Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Our previous ASA is transitioning to a new role within Google, so I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be your new ASA.
I really look forward to working with you.
Fire away!
ASA
Bottomline, give us more power to combat low quality and low paying ads.
My filter is filled with maybe 50 times the same content on different domains, quick money and have soon Your yacht, luxury villa and luxury car.
Today I checked ads on my sites, again the same #*$!.
It's like the fight against the Hydra, whe You put one domain in the filter, they bring 2 new domains.
I could replace 50 entries in my filter just with one entry of a typical phrase on the landing page.
Well , if we get the tool, it should be interesting..Not holding my breath..or maybe I should..
The market will react VERY fast, believe me. The result will be another market balance, possibly eliminating some of the market participants.
"Market balance" and "eliminating some of the market participants" sounds like a good argument for not implementing publisher-set minimums: Using that argument, publishers who are awash in with penny ads for "fight belly fat" will leave the network, creating more competition among advertisers for the remaining impressions and clicks. Ad quality will rise, making the content network more attractive to niche advertisers who are willing to bid decent amounts for true "contextual" clicks from targeted audiences.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned here is the fact that many types of sites or content aren't ideal venues for contextual ads. As time goes by, Google and advertisers will continue to refine their techniques for buying and allocating ads, blocking publishers whose traffic doesn't convert, etc. We've come a long way from the days before smart pricing or separate bidding for the search and content networks, and the evolutionary process isn't over yet.
How can you guys assume that any advertiser who pays low is scum?
I believe "scum" is being defined as low-paying.
Thus the no-ethics ambulance-chasing personal-injury attorney who pays $15 per click becomes royalty and the grandma who is selling her handmade pot holders to raise money to buy seeing-eye dogs for blind children and pays $.02 per click becomes scum - even if that wasn't the publisher's intended outcome.
FarmBoy
"Market balance" and "eliminating some of the market participants" sounds like a good argument for not implementing publisher-set minimums: Using that argument, publishers who are awash in with penny ads for "fight belly fat" will leave the network, creating more competition among advertisers for the remaining impressions and clicks. Ad quality will rise, making the content network more attractive to niche advertisers who are willing to bid decent amounts for true "contextual" clicks from targeted audiences.
Sorry, you've lost me here.
What's wrong with improved ad quality, a more attractive content network, and decent amounts for true contextual clicks?
and the evolutionary process isn't over yet.
And the very nature of any evolution usually means that those who take the lead win.
s_j you know that the Elbonian Free Press daily does not attract the same type of advertiser nor make the same profit levels of the Elbonian Premium Press monthly. They are completely different markets and AdSense needs to address those issues.
If ALL sales were solely about price then Ikea would not exist and be in such demand meanwhile B&Q (similar to Homebase in the US I believe) would not be in such a mess.
Pile it high and sell crap supposedly at competitive prices has been seen for what it is...
I do not want "ebay type" ads on my sites, it is that simple and if I were to be given the option of filtering out those advertisers surely that is MY choice.
There is no option but a "one size fits all" with AdSense at present, surely publishers should be allowed to have the choice of bespoke tailoring, after all, the advertisers do have fairly comprehensive options in comparison?
And I would bet that there are those sites with squillions of page impressions per day that would be quite happy to have the low EPC advertisers since they are catering to the undecided masses for whatever widget genre they target.
There is no right or wrong AdSense fit, and let's be clear that this programme has only been running a few years with absolutely no precedent therefore there are bound to be cock-ups from all sides, however Google will have to listen to the concerns of all publishers and advertisers alike to develop the best (yes I wrote that) and easily implementable advertising scheme ever.
The AdWords/AdSense programme will be a completely different animal in 2-3 years than it is now without a doubt and (compliments again!) it is quite possible that this ASA is the person to kick some butt and get our concerned voices heard.
So far this ASA has contributed more in one week than all others ASAs put together.
