization tips" that do not work, tired of seeing eCPM fluctuating by up to 100% from one day to another, tired of playing whack-a-mole with shady advertisers, tired of reading threads like this one. In fact, I am tired of this whole Adsense stuff.
The idea of Adsense is brilliant, it's execution is mediocre.
Standard disclaimer: I know that some niches pay better than others, I know that I should not put all eggs in one basket, I know that I can leave Adsense at any time, I know that Google has all the right in the world to protect their valuable business information, I know that I should be grateful and humble that they let me make them money. I know I know I know.
I know that some niches pay better than others...
Well, that's good that you know that. If money is important to you, then that is a good thing to not only be aware of but actually act on. Have you experimented with finding other niches that work better for you? I'm just trying to be helpful, looking for solutions and give you encouragement.
Many of the most successful people I know have experienced many non-successes for every one success they've created. Many of the successful people I know are still throwing things up on the wall and finding that some things stick and many others don't. It's not unusual to find that something doesn't generate the expected revenue. It has happened to me on some projects where I expected something would work and it flamed. And I'm not saying that it's your website that is broken, either.
Good luck with whatever choices you make.
Worse than that, it makes it harder to take you seriously, and much harder to separate the serious points you are trying to make from the 'standard whinge' "Google Ain't Makin Me Rich".
In what way do you feel that 'shady advertisers' are bad for Adsense? So long as they pay for their ads, then they surely increase the money in the pool?
Just asking!
As for shady publishers, I simply don't know what you mean. Most of us resent MFA sites - but is that your problem? Please be more specific.
As for your other points, you seem upset that Google wants to make money ... how do you think you will get rich if Google do not get rich too? Adsense 101 says that when you sign up, you tie your success to their success; despite your standard disclaimer, it seems that you and Adsense have totally different business models in mind; it is therefore impossible for them to be 'right' for you.
If, as I strongly suspect, 'control' is the big issue - then you have little choice but to manage your own ads. No-one offers the service you seek, and it's pretty unlikely that anyone ever will. It's no different in the 'real world' - publishers can vetoe advertisers (and therefore choose to reduce their income), or go with the flow. No advertiser can force anyone to pay to be seen on their property. It doesn't work like that. Never did, almost certainly never will.
Good Luck.
Of course G wants to make money, so do I. I just try to find a balance with what is on offer and what I want.
Of course I also get many 1 - 3 cent clicks but then I also get 60 cents to USD 1.00 clicks, so on the average, it works out. Also, it is not only MFA's that pay low, ..any website with a High QS pays low.
The trick is to find a niche that has good competition and good demand for its products, especially products that are relatively easy to sell on the net. As your site converts, you WILL get high paying ads. Conversions is the name of the game.
Best of Luck with your ventures.
In what way do you feel that 'shady advertisers' are bad for Adsense? So long as they pay for their ads, then they surely increase the money in the pool?
Erm. Yes, if you are thinking "short term", then I definitely agree. They bring in some cents.
However, I have been always thinking "long-term". Certainly I get distracted by short-term needs now and then (e.g. paying the mortgage), but my sites have been up since long before Google was introducing the Adsense program, long before their IPO.
When I introduced Adsense to my sites (ages ago), I was stunned by the product. It was generating solid money, and I had not even optimized it. Back then, I was seeing an upward trend, i.e. a small revenue growth every month. It was worthwhile to consider it for longterm money generation.
I added a lot of unique content since then. Google search loves my sites more than ever. My visitors love my sites more than ever. Traffic is growing year by year. Yet, the revenue trend is down. I feel ripped off. (Note: this is not about "getting rich" - I just ask for a fair compensation for the effort I am putting into creating the content and publishing it to the web.)
As I said in my post, I strongly believe that the lack of quality control leads to a mediocre perceived quality by users, and ultimately to a lack of quality of the program itself. Which causes a general pull away from Adsense on the advertisers side. And I 100% understand the (honest) advertisers. I have seen MFA sites that should never be admitted to the program in the first place, so MFA were these. Stolen/scraped content, a bunch of ad rectangles, a catchy domain name. Bingo. Easy to detect, easy to swat. Why they were admitted is beyond me. And yes, nobody could explain to me why parked pages are admitted to advertise using Adwords. Where is the VALUE in this?
My post was not intended as a rant about seasonal fluctuations. It's about a proven downward trend for me. Yep, for me only. It's not about you. If you are making good money, congrats! All the best for your future projects.
