Forum Moderators: martinibuster
the more you guys look for the profitable niches, the more advertisers will hold back on choosing content targetted ads :)just bear that in mind!
This got me thinking.... what makes a visitor that clicks an adword ad in a SERP a better visitor to say an Ecommerce site than one that visits from a content site adsense ad? What makes it more prone to buy? What makes it better for the advertiser?
IMHO, a visitor searching to buy a red widget will be just as likely to convert from an ad in a SERP for “red widget” than as a result of an ad in a content page that has a review about a red widget.
Am I missing something?
Don’t you guys think that the actual copy of the ad makes the most impact along with properly targeting key phrases?
If a keyword doesn't generate a sufficient ROI for advertiser A, but it does for advertiser B, then advertiser A should bow out after a trivial investment. If no advertisers can achieve a sufficient ROI for a keyword then they should all bow out or lower their bids until the ROI is sufficient.
Just remember that not all advertisers are looking for immediate orders from clicks. Some are looking for leads. In certain categories, "cost per lead" will be more important than immediate conversion rates and ROI as mainstream advertisers and direct marketers embrace PPC. For example, to the company that's been obtaining leads for European houseboat rentals or brass dog beds via ads in the back of THE NEW YORKER, the ability to reach European travelers or devoted dog owners at less cost per inquiry will be a compelling advantage of AdWords/AdSense.
Don't forget that some publishers know pretty well what the space they use for adsense ads is worth through affiliate programs where they see the chance a visitor clicking on highly targetted ads will convert into a sale, and the amount those people are willing to pay.
e.g.: On affiliate links sending visitors towards amazon.com for targetted content (towards books on the subject of the web site's niche) conversion rates from a click towards a sale can be higher than 25%.
Advertisers can easily calculate their own expected turnover and profit calculations for those kind of clicks ... .
I also know the average amazon.com conversion rate (any affiliate member can see it in their reports) and the highest for normal links to amazon (not shopping carts and the like, where the visitor is kept on the publisher's site and decides to buy there) is below 4%; With an exception for home page links (of just above 4%).
The highly targetted conversion rates should be ok for advertisers IMHO, the average numbers: I can see the problem there, but google gives you targetted context, use it wisely, make sure you bid on the right keywords and push google into matching very strictly, not broadly.
I can imagine advertisers not getting happy to have to pay per click for small conversion rates, but there are people out there who have these large conversion rates, many of them each doing a small amount of clicks, why woudn't you want to buy those from a single source (google).
About comparing to advertising on SERPs:
I know I'm completely blind to those ads, still ...
I'm 100% sure I can convince people to be willing to buy things far better after they visited even only my home page than when they just typed the search term in google.
Also please remember that soem established sites don't really need search engines to get incoming clicks. Some of us were around before google (and even altavista) existed ...
As a publisher it depends on the topic and the margin you get from the affiliate program too see which pays best, but in most cases doing both (alternating) is going to be best, just as a way to avoid blindness, and to cater for the differing needs.
Advertisers looking for branding and the like:
What are you looking for as an advertiser? exposure!
The exposure is free with adsense, it's the unpredictable click that will cost you money. Better would be to get some pay per impression schema. The clicks are very likely to be rather useless in selling directly as well. And the publishers won't like you very much once you know how to write ads to make sure they don't get clicked on.
So why use Google?
Clear they are the marketplace where everything meets. It's impossible for both sides to meet each other directly. The win-win is the reduction of effort to bring publishers and advertisers in touch.
There are however 2 things distrubing here:
- publishers looking to capture advertisers money without doing the effort of making content for it; google should boot them asap as far as I'm concerned.
- advertisers getting upset vs. adsense; partly because the above ; partly because they think adsense brings them less value than the search engine placements.
In my opinion true content publishers should get a bit more
ability to help them get the right advertisers -yes, then google really needs to act on the pirates- I know I often get ads that are somewhat off target, during the half day that the related keywords was running it was easy to see why: adsense was picking up on keywords that it shoudn't have.
Also living outside my main geo target, I'm doing most bindly (as I don't see what most of my visitors would see)
So my suggestion would be to let publishers see what keywords they are be thought to serve, and ask them to flag those they aren't providing content for. This way the engine still has to believe it, and if it finds only the high paying keywords remaining, a quick manual review will find the pirates and ...
I thought thsi was a publishers forum, not an advertisers one, although I sometimes get a different impression.
Perhaps google needs to raise the bar to become a publisher by demanding better content. [minimum PR?]
So my suggestion would be to let publishers see what keywords they are be thought to serve, and ask them to flag those they aren't providing content for. This way the engine still has to believe it, and if it finds only the high paying keywords remaining, a quick manual review will find the pirates and ...
