By Unknown
Posted at 10:17 AM
Google
Undoubtedly, you've heard about Google's AdSense and you are thinking about giving it a go. But is it really worth placing an AdSense banner on your site?
The answer is a definite yes. You could always have some other banner on your site, or even use some search of affiliate ad program and that would probably make you some money, given of course that your site enjoys a healthy amount of visitors. However with affiliate marketing, it is expected that the visitor from your website completes a sale before you are remunerated.
But that's nowhere near what you get for using AdSense. There are people who earn in excess of 100.000 dollars per year by using AdSense. And it doesn't just stop with making more money. Firstly, the ads are text only. That means they're by far less obtrusive on your visitors then your average, flashy banner that's designed to catch the eye of the visitor.
Sure, you'll have to ensure they get better placement, so as to be noticed but despite that they don't bother viewer’s as much as traditional ads. Think about the many sites you've seen using pop-ups, floating banners and many other schemes that will have visitors screaming in anger every time they visit the said website. You can actually do better then that, annoying people less and still making an amount of money.
Secondly, the ads are generated based on the contents of your site automatically. When you use an affiliate ad program, you have to specify certain categories that your sites belong to.
However, if any page on your site falls outside of these categories, the banners aren't targeted anymore. And what that means is that you're potentially showing ads to people who don't have any interest in them and that can lead to inefficiencies.
With Google AdSense that just about never happens: the ads present on your site will always be in sync with whatever your visitors are interested in and that adds to your site's value and to the revenue it produces.
What's more, the look of these banners and their size is customizable, which means they will feel more integrated with the rest of your site's content, which brings an increase in your site's overall visual quality as opposed to a traditional approach.
For many people, there's also a great problem with finding people to advertise on their site as well. AdSense is clearly the easiest solution available to this problem today.
It's free to join the AdSense program and it almost takes no time at all. The potential database of websites from AdWords is larger then anything you might encounter from any competitor, numbering over 150.000 users. This means as more people compete the CPC or cost per click for search terms will inevitably rise.
Also, setting up AdSense on your site is a breeze, and you can complete the whole process in less then an hour. It takes a lot less to do then any form of affiliate advertising which is yet another reason to choose the easy AdSense approach.
All you need to do is add an AdSense banner on your website (other then registering with the program of course) is to copy & paste a few lines and you're all done, you get to choose where the banners go, how large they are and how they integrate with the rest of your site.
For any webmaster out there, that's a killer scheme because it lets you draw the line between your site's usability level and the amount of advertising you wish to have. Some people need the money badly while others just keep AdSense running to pay for the hosting of their website.
AdSense is a great advertising program because a lot of thought has went into making it "just work for everyone". It works great for the people who use AdWords, for the webmasters using AdSense, and most importantly for the visitors of the websites.
By Unknown
Posted at 9:32 AM
Google
If you look at the Internet a few years back, you'll see that advertising was done in a way that was very similar to other types of media like television, or actually, more like what you see in a newspaper.
You'd enter a site, and in some location you'd get to see a banner (often these were quite numerous and very large), which would present and ad for whatever company was paying for adds on your space.
But there was one problem with this kind of advertising. It really wasn't exploiting the fact that the adds weren't in some newspaper, but were instead presented over the Internet.
You've probably noticed a lot of things like this over the pages you've browsed. You're looking at an on-line shop, looking for a watch but you get a banner that advertises a car.
While you might, at some later point want to buy a car, right now you're looking for a watch and it would have surely been nice if the banner were advertising a watch, because then you would have probably clicked it.
Well that's also what the folks at Google thought of, so they came up with a killer idea. This is knows as Google AdSense, and it's known as a targeted advertising program
What you do (as a web designer / website owner) is, instead of jumping through hoops to get some banner on your site that your visitors won't even care about, is you just allocate some region of the screen.
You then sign up for the Google AdSense program, you insert a small snippet of code in your webpage and Google ensures that in the location you specify, a banner will appear, presenting adds relevant to the contents of your site.
It's very easy for Google to do this because Google is a search engine company. It looks for the key words in your page, searches a database of websites to find the ones related to whatever is on your page and presto: a targeted ad.
You (the webmaster) get a fee for each visitor that clicks on an adsense banner on your site. Now that's bound to happen more often then with a traditional banner because people are actually interested in what's in that banner (otherwise, they wouldn't be on your page would they?).
But, this also does wonders for the people who want to advertise. And it's because of the same reason. The greatest thing about Google AdSense is that all the content in a banner is relevant.
This relevancy is the key to the programs success, and also the reason why everyone remains happy. The advertiser has a relevantly placed advert, the publisher earns money from their content and Google take their cut.
Of course, as always, Google has set some high standards for its AdSense program, in terms of looks and functionality. You can't have more than two such banners on your website and Google only inserts text in these banners.
So an extra benefit is that AdSense advertising is a lot less obtrusive then regular advertising. But this also means you should position the banner better because it's possible that visitors might miss it altogether.
So in the end, Google AdSense is an advertising program that is unique because the ads are relevant to the content on the site. Anyone that wants to advertise pays Google for it. Anyone who wants to place ads on their site does this through AdSense, getting paid by Google in the process.
All transactions are run through Google, and the advertisers and publishers get access to statistics which help them to understand and moderate the effectiveness of their campaign.
The whole process is elegant, simple and effective from anyone in the chain, from site visitors to advertisers, and it's one of the reasons Google are known for their innovation and new thinking.
By Unknown
Posted at 8:17 AM
Google
There are many ideas springing up concerning what AdSense will look like in the future and how the system will change as opposed to what it is now.