But I feel that the Adsense program -as good as its intentions/ideas/visions were when introduced- is in a lousy state today. Looking at complaints from other people (again, this may not be you) I get the feeling that I am not the only one who badly misses the quality aspect of Adsense.
But back to your question - shady advertisers and publishers throw a bad light on your site and on the Google Adsense program. People actually remember that clicking those nasty text links may be foolish, especially if there is the "Ads by Google" logo somewhere close to the link. "Could be an ad. Caution! That led you to a useless junk page the last time you clicked. Caution! Do not click this link! Caution!"
That's why I am seeing (again, my sites only) decreasing CTR. People simply stay away from ads that promise something and keep nothing.
Also, in another post I outlined the business model behind, for example, parked pages:
Advertiser advertises on YPN
> YPN buys traffic from (parking provider)
> Parking provider buys traffic from shady advertiser
> Shady advertiser buys traffic from Google Adsense
> Google Adsense buys MY traffic
In order to make this a profitable business model, every participant has to earn money. I.e. YPN, the parking provider, and the shady advertiser pocket money that could have been directed to Google directly. I get only cents were I could earn dollars. THIS makes me sick.
Shady advertisers withdraw money from the online advertising market. Otherwise they would not be in this. They do not add money.
But I understand that certain publishers/advertisers have a sound interest in not discussing these issues, because they love to work unseen in the dark.
You ofcourse make some valid points.
It is bad policy of G to allow parked pages in adSense.
MFA control is weak.
Removal of above requires policy change in G and strict quality control which G seems to 'lack'. Lack of intent, I suppose.
However all said and done, adSense works for me. In my country, this program is a godsend. We have nothing even close to it. So we take things with a pinch of salt.
AdSense is a tool. If it works for you, great. If not, why agonize over it? Go ahead and pull the ads. That's what I did on my writing site, where nearly all of the ads were shady at best, and I felt a lot better afterwards.
Standard disclaimer: I know that some niches pay better than others, I know that I should not put all eggs in one basket, I know that I can leave Adsense at any time, I know that Google has all the right in the world to protect their valuable business information, I know that I should be grateful and humble that they let me make them money. I know I know I know.
The guy just needs some moral support to help him make the right decision, and providing support is what we're here for. :-)
They are so scared that the information they give out may blow down their house of cards, and all the money with it, that they just do not give out any meaningful information. How they can get away with this is beyond me.
Oh - that's very simple actually - the answer is no meaningful competition. When (and if) Yahoo or Microsoft or anybody gets their act together and creates something comparable, Google will be forced to start changing their ways.
I share your frustration (albeit not to the same degree) with AdSense. My biggest complaint is the lack of transparency and what I suspect to be a very shady way of "rationing" of money (eCPM seems to adjust down for higher traffic - especially originating from Google itself, goes up with lower impression volume). I am also dumbfounded as to how they can get away with not disclosing the % they share with publishers. But hey - what can I do? In my niche there are NO VIABLE ALTERNATIVES.
Of course, I understand. The only possible answer is ...
Actually, there are several plausible alternative explanations. Google may not share certain information if they feel that it would make it easier for people to engage in the type of abuse you decry. Adsense is a complex kluge constantly in flux; they may not be able to describe everything in detail before it changes again.
I see part of your point - for many publishers, Adsense is not the bonazana it once was. I have thought about pulling it, but chose to diversify instead. On my best sites, the value of clicks has gone up over the past few months - what started out higher once dropped to pennies or a dime a click, but 50 cent or higher clicks have come back in the past few months ...
I guess what I am saying is you don't have to throw out the baby with the bath water. Just be selective about where you use AdSense.
I am also dumbfounded as to how they can get away with not disclosing the % they share with publishers.
1) The folks at Google tell publishers, "Earn money from your site," but they don't promise a specific percentage. The relevant metrics become earnings (for everyone) and eCPM (for publishers who want to compare the performace of AdSense to that of other revenue sources on their sites).
2) Many of us understand that Google would be foolish to reveal information that could help competitors cherrypick the AdSense publisher network.
More users than last year on more content .. one basically works against increasing ad blindness...
The more ads you put on, the more you devalue your site, especially with pseudo lefty WP around ..
IMHO, it's always a mistake to think that the entire world looks like the view from your kitchen window.
So true EFV so true ;)
Adsense is dropping
Not according to Google's quarterly earnings reports.
Of course, if growth in the number of publishers' pages exceeds growth in the amount of money being spent on advertising, individual publishers' shares of the total may be dropping in some cases.
