Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Is this just me or is anyone else noticing this?
OK, but what do you think about the study and the fact that online users are NOT impulse/"moment of decision" buyers?
They aren't? Are you saying that my affiliate earnings are illusory? :-)
...would like to be in Google's shoes then. But I wouldn't like to be one of Adsense publishers.
There are issues to be dealt with as a publisher certainly, but the viability of contextual advertising is not one of them.
If you think AdSense publishers have a poor future, tell us why! Because it is definitely not a problem with contextual advertising itself.
edited for clarity
[edited by: OnlyToday at 9:16 pm (utc) on Dec. 11, 2007]
If you think AdSense publishers have a poor future, tell us why! Because it is definitely not a problem with contextual advertising itself.
I think it is the problem with contextual advertising itself. It has too much limits and works/worked well only with very inexperienced Internet users. The problem is that there are less and less such users online so the idea of contextual ads has no chances to grow.
They aren't? Are you saying that my affiliate earnings are illusory? :-)
Make up your mind, it's not that hard...
And yet AdSense continues to bring in more money every quarter.
Do you suggest an average publisher made more money in 2007 versus 2003-2006? I don't think so.
But that has nothing to do with the effectiveness of contextual ads. With contextual ads Google not only makes record profits but spends obscene amounts on new hires, equipment, companies and other acquisitions.
If you continue to pose contradictory arguments in the same thread you will injure your brain. You've already damaged your credibilty.
And yet AdSense continues to bring in more money every quarter.
Do you suggest an average publisher made more money in 2007 versus 2003-2006? I don't think so.
But that has nothing to do with the effectiveness of contextual ads. With contextual ads Google not only makes record profits but spends obscene amounts on new hires, equipment, companies and other acquisitions.
So the overall effect of the end of the contextual ads era will be seen in a year/a couple of years at the latest.
Granted the concept evolves as the public's awareness of it increases but Google is not standing still either.
I think your analysis of contextual ad growth and your conjecture about the demise of contextual ads is absurd, but like all predictions only time will tell.
The problem with AdSense is that Google has allowed a lot MFAs to carry the ads. Advertisers aren't given the option to choose between a quality magazine and a free paper that sits just inside the grocery store door and is nothing but ads.
I think if a program was started where the advertiser paid depending on the quality of the location where the ads will be shown the program would be more viable. Advertisers want to know the quality of the sites where the ads will be displayed and visitors need to be able to trust that when they click on the ad there will be a actual product and not a phony survey or a page with more ads.
I think your analysis of contextual ad growth and your conjecture about the demise of contextual ads is absurd, but like all predictions only time will tell.
I think if a program was started where the advertiser paid depending on the quality of the location where the ads will be shown the program would be more viable
Wasn't this the intended purpose of smartpricing?
I don't see anything that could change a steady drop in Adsense earnings (and that will affect both Google and the publishers).
Maybe employing an army of the brightest engineers and other geniuses in silicon valley and now all over the world could. I wouldn't underestimate Google. And I still don't believe that the effectiveness of contextual advertising is eroding. I think your premise is flawed. There is a constant supply of new advertisers arriving from other, less accountable media.
[edited by: OnlyToday at 11:50 pm (utc) on Dec. 11, 2007]
I think it is the problem with contextual advertising itself. It has too much limits and works/worked well only with very inexperienced Internet users.
As anyone who's worked in the advertising business can tell you, keyword targeting is only part of the puzzle. Audience is just as important. Put a dealer ad for the Widgetco WC-1 digital SLR in front of a photography enthusiast who's reading a review of that camera, and there's a good chance that a click will convert. Put that same ad in front of a NEW YORK DAILY NEWS reader or someone who landed on a scraper site, and the click probably won't convert.
The biggest problem faced by many AdSense publishers is that they aren't reaching motivated audiences. Their readers or users aren't looking for ways to spend money. If the AdSense publisher has a site that exists mainly as an ad platform, the problem is even worse, because users are likely to have clicked through from a SERP (where they ignored the AdWords ads) and the only value added by the AdSense site is to provide another opportunity for users to click. What's more, if users do click, they're unlikely to convert for the advertiser because they were just looking for information and haven't been brought to the "moment of decision" by what they've been reading (as they might have been on the aforementioned camera-review site).
Fact is, contextual advertising does work. If it didn't work, advertisers (who can track ROI) wouldn't be using it. That doesn't mean contextual advertising always works from a publisher's perspective. If you're just slapping ads on a forum or a page of product listings or a directory site, you're going to earn less and less as Google and its advertisers get better at determining the actual net value of clicks from a given audience.
