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The good times will be over soon so well done to everyone who has made a tonne of money so far - you caught the gold rush. As for everyone else it is only a matter of time (see the end of the banner ad days for details) before making a decent amount is impossible.
Time to start thinking about the next big thing...
Time to start thinking about the next big thing...
Time to start building high quality sites perhaps?
Google is putting more and more control into the hands of the AdWords advertiser as to where their ads are displayed.#
Affilliate marketing is actually an increasing market, not a decreasing one.
TJ
Google is putting more and more control into the hands of the AdWords advertiser as to where their ads are displayed.
Yep, this is IMO the change with the largest consequences they made in the whole advertising program recently. Even with only 25 URLs that an advertiser can choose to disable the displaying of his ads this can largely change the AdSense ads distribution map.
A group of advertisers have turned on the content network again in their campaigns because of this feature and the income of large AdSense sites with low conversion ratio has fallen. Both is good for the remaining content sites that profit from both the larger ad base and less competition.
See also [webmasterworld.com...] about the introduction of the URL filter for advertisers. There are many posts from advertisers who turned the content network on again after introduction of this feature.
The good times will be over soon so well done to everyone who has made a tonne of money so far - you caught the gold rush. As for everyone else it is only a matter of time (see the end of the banner ad days for details) before making a decent amount is impossible.
I think that the greatest risk may be that we are close to saturation point. Google is milking this for all that it's worth and it cannot continue. Can it?
Google ads are everywhere, in email, top of results, right of results and just about everywhere in many web sites. Internet users will surely get pissed off with this eventually and then all it takes is for another effective, ad free search engine to fill the gap and the cycle can start again ;)
I think that the greatest risk may be that we are close to saturation point.
Nope, not even close, IMHO.
People that are good at online advertising are having problems spending money - they can't seem to spend enough.
One thing I've found lately is that made for AdSense sites can sometimes be a blessing in disguise. Somehow a user is getting to those sites, and since the only thing to do is click on an ad, he does it. Assuming you have your conversion process down to a science once a user is delivered from an ad, the more users that come from ads, the better.
Typically, as long as your return on ad spend is positive and you have a decent cashflow business-wise, you can throw an infinite amount of money at advertising. This is the boat that many advertisers are in now - they can't seem to spend enough. So the made for AdSense sites are helping a good majority of them.
I feel bad for the small business that has a limited cashflow and is just starting out. There is a built-in percentage of traffic that will never convert no matter what (internally we call it the "crap factor", and we know it to be about 30%). Factored into that is clickfraud, dumbusers, etc etc etc. Small businesses will discover this the hard way and will probably shy away from online advertising. I consider myself relatively good, and I've launched new campaigns with over a 90% crap factor, which I have to refine after a few days of testing. Small businesses may not have the cash flow to do that.
But I don't think it's going to end anytime soon.
Vince I don't think an economic downturn would be as hard on the PPC market as you think - there is an inherent value in being able to track ROI to the penny (and not deal with assumptions and averages). Maybe people are more likely optimise their campaigns, but I would doubt they would be removed altogether.
Simply put, with reasonably competent PPC management you can say that if you spend x you will earn y and if at any time you don't have x to spend, then pause it. That's the bottom line.
Plus advertising folks love the ability to edit live edits and tinker with them - the process is infinitely easier and more flexible than say TV or print advertising where you have to submit to various review processes, etc etc.
People used to dismiss banner advertising as a fad during the years it was rampant on the web - but they are still around and still making a lot of money for people (and in some cases have progressed into better forms of advertising).
I doubt we'll see the day when Google says, "ah well it was good while it lasted, let's pack up and go..."! ;)
Leading companies innovate and diversify - online advertising spend is on the increase - Adsense will be around for a while in one shape or form and maybe will even have a competitor or two to that will make it more lucrative for us!
The next big thing is just usually the last big thing made better in some way. PPC advertising was the natural progression from banner advertising, pushed forward by business innovation and advertiser demand for better targeting.
Adsense is just a natural progression from Google's PPC program and search technology. Wonder where we would be today if MSN dominated the search market for the past few years? IE toolbar advertising based on site content WITHOUT paying the site owner? ;)
MG
Google ads on the other hand are useful and they are not always commercial in nature. Many informational based sites use them to get the word out about their sites. Users actually LOOK for Google ads as opposed to mentally blocking them out. When I search Google, I often look at the ads before I look at the search results.
As long as the quality of ads remain high people will continue to click and publishers will continue to make money. I believe text ads will be around for a long time.
The good times will be over soon so well done to everyone who has made a tonne of money so far - you caught the gold rush. As for everyone else it is only a matter of time (see the end of the banner ad days for details) before making a decent amount is impossible.
The Gold Rush days of "slap up a made-for-AdSense site and scoop up the nuggets" days may be over, or at least waning. As others have suggested, advertiser controls and site-targeted CPM ads are just the first wave of changes that will make it harder to milk the system (and advertisers).