This is a great idea, but I think that Google will never go for something like that. They believe on code and algos before they believe on humans and although the algo would still have to believe it, I doubt they would give up that kind of power. Not that I blame them much, people have a habit of disapointing you. Even if 99% of publishers do right, the remaining 1% will do so much wrong that it might affect the reputation of the program.
Regarding your point about this being a publishers forum, technically it is, but I think some of the advertisers are a bit upset at the changes in the market so they express their opinions. I think hearing their point of view is a good thing.
Regarding your point about this being a publishers forum, technically it is, but I think some of the advertisers are a bit upset at the changes in the market so they express their opinions. I think hearing their point of view is a good thing.
I agree. For that matter, it can be useful for AdWords advertisers to hear from publishers, too.
It's certainly true that the market is changing. I suspect we'll see exponential growth in the number of established big-name marketers who use AdWords and, yes, AdSense before too long. Remember, it wasn't so long ago that "mail-order houses" (doesn't that term seem quaint?) had businesses that were built around catalogs. Just three or four years ago, ordering a camera from one of New York's leading photographic mail-order retailers involved getting the product number and price from an ad or a catalog, submitting an e-mail form, and waiting for a confirmation phone call by long distance before the order could be processed. Now you can find everything you need on the retailer's Web site and handle the entire order process online. IMHO, the transition from "mail order" to e-commerce was a much bigger transition than the change from obtaining leads through print ads or purchased lists to obtaining leads through AdWords and contextual "content ads." The PPC market is about to explode, with the biggest increase coming on the content side.
First of all, leting the advertisers opt into specific sites will destroy the system. It's based on haveing a large volume and variety of inventory. If that's gone, it's not worth it for publishers. One guy you picks my site to advertise on for 5c/click is not gonna keep me interested.
Recently I set up the PSAs to point to my own ad serving: context-sensitive seletion of affiliate links. My CPM AND CPC AND CTR are much higher on the affiliate links, and I believe that AdSense ads on my site actually pay pretty well.
As soon as I have better tracking in my PSA-served affiliate links, i'll see if it's more profitable to replace adSesne completely on the popular pages.
Often though, adSense finds related merchendise that it would be hard to find hte affilaite links for. Unfortunately with affiliates the effort required of managing a LARGE inventory soon outstrips the profit of the individual merchants. The large networks help but they never cover all your content.
What I think would REALLY HELP is the abiility for advertisers to do AdSense only campaigns, with their own pricing. As Publisher I say: bring it on. I'm fickle, if it pays less then something else for the space I'll switch at a heartbeat. Heck my ad serving system will take care of that.
In the meantime and combination of all that, like bidding on sites like you can now bid on keywords, and usign keyword bidded terms as backfill might bring in extra dough for those well-converting, pre-selling review and info sites. Just an idea.
All in all I think we all agree that something has to change to satisfy the advertiser, while mentaining the edge adSense ahs for the publisher.
SN
First of all, leting the advertisers opt into specific sites will destroy the system. It's based on haveing a large volume and variety of inventory. If that's gone, it's not worth it for publishers. One guy you picks my site to advertise on for 5c/click is not gonna keep me interested.
OK, but let's say that luxury-widgets-advertiser.com wants to advertise on your upscale widget collectors' site and a dozen others. He's assuming the clicks from those handpicked sites will be of high quality, so he may be willing to bid more than he would if his ads were being scattered across a thousand Web sites. In fact, the ability to control where his ads appear via an "AdSense Select" option may be the determining factor in whether he uses "content ads" at all.
Another advertiser, generic-widgets-advertiser.com, may be selling low-priced widgets for the mass market. He chooses the "AdSense Full Network" option because he doesn't have to worry about waste circulation in the same way that luxury-widgets-advertiser.com does. As long as his ads appear on pages about widgets, he's a happy camper.
Will publishers who get most of their impressions from the "AdSense Full Network" option dump AdSense because they don't make as much per click as the publishers who attract choosier (and higher-bidding) "AdSense Select" advertisers? Probably not, because they're likely to be either:
1) Newspapers and other general news or entertainment sites that have large enough circulations to profit at lower "AdSense Full Network" bids, or...
2) Small noncommercial sites that are happy to make any money at all (not unlike the untold thousands of hobby sites that run Amazon.com ads and untargeted affiliate banners from Commission Junction).
IMHO, a tiered system such as the one I've just described would have several benefits:
1) It would make AdSense attractive to a larger pool of advertisers (especially mainstream advertisers).
2) It would encourage the development of high-quality content sites, because publishers would have an incentive to think long-term instead of going for the quick buck.
3) It would discourage the cranking out of low-quality, keyword-optimized sites that exist only as AdSense vehicles.
