AdSense have announced a couple of changes. One is that they’ve replaced ‘site targeting’ with ‘placement targeting’. Now advertisers can target their ads to specific ad units on your blog (depending upon how you’ve set your channels up).
The second change is that they’re now allowing advertisers to target sites with CPC ads (cost per click) rather than just CPM ads (cost per thousand impressions).
I’m not really sure how this will impact publishers. I did hear a couple of other things from AdSense that concerned me a little though – I’m not at liberty to reveal them yet – but hopefully can in the coming week or two.
Hm,
I have started to trust Google less in recent times.
It feels like they became my friend only to stab me in the back. I feel completely betrayed.
LOL only kidding, but what I wrote above seems like the attitude of a lot of bloggers.
I think we should get over it, they are the giant conglomerate and we are the measly users, end of story.
Those changes you announce seem interesting though.
Hey by the way, you are a lot more popular then Shoe and John eh?
That’s probably why they never mention your blog in their day to day bickering… they are too jealous :).
Keep it up mate!
I am testing this on the ad side. I have around 40 ads out there and am applying the same splittest logic to these as I would for ads distributed on the google network. I’m anxious to see how well it works.
Some publishers will surely be impacted as advertisers spend more time going over the data carefully. With CPM you digest your advertising results in larger chunks. With CPC you tend to modify/tweak with more scrutiny because you have better real time data.
Darren,
I am using Adsense on a few of my sites, but with little success so far. What is your average impressions vs. clicks?
What is the best way to optimize your Adsense ads to get clicks on them? Should they go before, in, or after the content of the article?
the adsense targeting system didn’t proved good for many of us publishers and i’m a little skeptical about those changes also. Low paying ads are the worst nightmare of any publisher and targeting(until not at least) didn’t do anything but allow sites to post low cost ads in your targeted ad units
Elliott,
Go to this webpage:
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=17954&topic=8970
This is where Adsense tells you where to place your ads for maximum return. I started using this approach about 18 months ago and my revenue increased nicely.
Hope this helps.
This means now we can track places that generate more money. We can play with the targeting system until get the best placement on the website.
I think it’s just a change of terms.. that’s all..
Furthermore it’s costly to target sites.. but nevertheless, it gives you quality traffic though..
Great… new things from Adsense. I like using it but its a slow earner, and if you’re concerned Darren, I’m concerned too. Hopefully it won’t impact the small guy like me too much.
the first change won’t affect the publisher that very much if he isn’t a huge traffic generator. If he is one of those Google whores than advertisers might go on to target the most suitable individual ad units and hence the ad units which are not brining in more money will receive less paying ads. i.e. the value of high paying ad spots will increase and the value of low paying ad spots will decrease..(this was for a blogger who is earning huge from adsense)
for bloggers who are earning less may not get affected by change one as they will keep getting ads as per there content because no one might seem to target there ad spots..they will receive ads which are NOT target for any specific website.
Change two will give the publishers better chance to analyze which ad spot in which blog is bringing in what kind of traffic. So again they will be able to target better publishers (the one with heavy traffic.) Low traffic websites wont see any huge changes in money earned.
I wrote a complete analysis here on my blog but for the readers comfort also posted it here on your comment..
Interesting changes. I can see that being very nice for advertisers. It will probably pay publishers to keep an eye on if this changes how much they earn. Site targeting has definitely been a bit of an iffy thing to many publishers.
As someone with a budget to spend $30,000 a month on AdSense in 2008, I welcome these changes. The more I can fine tune and target, the better!
Google has been changing a lot lately, but I think it is hard to say whether it will hurt the advertisers or those or us that are using adsense. CompuWorld seems to have a handle on it and I guess I have to assume that they know what they are talking about because I am the little guy and they are the big guy.
I try to use google adsense as a gauge to how well I am doing. Does anyone have any thoughts on whether that is a good idea or not?
I am using Adsense on a few of my sites, but with little success so far. What is your average impressions vs. clicks?
I am using Adsense on my site and doing ok with them hopefully the changes will not change this for the worst heres my site http://www.justlaughs.co.uk
Seems like Google are there more and more too please the big guys…with deep pockets…
They make whatever changes only to benefit Adwords advertisers.