Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Jenstar said in another thread:....I have seen extremely targeted AdSense on forums....
There is one well known active forum board I visit which has extremely well targeted high-paying Adsense and rare PSA's. I could never figure out why their ads are so good while some of my sites have poor targeting or excessive PSA's?
Upon looking into the issue it turns out that forum owner is a so called Premium Publisher. It has been reported by credible sources (including said to me by the forum owner himself) he is allowed by Google to modify the adsense javascript, adding 1 small extra line of code.
That extra line of code (which I will not copy here to not give non-premium publishers any ideas to do the same) is a short url/page referral line. The premium webmaster can modify it at any time by simply changing the url of the 3rd party website who's ads he wishes his adsense to target.
What that means is that in effect the same ads which would appear on the other site based on the other websites content, will then be on your site. So let us assume your forum (or any website for that matter) is discussing a specific subject today or a recent issue, which does not have adsense optimized for those keywords/subject, or perhaps your regular ads are not good, or PSA.
All the webmaster needs to do is find a 3rd party web-site targeted to the keywords which would display excellent ads on his subject (and I assume he would also seek out high paying ones too!), and then simply change the page referral url to that site and his adsense gets targeted toward that other website immidiately. I assume he could do this as often as he wants, perhaps daily, weekly, or even several times a day if he wishes.
It is somewhat understandable G wants to give preferential treatment and extra help and consideration to Premium Publishers but at the same time it;s alleged as being discriminatory and biased against regular publishers.
After all, a big publisher is already making lots of revenue so why should he earn even a larger income than normal with permission to modify the javascript so easily? However, if a regular publisher does that he is in serious violation of the TOS. It just does not seem at all fair.
An additional negative you may not think of is that the big publishers by doing so would seem to end-up grabbing vast numbers of the better high payout keyword ads thus potentially depleting the supply available to small publishers. That would seem to eventually lead to a lack of ad inventory and likely be a major reason why so many of us often see poor targeting, or worse yet too many PSA's.
Any feedback or opinions on this important issue are appreciated?
P.S. This issue is not to be critical of the Adsense program in general which I think is great, and am very happy with it overall and their excellent support.
In essense, it is two completely different programs - different terms, policies, code generating options - they just happen to both display Adwords.
Since there are fewer premium publishers, it is probably easier for the AdSense team to keep track of who is using it, because it definitely has the potential to be abused. There are enough publishers out there trying to game and defraud the system without giving them another tool for their arsenal.
Any since premium publishers are responsible for bringing in more money for Google, why shouldn't they be rewarded with extra options and perks? No different than any other program on the net - top earners can negotiate for better terms/earnings/etc.
Perhaps this is something that will eventually migrate over to regular publishers, or start with beta testers whom are regular publishers. But I really don't see anything wrong with it (and yes, I am a regular publisher, not a premium publisher). And even without the extra line of script, I do see targeted ads on my own forums, and on other forums I visit.
G could monitor it to watch for abuse and if anyone uses it wrongly could immidiately ban them from adsense and confiscate their earnings, even bill them for past earnings already paid out.
Anyone know what it takes to be a so called Premium Publisher? Possibly some of us are near that point but not realize it, and with some work getting extra traffic (perhaps buy some traffic domains and put them on redirect) could qualify soon?
I viewed the source on the website I refer to and the javascript is exactly the same as my own *except* for that one small url/page referral line added near the bottom of the javascipt. If a regular publisher added that same small line his ads would get amazingly targeted instantly. However, I have not tried it as I have no intention of violating their TOS.
[edited by: trader at 2:22 am (utc) on Sep. 26, 2004]
Premium service
If your site receives more than 5 million search queries or 20 million content page views a month, our sales team can help customize the AdSense program for your business.
I think by "Premium Service" they mean "Premium Publishers"?
Since he has thousands of active members and many visit off and on all day and night I am sure he could easily get millions of page views. In fact, I probably visit the site over 100 times a day myself and then click on dozens of various forums and threads while in the site each time, times more than 100 logins/day. That's a lot of page views and hits!
Thats sure would add up quickly if multiplied by all his members and guests who often arrive via links or search engine indexing of the hundreds of thousands of posts over a few years time.