Purr......:-)
Still, if Google wants to let publishers set minimum bids, it's welcome to do so. Any such decision will be based on Google's view of the bigger picture, not just on what recipients of "fight belly fat" ads want.
The solution isn't increasing minimum bids, it's increasing advertisers (and competition).
I agree with martinibuster's observation and I've felt this way for years.
Adwords advertisers, who are not unlike most banner network advertisers (e.g. CJ, Linkshare, Google/Doubleclick), probably don't care to have their ads displayed on certain sites (for fear of low ROI).
For those of you who opt out of placement-targeting, this may be something worth considering when thinking about how Google can offer better incentives to Adwords advertisers in an effort to draw them into the content network.
If more enter the content network, more competition will create higher bidding.
Adwords advertisers, who are not unlike most banner network advertisers (e.g. CJ, Linkshare, Google/Doubleclick), probably don't care to have their ads displayed on certain sites (for fear of low ROI).
This may be a bit off-topic (like much of this thread), but it ties in with what you just said. ComScore has been publicizing a concept called "view-through" (DoubleClick uses the term "post-impression"), a relatively new metric that measures the impact of display ads on visits to advertisers' sites. The idea is to drop a cookie when a reader sees an ad. If the reader later visits the advertiser's site independently (as opposed to via a clickthrough), the cookie is recognized and the visitor is registered as someone who's seen the advertiser's ad.
The "view-through" concept may not be directly relevant to CPC contextual ads, but it's easy to imagine it being harnessed by AdSense for CPM placement-targeted ads down the road. If and when that occurs, placement-targeted ads could become much more valuable for publishers who deliver quality "view-through" traffic to advertisers.
"View-through" is just one example of new metrics and tools that are becoming available to advertisers--and that are bound to help some publishers while hurting others.
Hop on the reality bus - if you want more control, you do not want to limit yourself to the easiest ad system on the planet to implement. THAT is what you give up in return for not having to do any work other than designing how your ad block looks and where to put it. THAT is the contract.
In the grand scheme of things, there's a pretty long advertiser wishlist in the other forum, and I'd be willing to bet that that list gets implemented first. That's where the money comes from. (And spare me about how Google can't live without the Content Network or our individual sites - 95% of the Content Network never heard of WebmasterWorld and probably 85% of it is perfectly happy to let AdSense do all the work and collect that check every month. ) As was said above - the advertisers are driving this boat.
There was slow motion stabbing and Carmina Burana playing in the background a couple of pages back.. But he's still here, not sure if being a guy has anything to do with it ..
netmeg, while agree with you about the complaining extremes, the lack of viable alternatives is very real.
At pubcon a guy with a video site asked about organic link building. Sugarrae took a look at his rankings and backlinks and told him links aren't his problem. The video guy has over 3 million unique users every month and Rae told him something along the lines of, "Why are you trying to monetize your site with webmaster welfare? Get a publicist in Los Angeles who can hook your site up with the right people in Hollywood who would be more than happy to throw a lot of money at you for those 3 million sets of eyeballs every month. Your problem is that you're under-monetized. You need to get out and make some deals."
Reading through this thread you'd think things were horrible out there. Let me take a moment for a different point of view.
I had websites long before AdSense appeared. Mostly very niche informational sites - not selling anything - just providing a resource.
I starting using AdSense as an experiment - hoping to cover the basic costs of the site (domain name, hosting, etc.) - and it has exceeding all my expectations.
I'm not saying its perfect - but its covered my basic costs with lots of extras (new/better hardware and software) with plenty leftover.
So I just want to say: Thank You!
The publishers are the "river" that the boat is driving on.
":^)
Either way, a lot of you have a good handle on the ads ecosystem. I'm impressed.
Here's another question for you: If you were able to set a minimum CPC/CPM bid for an ad slot, would that reserve price be private or public? In other words, would an advertiser be able to see the minimum bid you set?
