Adsense is surely a quick and painless way to getting ads on your site, but finding advertisers (targeted advertisers) may be a dilemma today, but it does have its own rewards.

My concern was not so much about the usefulness of AdSense as it was about the perception of AdSense. In some quarters it is, or was, considered to be an advertising method used by people who aren’t so much concerned with content as they are with getting people to come to their site and click ads. I’m also not overly fond of the straight text design that I’ve always considered the “traditional” AdSense ad.

Once I went and investigated, I discovered the image ads. These are much more attractive, and would, I think, fit better into more upscale sites.

Whether we like it or not, how others perceive our sites matters. If the majority of people who come to your site think that AdSense is generally used by people who aren’t serious businesspeople, then it will hurt the perception of your business. That’s where my hesitation came from, and why I was hesitant to use AdSense. When I investigated further, I discovered there were other options than the AdSense ads with which I was familiar. We’re still probably going to give the image ads a try on one of our sites. I’ll let everyone know how it turns out.

I did use AdSense here shortly after launching the blog and still have the ads on older posts. In part because I’m too lazy to remove them and in part out of curiosity and a way to understand the system better.

@David – I think you’re touching on one of the main ideas about AdSense in it depends on the audience for your site. A tech savvy audience will recognize the ads as ads and so the ads may raise some of the questions that have been mentioned here. A non tech savvy audience probably won’t raise those questions.

I agree with you that contextual advertising isn’t automatically a bad thing. It truly depends on your audience, your topic, how much you’re earning. It’s good to be aware of the potential concerns, though.

However, I totally agree that if you are in the “one sale makes my day” set then you probably don’t want anything that might distract your customers from the path to conversion.

One thing to take into consideration with AdSense is that those in the know will see the ads for ads. Some of those people may not link to your site because of the ads so having them there might be a concern. But, again, it depends on the viewer, the topic of your site, how tech savvy they are in seeing the ads as ads.

AdSense isn’t automatically ‘low rent,’ but there is an audience who will see them that way. If that audience is important to you then it’s something to consider. If that audience isn’t important to you then having the ads probably isn’t a big deal.

There are people who will see the ads as somewhat cheesy and may not link so readily or subscribe to a blog running AdSense so there are concerns to be considered. As a general rule the ads don’t bother.

Thanks again for the post.