As anyone who's worked in the advertising business can tell you, keyword targeting is only part of the puzzle. Audience is just as important.
"AdSense for content automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers ads (you can choose both text or image ads) that are relevant to your audience and your site content's ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful."
"AdSense for content automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers ads (you can choose both text or image ads) that are relevant to your audience and your site content's ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful."
Do you suggest an average publisher made more money in 2007 versus 2003-2006? I don't think so.
That's not a meaningful question, unless the increase in publishers matches the increase in advertising dollars. For example, if there are 10 time more publishers now than in 2003, but only double the advertising dollars, then of course the "average" publisher is going to make less.
After reading all your comments I think what happened is that your revenue has gone down, so you assume that's true for everyone else. but that's not the case.
Do a search for "IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report" The most recent report title is: "Internet Advertising Revenues Continue to Soar, Reach Nearly $10 Billion in First Half of '07"
But it seems it should be Google's job to match the ads to the audience of your website.
Trouble is, simply matching ads to the audience isn't enough, because not all audiences are good commercial prospects. For example, if you have a freebies site, your audience won't generate as much revenue as the audience of a site for wealthy widget collectors.
OK, but what do you think about the study and the fact that online users are NOT impulse/"moment of decision" buyers?
menial, I think that study lacks authority. It was done nearly three years ago by scanalert, the HackerSafe people. The intent is to make merchants feel they need a trust logo to speed up the purchase cycle.
Regardless, everyone knows there are segments to the purchasing cycle, and ways to zero in on consumers on the buying part of it.
Can we pretty please get back to the topic of this discussion? :)
Hey Anne, could this have anything at all, even a little, to do with their being less areas to click on an AdSense ad?
[adsense.blogspot.com...]
Although I don't use channels to track individual adsense ads on specific pages, I do use tracking on my affiliate text links, (and analytics to see which keywords drive traffic to particular pages) and my best converters are always the pages that attract the most visitors with phrases like "widget x review" or "widget x vs widget y".
In my case the success of these affiliate links could mean that my adsense ctr is declining (affiliate revenue way up - but it is xmas) - But I'm sure these pages must be good converters for my adsense advertisers too, if their landing pages are well optimised.
As efv says, as adwords advertisers become more savvy with their targeting, and they are given the tools to do so, I think the better converting sites will continue to make money whereas the others will see a steep drop off in revenue.
The caveat to all this is the way that the number of adsense publishers is increasing faster that the number of adwords users, so the "money pot" is being spread more thinly, even amongst good converting websites.
Not sure if that make sense actually. Off to write more (targetted) content.
1.) Bad Advertisers:
Bad quality of ads cause of scrapper sites, MFA sites, arbitrage sites, sites with spyware that advertise through google adwords
2.) Familiarity with the Ads
Almost everyone now a days knows what adsense ads look like. Especially after Google went ahead and allowed ads to be displayed on blogspot blogs.
As a person familiar with adsense and the crappy ads they provide, I will certainly refrain from clicking them.
Do you click adsense ads on other websites? Most probably not. Why? Cause you are familiar with adsense ads and the quality of sites you are likely to get when you click.
You are better off doing a search on google and clicking on the organic listings than clicking on a crappy adsense ad.
Only way google could avert the situation is by bringing some freshness to the ads.
- May be remove 'ads by google' mark
- Remove the current standard ad style of displaying a link, followed by text, followed by website url. Come on guys, how long are you planning to follow this same old boring ad style?
- Give more freedom to the publishers
3.) Sites hosted on free servers displaying ads
Most of the arbitrage sites are free blogspot blogs. And these are the real cause of the problem.
Google should consider reversing its decision to allow blogspot blogs and other freely hosted websites to display ads.
If changes are not done quickly, then in the near future, we would experience almost negligible clicks on the ads when almost everyone knows what adsense is and the crappy misleading ads it displays.
- May be remove 'ads by google' mark
If they did that, then the CTR would skyrocket, but cause too many invalid clicks.
Going from 10,000 impressions, 1000 clicks (CTR = 10%) at .05 per click = $50.00 per day.
To having 10,000 impressions, 600 clicks (CTR = 6%) at .10 per click = $60.00 per day.
I wish all this was happening during my higher traffic times.
[blog.efrontier.com...]
Across 70 advertisers spending on AdSense, CTR went down 12% but CPC went up 13%. Interesting data, so thought I would share.
-Shorebreak
