Forum Moderators: martinibuster
The tools state that they can 'learn and optimize' the best colors, placement, ad size, and even the best ad providor, and present just the right ad for the current visitor, at the current time, on the current page. They are supposed to free you from making these decisions, testing them, then turning around for another iteration, by learning about your site and visitors, and optimizing on the fly.
This reminds me of the innovation of AdSense's contextual text, matching the text of the ad to the text of the web page. This was really innovative at the time, and obviously very effective. Seems as though doing the same for colors, placement, size, ad providor, etc., would be just as effective for the bottom line.
Without being specific about which company is great and who sucks at it (since it's so new and all are in beta let's give them a break), can we discuss this concept, whether it has a future, whether it violates Google's ToS, and whether anyone else thinks this is likely to turn things upside down over the next year?
My belief is that, if you can optimize the ad providor, issues like the recent lowering of eCPM simply goes away. In theory (again, no one knows if any company can deliver this, it's very new) if the eCPM lowers then the tool will automatically shift to a different ad providor.
Seems like this would put a pretty big scare into Google. Right now, I'm all AdSense simply because it's soooo easy, and I'm soooo lazy. But, if I have a tool optimizing ad providors for me, I could be shifted from AdSense and not even know it until the check arrives (except for my crazy 'got to check the numbers' habit four hundred times a day...) Got to be scaring the heck out of Google, that a bad week of eCPMs could cost them customers. Takes the loyalty/lazy thing out of the picture and replaces it with raw cash.
Of course, that forces Google et. al. to improve, and I like that.
If nothing else, I kind of like the idea of colors/placement/size optimization through machine learning. I suck at that.
Anyway, does anyone think this is a good idea? Is anyone currently pursuing this, and able to share their experiences without being too specific about the companies involved?
UNFORTUNATELY, the fee is that 3% of the ad space goes to their own ads. I was uncomfortable with that for several reasons, even if it would result in enough revenue to offset that.
