Forum Moderators: martinibuster
1. Retire Smart Pricing
2. Go back to the very basics that made Adsense great.
3. DO NOT ACCEPT ANY SITE TO THE PROGRAM UNLESS THEY HAVEY 5000 DAILY VISITORS.
This last point will fight click fraud perfectly.
I reported several of those sites to Google, not only because of the stolen content but especially because they are at the same time violating the terms of services (too many ads on a page, ..). Several months later these websites are still there, running Adsense and violating the TOS.
How did you report them? Google seems to respond appropriately to DMCA submissions per their guidelines.
FarmBoy
If you feel that someone is distributing your copyrighted material without your permission, you should go through the DMCA process (more details are on the Help Center page.
You can report sites that you suspect are distributing others' copyrighted material through the Report a Policy Violation form [google.com].
ASA
Google knows it and Google should take action. They don't need to find proof for theft or copyright violations. Simply the fact that TOS are being violated should be enough to ban them.
What happens if Joe Thief likes one of your articles, republishes it, then complains to Google that you stole it from him? Are you suggesting that Google should accept Joe's allegations at face value and dump you from the AdSense network?
As the expression goes, "Be careful what you wish for."
You can report sites that you suspect are distributing others' copyrighted material through the Report a Policy Violation form
ASA,
I hope you are right because I've had little joy with other avenues and the DMCA path is cumbersome if you live in Australia and have numerous copyright breaches.
Yesterday I tried the email version mentioned on the Google DMCA page and received the reply they will still only act on written or faxed submissions.
This was for a European site hosting at least one of my pages in total [minus ads] as a PDF file and also included my copyright notice at the end.
How blatant!
Among the worst offenders is the Google Blogs. At least with private hosting a polite email usually gets action and an apology.
For AdSense to maintain their leadership position they need to extend their biggest asset, which is their incredible scale of advertisers and let people innovate on top of it. As far as we can tell, they are the only ad network with the breadth of advertisers to deliver superior monetization at scale.
I think if you combine their advertiser scale and the incredible pricing data they have through google analytics that they could rapidly increase the rate of innovation and widen their gap as the leader by doing two things.
1. They need to open APIs and let people innovate new types of targeting, new ad formats and new applications. I heard directly from Google that a small company had developed better targeting of text ads then they have in the social media space, but it was unlikely to ever be incorporated by them (even though it's better than what they have - This is tragic and will ultimately hurt them).
2. They need to become much more transparent to publishers. They should share real time bid prices, their cut, and what the publisher earns on a per impression basis.
Do you seriously think that Google will tell 99% of current AdSense publishers to take a hike?
We think AdSense is actually vulnerable to large competitors like Microsoft at this time because their closed system to publishers stifles innovation and the lack of transparency hurts trust.
Google's "closed system" may stifle the made-for-AdSense crowd, but it has the advantage of encouraging publishers to focus on publishing instead of on AdSense. (Remember click arbitrage, anyone?)
As for trust, how is that an issue? Google pays earnings on time, and--unless you've been hit with significant click fraud--what you see in your earnings reports is what you get at the end of the month. The notion that Google somehow might be cheating you because it isn't publicizing the details of its revenue-share or compensation algorithm is misguided, because (a) Google isn't promising a specific percentage, and (b) publishers are selling their ad space to Google, not to Google's advertisers. For the publisher, two numbers are important: eCPM (used for comparing AdSense to other revenue streams) and total earnings. Trust doesn't enter into it, unless the bank calls up and says Google's monthly payment has bounced.
BTW, members of this forum have predicted for years that AdSense publishers were flee en masse to Yahoo and Microsoft any minute now. It hasn't happened yet. Too bad--if the "anywhere but AdSense" crowd did go elsewhere, maybe the rest of us could divvy up their AdSense ads and income. :-)
fewer than 20,000
Are you saying that less than 20,000 of all sites get over 5,000 daily visitors, or just that less than 20,000 sites using AdSense get more than 5,000 visitors a day?
As for trust, how is that an issue? Google pays earnings on time, and--unless you've been hit with significant click fraud--what you see in your earnings reports is what you get at the end of the month.
You're joking, right?
Think of that big real goods auction house. Your statement would translate to: Set up your items for sale, and set the duration of the auctions, then trust us to do the rest. At the end of the month we will happily tell you whether the items were sold, and if so, at which average price. Sorry, but we won't tell you how many bids or bidders there where for individual items, and also not the amounts of the bids. You'll just have to trust us. We will pay you on time.
Would you seriously use such an auction house? Nobody in his right mind would use them.
(Then again, maybe YOU would because you like'em so much and you trust'em so much.)
I don't trust Google, and statements like yours increase my distrust.
