Adsense in "Image Galleries" -- works!

[webmastertexas]

Just wanted to offer this observation: I recently decided to put those lederboard adsense on my image pages, right below the picture. There is very little content on these pages except the image, and a brief description line. I had no idea they would work, I was just doing them because my lousy Casale Media ad was showing nothing but PSAs. Anyways, in the last two days since I've done this, my Adsense earnings have tripled! Really amazing. Now I intend to make my descriptions more "keyword-ish" to the ads. Who knew?

[Rodney]

I thought the Adsense policies said that you aren't allowed to put adsense on pages with little to no content?

[webmastertexas]

I thought the Adsense policies said that you aren't allowed to put adsense on pages with little to no content?

Photos qualify as content, don't they? I've seen some very big sites using Adsense in this manner, so I don't think I'm the first/last.

[trillianjedi]

Out of curiosity, is mediabot picking up on the alt text?

TJ

[webmastertexas]

Out of curiosity, is mediabot picking up on the alt text?

I'm not sure what "mediabot" is, but from my experiences, if Google Ad can't find any advertisers for your keywords, they default to your URL address. Which is why I've recently (as in, this morning) change the name of the directory the gallery is in. This way, it picks up more of the "movie" keyword, and displays relevant ads. In case it doesn't read my alt text, I use the same string of words for the alt text and underneath the picture via caption. I think it works.

[shortfork]

You're OK doing image galleries, just be sure that they don't open in a popup window. I did this, and the ads shown were quite relevant, however, I was using a nice little javascript windowopen to a sized window for the images and google did not like this.

I've yet to weigh the benefit of changing the way I display the images to be able to add the banners again. Sounds like it might well be a good idea though.

Shortz

[signup1]

what topic is your adsense in?
if you use images mainly with little text, will the adsense shown in ClipArt, ScreenSaver etc? They must be at most 0.2 per click. That is not much money.
Do you have any hot topic related to images?

[cabowabo]

This is against the Terms of Use. Pages that are images only do not qualify due to the media spider has nothing to eat.

CaboWabo

[webmastertexas]

This is against the Terms of Use. Pages that are images only do not qualify due to the media spider has nothing to eat.

This may be one of those cases where Adsense doesn't mind looking the other way, because I've seen it EVERYWHERE. That's how I got the idea to do it as well.

[Roomy]

I've used Adsense in image galleries for nearly a year. I run a niche Stock photo site. I'm also involved in the keyword blocking Beta test with Google and specifically asked them about blocking out ads from other galleries for this site. They kindly added the keywords I suggested and I get ads that are targetted to the keywords that are linked to the images.

For instance an image of a blue widget brings up ads for blue widgets, and not ads for other stock photo galleries. However Image galleries in general have v poor ctr's so I don't make much money on this site.

Maybe I should set up a SEO stock photo site with images of people busily writing meta tags.

[signup1]

For instance an image of a blue widget brings up ads for blue widgets, and not ads for other stock photo galleries. However Image galleries in general have v poor ctr's so I don't make much money on this site.

I wonder what TEXT info you have on the widget image which is not on the others. I am trying to see if Adsense is able to pick up Image File Names as content, or URL only, or require at least some TEXT words in HTML body.

I know there is a default adsense for most sites, but once Adsense found there is not much TEXT, they will show PSA from the next update (10-20 minutes from the first crawl.)

I have ideas that will make CTR at high level between 10% and 20%, but the problem is the CPC. I can not think of a high paying CPC which I can build images around. 0.1 a click is nothing much after Adwords, SEO, hosting, domain etc.

[annej]

shortfork, one reason to avoid using pop ups to show the larger versions of you images is that a lot of people have pop up blockers now. It's a frustrating case where a legitimate use of pop ups is affected by the pop up ads.

In the discussion on galleries not having text it seems to me a line of text for every picture in a gallery would be quite a bit of text. It seems that Google thinks so as well.

[webmastertexas]

From my experiences, Adsense doesn't just read the text and alt text, but they also read the URL address. For instance, on my image galleries, I have them all under the directory "stills" (as in, movie stills). As a result, the ads kept turning up for "still solutions", "salient stills", etc. Even when I changed the keywords, put in more "movie" keywords, I still got a lot of "still"-related products. So I moved my entire gallery over to a new directory called "Moviepics" (basically got rid of any mention of "still" in anywhere, the URL, the links, etc.) -- and guess what? No more "still"-related products! Now it's all movie-related ads! Go figure.

[shortfork]

shortfork, one reason to avoid using pop ups to show the larger versions of you images is that a lot of people have pop up blockers now. It's a frustrating case where a legitimate use of pop ups is affected by the pop up ads.

Do the popup blockers stop "voluntary" javascript windows? as in javascript:openWindow calls?

If so, that truly does suck. Outside the fact that I could maybe get more clicks by changing all my code for images, it sure looks better to have the smaller window open with the larger image and caption forced to be on top of the page that you clicked on. Way less confusing if the images are illistrating a story and not specifically a "gallery"..

But then, I guess I should be more concerned with my income level, which has been almost zip from '97 until last april when I discovered AdSense, which has been a real windfall.. hummn.. decisions decisions, art, money, art, money..........

;-)

Shortz

[ignatz]

Check out flickr.com for an example of adsense with images.

[camper]

"Images only" isn't the same as an image with a short caption. My site is mostly images but does pretty well earnings-wise, in the low four figures. The most important influence on ad selection, in my experience at least, is the title of the page.

[shortfork]

Check out flickr.com for an example of adsense with images.

Geez that's a slow server! I'm not patient enough to sit there waiting for anything to load!

SHortz