Firstly, it's clear that targeting algorithms will become even better and more powerful then they are now. This has clearly been seen with the Google search engine itself over the last few years and it should be of no surprise as this happens with AdSense. Advertisers will appear in more appropriate results and those advertisers who manipulate their content to allow high paying keywords to appear may struggle to do this unless it is actually appropriate to their content.
Another thing which is bound to happen is more protection for AdWords advertisers concerning click fraud. Google acknowledges this to be a very key issue that it needs to address as quickly as possible and there's no doubt it will happen as fast as possible. At the moment those who have high levels of traffic, can easily disguise IP addresses and increase CTR ( Click Through Rate).
Google is always keen on improving its products and this has been seen before in AdSense. The search engine company has introduced site-targeted AdSense CPM, "smart pricing" and domain blocking and there will probably be improvements that have already been added by other similar sites.
One such example is the option for the advertiser to have more control over where the content is being displayed. This could mean blocking your site from displaying on several addresses that host AdSense banners.
Another idea that has been advanced is that Google will integrate AdSense in other forms of media like newspapers or television and so on. While this might seem to be more on the science-fiction side of the facts there's no indication that this might not happen.
Google have access to an international array of over 150,000 advertisers of whom may choose to penetrate offline markets in different countries. With Google’s strong network of advertisers, they may choose to appoint or allow offline distributors to create a format for Adwords advertising in content, in search and now offline.
More options could be implemented for AdSense publishers, allowing them to specify keywords of their own. While Google has been reluctant of this there's no indication that this will not happen in the future.
Also, a lot of people are demanding a clear specification of the pricing policy of AdSense. Google has given no indication of why this isn't public information but at this moment it seems highly unlikely that such information will ever be present on Google AdSense.
Another feature that could find itself into AdSense would be letting website publishers see which links are generating clicks on their website and based on what keywords they arrive there.
This could end up being a major issue that could threaten the entire system as it could perhaps encourage more adsense only websites as profits become more transparent. A lot of people may make AdSense-only sites, designed just for making profits through AdSense.
While this is already happening today, it might be foolish of Google to put such tools in the hands of its publishers.
However, one thing that could happen is a way for users to fix their issues with low AdSense generated income on their site. This could be done through an on-line wizard or something similar that would make suggestions to website owners based on their contents.
But the major buzzword of the day is RSS. The possibility of sending targeted ads directly to users without requiring any navigation on their behalf is becoming a reality with RSS. And there are clear signs that Google isn't going to let such an opportunity pass by.
This is what "interactive television" and similar items have been trying to do for quite some time now. But the Internet would be a much better medium for this, because there are no mediums quite as interactive as the Internet.
But in the end, this is mostly speculation and we are bound to have Google surprising us with new features we would have never thought of.
By Unknown
Posted at 6:02 AM
Search?
When advertising with pay per click Google gives the advertiser two broad options. Advertising in search results, advertising in websites content or indeed many choose to do both. Advertising in search means that results are displayed in Google under searches, and in its distributors search results. Google content advertising applies to those websites who choose to incorporate “Adsense” into their websites. As adsense rapidly expands, it is now viewable on millions of web pages throughout the web. However, many advertisers are shunning this in favor of merely advertising in search results.
There are several reasons for this, and the first is trust. This has been a result of smaller websites, through to adsense empires choosing to embark on Click Fraud. Although this issue occurs in search it is far less dominant. Those who commit Click Fraud on search are those trying to weaken a competitor’s ROI. With Adsense the same applies, along with the website owner trying to increase his revenues using similar tactics.
Another reason why website owners are choosing to market out with content is the motivation of the buyer when he is on a website. Someone who is on a different website, other than the advertisers might be there for entirely different reasons. For example a website discussing the disadvantages of Adsense, would actually return adverts for those selling “Adsense Websites” for example. People may click on it, but they are unlikely to buy after reading a negative review. The other reason could be that the person on the adsense website was actually looking for what is the best color palette to use. The person therefore would not find the advert relevant, but might click on the advert in a care free manner.
Adsense websites are also often rejected by the advertiser because they feel it involves more administration. Checking through websites to see how relevant they are, and editing their bids to ensure they still appear on a page. With some words having a network of over 500 websites, it is surely a tedious and expensive task. Although this is the case, many also find that their Adwords account returns websites, that don’t even appear to be trying to support their keywords. The example which is ripe, are those advertising under legal phrases who appear on adsense websites “terms and conditions” and “privacy policy” pages.
Although many are rejecting content advertising, there are still those who feel it provides a similar ROI to search. A reason for this can be found through in the fact that more and more advertisers are only choosing search. As this occurs the advertiser has less competition so the price of the word reduces. Advertisers are also finding a good ROI from publisher’s websites who decide to actively promote the advertiser’s services within their content. An example of this can be realized from when someone is discussing printing services, and actually directly recommends the advertiser’s services. This is a positive move for both the publisher and the advertiser, and a good way for publishers to move forward. Despite this, publishers still have to remember, to not be too obvious in doing this, or savvy buyers will definitely calculate the publisher’s intention.
Another reason why advertisers are opting for content is to increase their scale, however this can also be done across other search engines. The fact however still exists that those who choose content advertising should choose the Google Adsense network. It is regulated far and above yahoo’s and others equivalents whilst its superior network of publishers means the advertisers will benefit from being able to spread their message through a diverse range of websites.
Despite Adsense being the best PPC content distributor, it certainly doesn’t compare to search for the advertiser. On search the leads are more qualified, more regulated, and less fraudulent. This has seen advertisers consistently choose search over content. Despite this advertiser’s should always test adsense and see if it can provide the ROI they are looking for. Some advertisers say that content provides a better return for their business than search. This varies, however in general search remains King for PPC advertisers.