I don't doubt Google, at the top of this one tiered pyramid scheme, hasn't reached its maximum point. And there will be publishers that will do better, it's kinda in the normal distribution thingy, that usually happens with living beings .. maybe it's a beta, gamma, log normal whatever distribution. ;)
Still it remains interesting what will happen when Google has reached it's maximum point.
Still it remains interesting what will happen when Google has reached it's maximum point.
Any "maximum point" is likely to be a long way off, and whatever effect dilution or slower growth will have on individual publishers is likely to be less significant than changes like placement reports (which are already here), site-targeted contextual ads (which are on the way), and refinements in smart pricing, allocation of ads, and how revenue shares are calculated.
Any "maximum point" is likely to be a long way off...
Regardless, it still remains interesting to see what will happen once more industries reach higher levels of inventory. Already there are industries with too much inventory.
In one scenario, advertisers ability to site target will raise the boats of sites perceived (real or not) to be quality. What should be interesting to publishersis if advertisers definition of quality has to do with site design and content, strictly ROI, or a combination of both.
What should be interesting to publishersis if advertisers definition of quality has to do with site design and content, strictly ROI, or a combination of both.
I'd guess a combination of both, in many instances. And why not, if there's enough AdSense inventory to let an advertiser block a domain because of junk content and/or low conversions? The greater the inventory, the more freedom of choice advertisers will have.
advertisers definition of quality has to do with site design and content, strictly ROI, or a combination of both.
Don't forget reputation.
If you can build a good ad sense site that ranks well and gets a ton of traffic, you can also build a good eCommerce site that converts as well.
Only if you can stay interested long enough to do it. :-)
Google CAN'T offer more transparency. It'd be great if they could, but realistically, they just plain can't. There are far too many barbarians at the gate. Google's competitors, MFA scammers, AdWords scammers, God only knows what all. As garbagey as you think the network is now, on the advertising and the publishing side - how much worse would it be if everyone out there knew exactly how to manipulate it to their own benefit?
If people were not forever trying to SPAM G and its users, G *would* be more open, I'm entirely sure about that. But the scam artists are there, and so G has to be more circumspect, which hurts us all. These crimes are not victimless, whatever the perps may convince themselves of.
Rgds
Damon
If all lay open, nothing would change. Now everybody operates on nearly no info, equal information for all parties, if all info lay open, all would again have the same level of info. The only one loosing their information monopoly would be Google and it would hand control to the bad and good ones.
Information monopoly is money and power. A viable and understandable business decision on their part, but not a charity event.
If you know how it works and the spammer knows how it works, you have control. If Google gives no info we just sit and wait and hope and pray and waste our time in forums .. convincing ourself that God is good and will deal with Satan .. and that all that mean behaviour is good for us.
There is no alien tin hat here, just a sensible business decision for Google, but not for us.
Stockholm syndrome ... although we would like more Lima syndrome, well the webmastertools are a start, I suppose.. ;)
All info open would be like WP, first anarchy, then commitees and subcommitees and so on and we would run through the whole social evolution again in search. WP will probably soon discover that, oh wonder, maybe people which have degrees would be a well qualified to edit an article ...
Well there are swikis, let's see were this goes.
But for Google it obviously would be idiotic to give away their trade secrets, but that doesn't mean they operate in my interest.
Why do people always have to attribute to Googles business decisions some charity touch? Good G marketing I guess.
One can learn a lot from them. :)
But for Google it obviously would be idiotic to give away their trade secrets, but that doesn't mean they operate in my interest.Why do people always have to attribute to Googles business decisions some charity touch? Good G marketing I guess.
Who said anything about a charity touch? Its in Google's best interest not to be more transparent; if the network gets trashier than it is now, they ultimately have more to lose than we do.
And I don't expect Google to operate in my best interest, or anyone's best interest but their own. When our interests coincide, everything's great. When they diverge, then it's time for me to find something else, not whine about what they're not doing for me anymore.
When our interests coincide, everything's great. When they diverge, then it's time for me to find something else, not whine about what they're not doing for me anymore.
Well said!
On another note, which may be more or less relevant to this thread, I'd caution anyone about reacting too quickly to seemingly serious changes in the way things are going.
Who said anything about a charity touch? Its in Google's best interest not to be more transparent; if the network gets trashier than it is now, they ultimately have more to lose than we do.
I don't think i would get trashier after a certain period. Given the yin and yang nature of things, an open policy would find another equilibrium. WP is proof of that. On the other things we agree anyway.