Are you saying that less than 20,000 of all sites get over 5,000 daily visitors
Ken, I'd be adding a few zeros to that 20,000 if I were you.
AdSense must have mega-millions of publishers signed up now [saw one new one today*] and a fair percentage would exceed the nominal 5,000 a day in traffic.
[today*] Brand new Amazon "store" over at the Amazon Board, hosted on a free site and consisting of nothing more than the usual collection of optimistic affiliate links
AND
AdSense!
No one in their right mind could say a site of absolute zero value should be immediately admitted to the AdSense programme. Whatever happened to the quality control? Not that it matters much anyway because the only traffic is going to be mum, dad, dog and the cat BUT it does make a mockery of the programme.
Unless of course it now provides Google with another new revenue stream by charging back for searches or whatever it was called if you didn't meet certain minimums. I forget the details. Joking of course but obviously admission is all automated with no possible human intervention.
[added] Wonder if that would come as a surprise to ASA?
[edited by: IanCP at 4:38 am (utc) on May 28, 2009]
more and more people are thinking "hey, I'm selling something, I have the right to know EXACTLY what it is I'm selling."
You're selling space on your pages. Google is filling that space with ads that it sells and is paying you the eCPM and earnings that you see in your daily AdSense reports. At the end of the month, you get a check or electronic payment.
If you're happy with the eCPM that you're getting, great. If not, you can devote less space to AdSense and more space to better-paying sources of revenue, or you can eliminate all AdSense ads from your pages. Sounds pretty simple to me.
Sure, a minority of AdSense publishers may obsess over the inner workings of Google's ad-allocation methods, smart-pricing formula, compensation scheme, etc., and Google's competitors would be even happier to have that kind of data available. ("Hey, buddy--Google is paying you X percent? We'll pay Y.") But does anyone here really believe that Google would be foolish enough to open up the "black box" that has enabled it to dominate the contextual ad market and build an AdSense business that's grossing billions of dollars a year? Why should they? If you owned AdSense, would you give out the recipe for your "secret sauce"?
does anyone here really believe that Google would be foolish enough to open up the "black box" that has enabled it to dominate the contextual ad market and build an AdSense business that's grossing billions of dollars a year? Why should they? If you owned AdSense, would you give out the recipe for your "secret sauce"?
See, that's why Google as a company attracts the attention of the antitrust folks in D.C., and rightly so. Many think that they are mis-using their market domination and their intransparency to distort and exploit the market. Some fair competition would definitely help.
See also: [webmasterworld.com...]
loudspeaker; I hadn't seen this number before. Are you saying that less than 20,000 of all sites get over 5,000 daily visitors, or just that less than 20,000 sites using AdSense get more than 5,000 visitors a day?
What I am saying is: according to Quantcast (by far the most reliable rating agency I've used) there are roughly 20,000-25,000 sites capable of pulling an average of more than 5,000 unique U.S. visitors daily.
To see some examples, just go to Quantcast and look at US Site rankings (add this: /top-sites-211 to the main site URL to see the page that would constitute your cut-off).
Quantcast (by far the most reliable rating agency I've used)
To the extent they directly measure yes!
They kinda guess the rest and as I've said before the Internet is far, far bigger than most of us imagine. Certainly bigger than Quantcast and others record.
We, the western developed world are very fast becoming a minority, not only on the internet, but in so many other areas.
Smart people would look to how to capitalise on that, forget the current world recession, that's merely a bump in the road, the future is with the developing nations.
For the doubters, consider the internet ten years ago versus today and then look ahead another ten years, given that these things tend to expand almost exponentially.
See, that's why Google as a company attracts the attention of the antitrust folks in D.C.
You're suggesting that Google is an abusive monopoly because it won't tell you that you're earning X percent of AdSense gross revenues from a given ad while Publisher 2, whose audience is more valuable to advertisers, is earning Y percent? That's a stretch. And even if you did know, it wouldn't make you any richer.
Or are you suggesting that Google is an abusive monopoly because it won't give you the tools that you need to game the system? That's quite a stretch, too.
AdSense isn't a "business" (unless you're Google). Publishing is a business, with AdSense being one of many possible revenue streams. As a publisher, it's your job to find a business model that works, and to pick the revenue sources that work with your topic, content, and audience. Obsessing about how much Joe Blow is earning or why Google doesn't think traffic from a forum for 12-year-olds is as likely to convert as traffic from a product-review site for purchasing agents won't solve your problems if AdSense isn't working for you.
we have no way of querying any mistakes in our earnings, because they don't even tell us the rules that they operate by.
how can that be fair? we have no way of querying our earnings... at all. and all companies make the occasional mistake every now and then. it's inevitable. but if our earnings are down a little bit because of a mistake at google's end then it's tough luck on us.
google does provide me with earnings, for which i'm grateful, but it's disingenious to argue that they don't try and get away with all that they can. their motto isn't "do no evil", it's "lump it, or leave"
You're suggesting that
Google keeps their contracted partners (Adsense publishers) completely in the dark. They can only do so because there is no sufficient competition. This should trigger an antitrust investigation whether the company is actually abusing their market dominance.
