August 16th, 2008

Google feeds publishers with new AdSense option

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 7:30 pm

Categories: Google, Google AdSense

Tags: Google Inc., Advertisement, Google AdSense, RSS, Internet, Garett Rogers

When most publishers use RSS feeds to syndicate their content, most are hoping readers click through to the original content, and then they can monetize it from there — unfortunately, consumers of this feed data are often just looking for a quick fix, and not really that interested in the actual source of the information. This has made monetizing content a bit tricky when providing full-text feeds.

When Google bought Feed Burner, they instantly got access to a whole bunch of new ad inventory — which has largely remained untapped. Google has finally publicly launched their solution to that problem — AdSense for Feeds.

Google has actually been trying out this service for a long time with a few selected feed publishers, but yesterday they launched it for the rest of the world . This new offering lets publishers very easily include AdSense in their RSS feeds which takes advantage of Google’s classic CPC (cost per click) and also CPM (cost per thousand impressions) ads.

To use the service, simply log into your AdSense account, then follow these steps:

1) Click on AdSense Setup
2) Click AdSense for Feeds
3) Fill out the setup form
4) Click “Save” and you’re done

Once you’ve finished this, the feeds you selected will now show ads at a frequency that matches the criteria you specified when setting it up, and you will magically begin receiving checks for all the content you have been syndicating for free all these years.

July 1st, 2008

Google retires AdSense referral program

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:57 am

Categories: Google AdSense

Tags: Google Inc., Google AdSense, Garett Rogers

Due to reasons unknown, the AdSense referral program is being retired at the end of August. It’s unclear how popular the referral program actually was, but it’s safe to assume it wasn’t a huge money-maker for Google. In their official announcement, they alluded to their reasoning behind retiring the program.

We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August.

In the announcement, they also suggest a possible replacement for your AdSense referral program called the Google Affiliate Network (formerly DoubleClick Performics). The two programs are almost functionally the same — advertisers pay-per-action and publishers get a portion of it. It doesn’t make sense to support two separate programs that seem to compete, and since they paid billions of dollars for DoubleClick, they might as well use some of their technology going forward.

If you have AdSense referral code on your website right now, Google suggests you replace it with AdSense for Content code before the end of August.

In order to prevent a decrease in your AdSense earnings, we strongly encourage you to replace all referral ad code on your site with AdSense for content ad code prior to the last week of August. You can get this ad code by signing in to your AdSense account, selecting the AdSense Setup tab, and choosing AdSense for content as the product.

Do you use AdSense Referrals? If so, how successful was it? Will you be giving the Google Afilliate Network a try, or will you put other ads in their place?

June 29th, 2008

"Family Guy" creator and Google team up

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 11:27 pm

Categories: Google AdSense

Tags: Google Inc., Team, Advertisement, Google AdSense, MacFarlane, Web Site Development, Web Technology, Internet, Garett Rogers

It’s unknown what kind of money was involved in the deal, but Google has teamed up with the creator of Family Guy to create two minute episodes of a new cartoon called “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy”. MacFarlane will take a percentage of the profit made by advertising that accompanies the 50 two minute episodes that he plans to distribute only on the internet. The cartoon is to be distributed on the AdSense network, though I’m not completely sure how successful this will end up being.

I am guessing that Google will eventually provide a library of content that people can host on their websites — “Cavalcade” is just the beginning. The viewers, if they click on embedded advertisements in the video, will help the website owner, and content creators, generate revenue. I guess if the content is entertaining enough, people will watch — but for the same reason Google is having trouble monetizing YouTube, I fear this won’t be a huge success either.

According to the New York Times, this deal between Google and MacFarlane is one of the largest ever for AdSense.

MacFarlane is also reportedly working with advertisers to create original advertising to run with the Cavalcade content, although neither Google nor MacFarlane would reveal any of the advertisers, saying only that the deals were among AdSense’s largest ever. — CNet

What do you think of the new deal? I for one can’t wait to see what MacFarlane has come up with — if it’s anything as good as Family Guy, we’re in for a treat!

March 13th, 2008

Google releases Ad Manager after DoubleClick approval

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 11:23 am

Categories: Acquisition, Google AdSense, Google AdWords

Tags: Google Inc., Advertisement, DoubleClick Inc., Service, Google Ad Manager, Garett Rogers

After winning approval for the DoubleClick acquisition from regulators, Google wasted no time introducing a new free service called “Ad Manager” that gives companies a powerful way to manage their ad inventory.

Google Ad Manager is a free, hosted ad and inventory management tool that can help publishers sell, schedule, deliver and measure their directly-sold and network-based ad inventory. It offers an intuitive and simple user experience with Google speed and a tagging process so publishers can spend more time working with their advertisers and less time on their ad management solution. And by providing detailed inventory forecasts and tracking at a very granular level, Ad Manager helps publishers maximize their inventory sell-through rates.

This is different from simply putting AdSense on a website — it lets companies with a real ad sales team sell and maintain their own ad inventory on their website. Google says they look forward to integrating DART (the platform behind DoubleClick) into this new service.

We’re excited to add DART for Publishers to our suite of products, and we’re committed to the continued development and enhancement of DoubleClick’s offerings.

The service is still only available as an invitation-only beta — though if you are interested, you can sign up for an invitation here.

