Adsense has just gone live with a new feature to allow ALL Adsense publishers to add an ‘advertise on this site’ link to their Google ads.
This is a feature that they’ve been testing with a small number of publisher for a while but have just announced on their blog that is being released on a wider basis. They describe this feature as:
‘When you use Onsite Advertiser Sign-up, your ad units will display an ‘Advertise on this site’ link that takes advertisers to an informational landing page with details about your site and the Google AdWords advertising program. Advertisers who sign up through this page will be guided to create an ad targeted specifically to your site, and only your site. When more advertisers create and target ads to your site, you’ll benefit from the competition as it drives your potential earnings up.’
The process is simple and doesn’t require any additional code to be added to pages. You simply activate it through your ‘My Account’ tab once you sign in to Adsense. Then scroll down tot the ‘Onsite Advertiser Sign-up’ section and click the ‘edit’ button. You can then upload a logo and customize the landing page that potential advertisers will see.
One downside of this feature is that there is only one landing page per account. I have 20 blogs in my system so have a challenge ahead of me to customize the page in a way to make it relevant to potential advertisers from all sites. This is a challenge as they only allow you 384 characters in your description!
Another downer is that any new advertisers you refer to the system do not get credited to you as a referral to their referral system. They argue that you’ll benefit by having new advertisers – but the cynical side of me thinks that Google will benefit more as are likely to advertiser more broadly than on just one site.
Lastly on the negative side of the equation – there is no way to track who you refer or if any referrals actually do run ads on your site. Adsense say that you ‘may’ notice increases in revenue/CPM but really there is no way of tracking the impact directly which makes reviewing the benefits of this a lot harder.
So while this ‘may’ bring new advertisers to your site – it ‘may’ not. I’ve got mixed feelings about doing it.
