AdSense Serving 3rd Party Ads on Content Network

What will this mean to AdWords advertisers?

[netmeg]

So the announcement came yesterday to those of us who are AdSense publishers - AdSense is going to start serving display ads from "qualified 3rd party vendors" on the Content Network.

What will this mean for those of AdWords advertisers who advertise on Content? Will it drive up our prices? Create more competition?

I admit, I don't do a lot of display ads (mostly text) so I'm not sure what I'm going to see.

Kinda surprised there hasn't been a similar announcement on the AdWords side yet.

Here's a link to the AdSense blog:

[adsense.blogspot.com...]

Discuss.

Moderator Note
Here's the WebmasterWorld discussion in AdSense
More competition for your display ad inventory [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: engine at 9:59 am (utc) on Aug. 28, 2009]
[edit reason] Added WebmasterWorld AdSense discussion [/edit]

[koan]

There seems to be little competition on a CPM basis, as they rarely take over CPC ads, from my experience, when you check the overall revenue of a channel, so this would be a welcome shot in the arm for sites that generally benefit from CPM ads (high traffic, few clicks or not a commercial topic). Google was never a big player with banner ads, but this could help them have a bigger hand in that industry without the burden of direct management.

[maximillianos]

Unfortunately we use the display ads very little... We never had much success with them...

Perhaps this will improve that... and maybe we'll try them again down the road.

[LucidSW]

In other forums, some advertisers think this will increase their costs and reduce their impressions.

Don't know who the third-party vendors are and I don't use them. Are there not tonnes of them offering low-cost, CPM-based advertising? Are they not mostly banner ads?

Maybe Google wants to show more banner ads to satisfy a demand from publishers. If my above assumptions are correct, this should not affect text ads, although impressions may be reduced in favor of image ads, the costs should not. If third-party vendors are lower cost, those using image ads may not see much of a reduction in impressions since Google would favor showing ads that result in more revenues. The advertisers' cost would therefore not significantly change.

[koan]

Google would favor showing ads that result in more revenues

True, but sometimes they're in limited supply. If you run out of good CPC text ads, some banners, although with lower eCPM, would be still better than PSA ads or blank ads.

[moTi]

We never had much success with them

how do you define success? image ads have branding capacities. if direct sales is your only objective you'll most certainly be disappointed.

this is the major fault why image ads don't work: google training advertisers to compare apples with oranges by letting two completely different media types (text ads vs image ads) compete in one and the same bidding scheme.

[potentialgeek]

It sounds like somebody (Google) is trying to use or set up the use of Remnant Inventory. You know, those awful, cheesy, bogus ads for dieting, etc.

I started with a new ad network recently, and I signed up for its Premium Ads. But then I saw lots of those ugly ads for their useful diet pill products. (Why are they appearing on my site!?)

I asked them.

It turns out the ad network had -- without asking me -- used the Premium Ad code for Remnant Inventory ads! I took all their ads off my site, much the same way I switched AdSense from Text/Images to Text only. I am still waiting for them to fix the code.

Three times they said they'd fixed it, but I still saw the same ads appearing.

The biggest problem with 3rd Party ads is the lack of control over what ads appear on your site. Google used very little discretion on what it allowed with AdSense. I doubt its standards will get better.

I researched the one ad that plagued my site. Another publisher was playing wack-a-mole with it. The advertiser was completely abusing the system.

So if you have third party ads on your site, you'd have two layers instead of one layer of red tape to get it fixed.

Apparently Google will only let you block entire networks, instead of individual ads, with its new setup. A bit primitive.

p/g

[sanfrankid94102]

This all has to do with the Google Purchasing Double Click and their Ad Exchange called Adex.

"It's official! Well, almost. The AdSense blog announced late Tuesday that ad networks will now be buying AdSense inventory through an open auction. That can only mean one thing: Google's DoubleClick Ad Exchange - AdEx 2.0 - lives."

[adwords.google.com...]

[adexchanger.com...]