February 26th, 2008

ComScore results demolish Google's share price

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:46 am

Categories: Google AdSense, Google AdWords

Tags: Google Inc., ComScore Networks Inc., Blogging, Investment, Internet, Finance, Garett Rogers

After ComScore made an announcement that clicks on Google ads have leveled off from January 2007 to January 2008, Google’s stock plummeted about $38 to below $450/share — but have since gone up slightly and are currently sitting around $456.

This is interesting timing as Google and ComScore are holding a conference call starting around 15 minutes from now. I will post live updates from the call if it’s interesting, so keep your eyes peeled on this blog starting soon. I’m definitely looking forward to the Q&A session to follow!

January 25th, 2008

Google stops paying "domain tasters"

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 2:28 pm

Categories: Google AdSense

Tags: Google Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Domain, Domain Taster, Garett Rogers

When you register a domain name, you have 5 days to give it back for a full refund. This paved the way for “domain tasters” to monetize their efforts by placing AdSense ads on these temporary pages. Domain tasting is the act of registering a domain or many domains to get a taste of their traffic, then returning them if they don’t meet a certain threshold.

At least one Google partner was making over $3 million per month by putting ads on these temporary domains. Google decided to make sure these people weren’t cashing in like this by introducing a new rule — Google won’t pay out for on a domain that is less than 5 days old. This doesn’t stop people from switching to another ad provider, but just by doing this, other companies may be tempted to do the same thing.

This is a smart policy move on Google’s part to ward off impending litigation that might have hit them in the coming months. Trademark lawyers have been getting crafter at taking down Kiting by suing under other laws. The new weapon of choice is not using Trademark laws but Forgery laws. The penalty for forgery is much worse and cares a much higher fine per article that is forged. Dell, Yahoo, and BMW have all filed lawsuits in the last two months that ask for millions of dollars of damage from Google partners and I think Google sees the writing on the wall, they might be named next. — DomainTools blog

Will Yahoo turn on on Domain Tasters too though? There is a good chance they will because they are already suing domain tasters under the forgery law mentioned above. Due to this AdSense update, all those people who were taking advantage of the system will be looking for money elsewhere, and the next likely choice is Yahoo. Now Yahoo has to decide whether to play nice and cash in on same people they are suing, or kick them where it hurts. It should be interesting!

December 24th, 2007

Google sends out presents to loyal advertisers

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 8:08 pm

Categories: Google AdSense, Google AdWords

Tags: Google Inc., USB Flash Drive, Camera, Advertiser, Corporate Communications, Marketing, Garett Rogers

Advertisers who spend big bucks on AdWords got a surprise in the mail recently — a 1GB Flip Video Camera which retails for about $149US. The camera is a huge step up over the conciliation USB drive though. Those advertisers who didn’t quite meet the “big gift” quota only got a slap in the face, or I mean, a modern floppy disk. Personally I would rather receive nothing than a flash drive fror spending $500,000 on ads. This video says it all.

July 26th, 2007

Digg diggs Microsoft, not Google

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 7:02 am

Categories: Google AdSense

Tags: Google Inc., Advertisement, Microsoft Corp., Digg, Garett Rogers

An announcement made today by Digg’s founder, Kevin Rose, prepares his users for an upcoming change that I’m sure would have caused a stir if nothing was pre-announced. Google has been used by the company to serve advertisements on their website since it was launched, but today Kevin says that they will be switching to Microsoft because they have a more “scalable technology platform”.

I’m not sure what he means by that, but anyway, this new 3 year contract does hit Google where it hurts. Since advertising is pretty much Google’s only means of making money, huge clients like Digg are worth keeping.

It will be interesting to see what Digg users think of the new ad units when they arrive. What do you think?

June 30th, 2007

AdSense designed for invalid clicks?

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:16 am

Categories: Google AdSense, Google AdWords

Tags: Advertisement, Google AdSense, Garett Rogers

Philipp made an interesting observation this morning about the difference between Google AdWords and AdSense units — the clickable zones on them are noticeably different enough to raise some concern. It appears AdSense units are designed for accidental clicks — or at least not designed for no accidental clicks.

A long time ago, Google made the ad units on their result pages only respond to clicks on the title link — before that, you could click anywhere on the advertisement. Why did they stop doing this? Here’s what they said:

“these changes help decrease the likelihood that a user will unintentionally click on an ad”

Now the question is, even after updates to AdSense, do they still allow “accidental” clicks? It seems to me this is being done in their best interest and at the same time ripping off a lot of advertisers who choose to show their ads in the AdSense network.

May 7th, 2007

Gadget Ads coming soon

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 11:24 am

Categories: Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Google Gadgets

Tags: Google Inc., Advertisement, Google AdSense, Gadget, Garett Rogers

Google is preparing to launch Gadget Ads as part of AdWords very soon according to several sources.  It is still unclear how they will be distributed, but they will likely appear on the Google Personalized Homepage and possibly throughout the AdSense network.  The ads will supposedly be sold through a CPM or CPC model.

Nathan Weinberg has a good point — he is worried that if these are automatically placed by Google, it would potentially give too much power to the advertiser and could very well detract from the main content.  As Nathan puts it, "I don’t want advertisers sticking pointless stuff on my site to distract and piss off you guys".

First it was text ads, then images, then flash, now gadgets — each step has been more "rich", which isn't necessarily a good thing for publishers.  We will see how it's implemented, but I'm sure if these gadgets make it to the AdSense network, it will either be on a per-advertiser basis, or there will be some way to disable gadgets completely.