That doesn't mean AdSense will be in decline, or that publishers won't be able to profit from AdSense. It simply means that AdSense will become more like the offline advertising world where quality media and mailing lists get paid higher rates than weekly shoppers and "occupant" mailing-list vendors do.
Also, Google's introduction of site-targeted CPM ads is likely to bring in mainstream corporate advertisers and ad agencies that haven't had the expertise or inclination to use contextual CPC ads. That's good news for publishers who can pass the sniff test from media buyers, and it's bad news for the quick-buck, ads-disguised-as-content scraper crowd.
I don't think Google adsense will ever die as it represents a very sound business model - targetted advertising. When all is said and done, eyeballs have value and the more targetted the ad, the more valuable the pairs of eyeballs will be.
Right, and new features such as advertiser blocking by domain and site-targeted CPM ads are just ways for Google to allow targeting by audience, not just by keyword. That's important, because mainstream advertisers want to buy the right eyeballs, not just any eyeballs.
For people with those tactics the ride will be ending soon, I am sure. I believe eventually search engines will be super-precise and will learn from people, so when I go search for something new, it will know so much about my previous habits it will be able to pinpoint a site that acutally matches my needs without me trying to hard.
What this will mean, ultimately, is that people who spend all their time trying to design their sites to get traffic will lose out and people who design sites that actually appeal to people will get more traffics.
The idea that the gold rush is over assumes that people will stop visiting sites that provide a real service or benefit to them. That is completely unlikely. And on top of that advertisers would not want to be able to reach those people, again, highly unlikely.
As mentioned above though, if you make all your money on keyword configuring and manipulating the system, you are likely to get squeezed out.
People that are good at online advertising are having problems spending money - they can't seem to spend enough.
I hear you...that is what I am talking about! The goal is to create quality sites with more traffic.
Let's give adertisers a place to spend it!
[edited by: medowl at 6:28 pm (utc) on July 26, 2005]
I've missed these.
People will always want to advertise. If your advertising portal is optimized well enough for your industry, you have more options than just adsense. If you are thinking of doom and gloom, you won't come up with a solution to make positive things happen. "I can't" is only an option for those that claim it.
I believe there is always enough money, just use your brain and figure out how you can honestly get it. This belief has worked extremely well for me, so I'll stick to it :)
The future of Adsense is directly linked to the quality of the search algos. When the algos fall behind and auto-content wins real estate to a point of consumer nausea, the value of Adsense will drop. Einfach, as 'ze germans' say.
...just tricks and mirrors leading people into ads.For people with those tactics the ride will be ending soon, I am sure.
I doubt the ride will be ending anytime soon for these folks. Sure, there will always be some churning of sites, the poorly implemented will fade away.
But the real pros at scrapping and maximizing their serps will simply adjust their methods a bit to keep one step ahead of the SEs and programs like Adsense.
I guarantee you that people buying .info domains for $1.50 and auto-generating a 50,000 page site of nonsense can make sites quicker than advertisers can filter them.
At the moment I agree with you, but when you read the thread about the introduction of the filter for advertisers at [webmasterworld.com...] you can see that in that thread advertisers were already asking for the possibility to block ads publishing based on publisher ID rather than domain name. It is just a matter of time before AdWords will introduce this feature to the advertisers making the method you describe much more difficult.
block ads publishing based on publisher ID
That might help in some cases. But there is no reason to believe that the folks operating on the margins are going to let that stop them. I doubt if multiple publisher accounts are all that hard to come by, regardless of any "one account" policy.
if this becomes a serious problem for google, they have several courses of action at their fingertips. they do not only have to rely on adwords advertisers blocking sites.
Good sites that have intrinsic value for users and continue to grow in terms of content coverage will draw visitors, benefit advertisers, and do well with adsense.
Over time, it may be the advertisers themselves who set the stage for the decline of scrapers and shoddy sites via cpm bidding and site blocking (which hopefully will be expanded to more than 25 at some point in the near future).
That'd be great. It would certainly discourage the building of garbage sites and make doing so a riskier proposition when it comes to one's adsense account.
That is not the case with ecommerce. With ecommerce severe economic downturn, drives people to the web in search of lost income, and ecommerce on the web grows. It becomes more competitive, and people advertise. They have to... they can't compete well in organic when longevity has such a heavy weight in algo.
This problem with declining economic stability in the USA is the sole reason that ebay grew so much from the late 90s to now... people trying to make ends meet and create jobs for themselves after big business flew the coop. As ebay fees have increased, and their market has become majorly flooded, more people are moving to traditional ecommerce, website ownership.
Adsense is here to stay, and the gravy train has a very long track to ride, right around the world.
One is hauling in about $50 so far this month and the other hasn't broken $5 yet.
Yup, this is so easy everyone and his dog can do it ;)
