The team at Adsense have responded to some of the recent talk about Smart Pricing by writing a post on their blog on the topic. Their main points are:
1. Many factors determine the price of an ad
2. Clickthrough rate doesn’t affect advertiser return on investment (ROI)
3. Google doesn’t make money from ‘smart pricing’
4. Remember the old chestnut: “Content is King”
I think their post is a good step in the right direction – at least they are engaging in the conversation (something I’m pleased to see them doing more and more) and there are some valid points there that are there to stop publishers panicking too much. At the same time there is still a certain vagueness about smart pricing from a publishers end that leaves me feeling a little uneasy.
Maybe I’m missing something, but they seem not to have responded to the complaint that smart pricing affects an entire account. Also I wish they’d get more serious about joining in a conversation with their clients, e.g. by:
signalling that they consider talk about adsense useful feedback, not just a bunch of misconceptions that need to be countered with ‘the facts’;
allowing for comments on their blog (currently they will only engage with their readers one-on-one via e-mail);
saying who they are (how are we supposed to engage with a faceless ‘team’?).
I appreciate the steps they’ve taken to work this out, and I understand that being part of a huge, important corporation and being part of the team that brings in ALL of that corporations money they are likely careful about what they give away.
That said, I love how they pay GoogleGuy to interact with people. That’s one of the greatest things they’ve done to foster trust and have real conversations with those with whom they are interdependant. I wish they’d do the same with the Adsense team. It’d be good to learn their (first) names and have real, posted discussions with them.
By the way, it’s clear that the folks at Adsense read EVERYTHING that Darren writes :-)
I dunno – personally I think we’re all suffering from The King’s New Clothes Syndrome.
Who, in their right mind would work for an employer who would not tell how much you were going to earn?
But that’s what we’re doing when we put Adsense on our sites. We advertise without having a clue what we will get for displaying those ads … and we do it all because we trust a big American corporation to do the right thing.
Sometimes I just have to scratch my head and wonder at the naivety of some people.
I agree with the comments left so far. But you have to admit it is tough to say no to the Google check that arrives every month.
Just my 2 cents.
“saying who they are”
“It’d be good to learn their (first) names”
Did they update the blog entry by the time I looked at it, because now it says: “Posted by Suzie – AdSense Publisher Support’
Google will need to change the way they operate if the expect people to say with Adsense when YPN and MSN’s programs go mainstream. Yahoo and MSN will surely expolit the weaknesses of Adsense, which will force change at Google as publishers leave in droves to programs that actually work with the publishers and disclose commission rates, etc…
I’m personally looking forward to a little competition in the marketplace.
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I think this attempt by Google to “engage” in the conversation about smart pricing was just damage control. As said earlier they have still not addressed the main issue for most about SmartPricing affecting an entire adsense publisher’s account.
I cant wait for MSN or Yahoo to go mainstream and look forward to watching them suffer for their benign actions on so many fronts. Google clearly has no intention of making the adsense/adwords system anymore transparent than it isn’t now and distrust is growing exponentially each day. About time Karma kicked them in the ass with a size 6 Billion boot.