I am suggesting that it is quite unnatural to not know how much individual sales (i.e. clicks on ads placed by Google) actually make.
I am suggesting that it is strange that thousands of Adsense publishers are flying blind in the fog with regards to which ads show on their sites, which ads were actually clicked, and what revenue individual clicks generated.
I am suggesting that your statement...
As for trust, how is that an issue? Google pays earnings on time, and--unless you've been hit with significant click fraud--what you see in your earnings reports is what you get at the end of the month.
...is just priceless, for the lack of a better word.
But yeah, I give up - we both know that we won't come to a joint understanding on this issue. So, let's just keep it at that, OK?
We, the western developed world are very fast becoming a minority, not only on the internet, but in so many other areas.
IanCP, minority or not, as far as AdSense revenue is concerned, I'll gladly swap 10,000,000 Chinese impressions for 10,000 U.S. ones.
With that said, Quantcast tracks all sites and tries its best to estimate global as well as US audience. Again, in the examples I've seen, their system was much more accurate than either Compete or Alexa (even when they don't have direct data). Compete is sometimes off by a factor of 10!
You're selling space on your pages. Google is filling that space with ads that it sells
What a joke. You can't be serious. So you're selling a room in your house and I'm taking in WHOEVER, ok. Geez...
That's a proper sales report for us salesmen.
Right now it's : sell WHATEVER, we pay you WHATEVER, don't ask, don't tell(can't share stats heh, what are they hiding?).
That's a proper sales report for us salesmen.
But we aren't "salesmen." Google is the salesman. We're outsourcing blocks of ad space to Google, and Google has made a contractual commitment to pay us for the use of those blocks. The intricacies of how Google gets the money to pay for the ad blocks aren't our business, because we agreed to participate in the program as it was offered to us. As netmeg has said more than once, "AdSense is what it is," and complaining that Google is somehow cheating us because it won't let us redesign the program or rewrite our contracts is neither honest nor logical.
I'd point out, too, that the title of this thread is "3 things AdSense needs to do to stay great," not "3 things AdSense needs to do to change the minds of people who thinks AdSense sucks." :-)
We all know that adsense performs widely different for sites that get a large amount of natural search traffic or that have primarily social media traffic with high repeat visitors and many pvs per session.
I'd like to see a tag option for PVs per user as a targeting option. The idea is I'd expect low paying CPM ads to outperform CPC ads in general on high engagement sites. In these type of environments we see ad networks like advertising.com and tribal fusion perform better than adsense sometimes.
The other thing is I'd like Google to be more transparent with the traffic quality score on our sites. I'd like to know how well my sites convert, industry average and things I can do to increase the quality of my traffic.
The other thing is I'd like Google to be more transparent with the traffic quality score on our sites. I'd like to know how well my sites convert, industry average and things I can do to increase the quality of my traffic.
Hmmm. Your traffic is your visitors. Doesn't the content of your site determine who your visitors are?
For example, if you watch pro-wrestling on television, you might see ads for miracle diet drugs and female hair extensions.
If you watch a serious business news show, you might see ads for mutual fund companies.
Do the wrestling show producers really want to change their audience so they can show mutual fund ads between wrestling matches? Or vice versa?
You are who you are. Or rather your site is who your site is. Or whatever.
FarmBoy
But we aren't "salesmen." Google is the salesman. We're outsourcing blocks of ad space to Google, and Google has made a contractual commitment to pay us for the use of those blocks.
Nonsense. Google doesn't pay by the block, they pay by the click.
The intricacies of how Google gets the money to pay for the ad blocks aren't our business,
You work for Google, don't you.
because we agreed to participate in the program as it was offered to us.
It's a great program, that lacks transparency.
I'd point out, too, that the title of this thread is "3 things AdSense needs to do to stay great," not "3 things AdSense needs to do to change the minds of people who thinks AdSense sucks." :-)
You fail at logic.
Google doesn't pay by the block, they pay by the click.
Yes, and they account for those clicks in your traffic reports. But how does being paid by the click make you a "salesman," unless you're encouraging your users to click on the ads?
You work for Google, don't you.
Nope. I'm just capable of looking beyond "It's all about what I want" to see the bigger picture.
[edited by: signor_john at 9:50 pm (utc) on May 29, 2009]
