There’s an interesting post over at The Simple Dollar titled – Why I’ve Decided To Abandon (Virtually All) Ads On The Simple Dollar. The post outlines Trent’s reasoning on why he’s taken AdSense off his blog – in short, the lack of control that the program gives him over who advertises on his blog.
While this problem will no doubt be helped by the recent introduction of an Ad Review center in AdSense – this only fixes part of the problem as it only gives you the opportunity to review those ads specifically targeted to your site and not those ads that AdSense just serves contextually from their non targeted pool of advertisers.
Thanks to Jeremy (no link supplied) for the heads up on this one.
As always its nice to read the varied opinions that make blogging what it is. The topic is interesting but I think too much attention is paid to relevant ads. My blog (6 months and counting) has AdSense recently placed them. I’m not concerned so much with relevant advertising. The few that I found distasteful I blocked.
Many people land on a blog and just as there are diverse opinions on this one subject, visitors land on your site for various reasons. An unrelated ad may interest them who knows.
I visit my own blog quite a bit in this season changing and adjusting things which I’ve heard is not good if you have advertising. But I still have to visit my own site. I’m trying things out and still finding “my voice” as they say. So I can’t blame advertising. I’m a visual creature thanks to a background as an artist so seeing my site is important.
There is so much online about blogging, AdSense and Google that most readers know the system better than we do. Those who don’t will, that’s a guarantee. And after all we’re readers ourselves.
AdSense is the best shot for newbie publishers and others who don’t want to spend a lot of unnecessary time making decisions about advertising.
On the other hand I think we might be overlooking something in the AdSense war and that is we are helping to create it. This one source of Advertising dominates blogs and websites. People read and form an opinion. Then they visit a site with AdSense and have already decided its taboo without even trying it out to see if there is something there.
Google is about search. Even their advertising program is about search. They have not meandered away. They are steady in their mission. I should be so focused.
I’ll be posting some future content on the subject, but for now it might raise suspicions that I’m trying to get my visitors to click on ads, so thanks for the article Darren, really helpful and thought provoking.
Well, so much for all the “integrity” – he put the ads back on his blog again.
He put the ads back on, but only because he was bombarded with reader comments urging him to do so. The readers’ reasoning, and his response, can be read here:
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/02/03/a-decision-on-ads/
In the end, he decided on a compromise: he put the ads back up, but underneath each of them he provides a link where readers can report distasteful ads.
Sounds like a good solution to me. My guess is this, as well as Google’s new Ad Review Center, will solve his problem.
Adsense also saves you the bother of getting advertisers for your site, uploading ads and taking them off. Then why bother about control?
Its about having control vs generating revenue. If you can make more money having more control over ads, it makes a lot of sense. This could be a case when there are advertisers who want your space. But for most people making some money from adsense would be more important than knowing what ads they show.