From an auction theory perspective, whether the reserve price is public or private makes a difference in the way the auction plays out, both in the behavior of the buyer (the advertiser) and in the final price for the seller (the publisher).
I'm going to share your feedback either way, but it's an interesting thing to think about.
ASA
Here's another question for you: If you were able to set a minimum CPC/CPM bid for an ad slot, would that reserve price be private or public? In other words, would an advertiser be able to see the minimum bid you set?
I'd say public. I'd want an advertiser to know up front the amount he would need to bid for his ad to show up in my slot - no need for him to offer a bid only to find out it isn't enough and not know how much is enough.
FarmBoy
So I say make it public at the start and let's "get it on", as they say in Ultimate Fighting.
Here's another question for you: If you were able to set a minimum CPC/CPM bid for an ad slot, would that reserve price be private or public? In other words, would an advertiser be able to see the minimum bid you set?
If that ability were to be made available I might try it to see if it works and if it works well. My feeling is that I'd want the reserve price to be private.
I'd want an advertiser to know up front the amount he would need to bid for his ad to show up in my slot - no need for him to offer a bid only to find out it isn't enough and not know how much is enough.
Yes, I think there is no reason to not let the advertizer know the 'entrance fee' for a certain site.
If his ads show up is still a realtime result of the auction, but he knows the minimum bid to take part and thus more transparency for the advertizer.
We should know someone is bidding on our ad slots (something I can't see in the Ad control center now)
martinibuster,
Talking about site traffic quality & volume being a factor as well as acquiring direct advertisers has nothing to do with there being no other contextual PPC player that can contend with AdSense, but I digress in favor of the features & wish lists being discussed now.
From an auction theory perspective, whether the reserve price is public or private makes a difference in the way the auction plays out, both in the behavior of the buyer (the advertiser) and in the final price for the seller (the publisher).
Since the advertiser now knows the only possible reserve we could set is "0", letting them know what we have as a (slightly) higher reserve doesn't make much difference and in the interest of transparency: sure let them know it.
ASA, advertiser should see the minimum bid, but publishers too should be able to easily opt in and out of this feature.
Seconded...
1) Advertisers can't do placement (a.k.a. site-specific) bidding for CPC ads, can they? Until they can, displaying a minimum bid for the publisher's ad slot won't accomplish much unless the publisher is getting a significant number of non-contextual CPM ads.
2) A demand for publisher-set minimums isn't likely to be met by Google for a simple reason: It goes against one of AdSense's fundamental principles, which is the use of automation to sell, allocate, and assign value to CPC ads. I can't see Google being willing to let rank-and-file publishers override its "black box." To borrow a phrase from netmeg, AdSense "is what it is," and ceding control over pricing to publishers would turn it into a different product.
A demand for publisher-set minimums isn't likely to be met by Google for a simple reason: It goes against one of AdSense's fundamental principles, which is the use of automation to sell, allocate, and assign value to CPC ads. I can't see Google being willing to let rank-and-file publishers override its "black box." To borrow a phrase from netmeg, AdSense "is what it is," and ceding control over pricing to publishers would turn it into a different product.
I think implementation is rather simple. The complete algo as is stays in place. The algo decides which ads to show for a particular site/page. After the algo decided, it's matched against the min. bid from the publisher. If the publisher decided it's too low either no or an alternative (house) ad is shown. It won't give the better ads to publishers that want higher bids they just loose bottom line earnings as requested (not wanting to loose a visitor for less than $X).
[edited by: Bddmed at 5:16 pm (utc) on Nov. 20, 2008]
with all due respect, don't you think we should let the ideas flow towards ASA (who appears to be finally listening) instead of discussing why Google might NOT implement certain features? Shouldn't we show Google ways how to implement things (like Bddmed does) instead of saying "it goes against one of AdSense's fundamental principles"?
I understand that ASA is listening. Google will know what to make of this information.
