I recently saw an article in USA Today about the wonders of Adsense and how senior citizens, and others, were using it to make tons of money. The article was brought to my attention by someone who knew that we were looking for ways to generate additional revenue from one of our websites. He thought AdSense might be the perfect fit for our needs.

At first, I scoffed. AdSense, to me, has always been about tacky text ads that look low rent. The people who use AdSense, I would say to my colleagues in a regrettably superior tone, are people who are too lazy to do the real work of finding advertisers. Granted, I hadn’t looked at the AdSense program in a while, but I did read marketing blogs and visited marketing forums. In those places, AdSense is not universally beloved. Sure, some people, according to USA Today at least, were extolling the wonders of AdSense, but even the article praising the program admitted that for every person who made a hundred thousand dollars there were probably several hundred, if not several thousand, who were making just a few dollars a month.

Still, to be honest, I had to acknowledge I hadn’t looked at AdSense for a while. In the interest of fairness, I thought I ought to at least go look at the program, so I did. One of the first things I found was that what I think of as the traditional AdSense advertisement, a text ad with the words “Ads by Google” underneath, was not the only sort of AdSense ad there was. There are now many more options for the look of AdSense ads. You can now have image ads, video ads and referral ads, all of which look like normal banner type ads, and which would blend well with almost any site. Suddenly, the advertising method I’d scorned as being “low rent” wasn’t looking so low rent after all.

For me, rightly or wrongly, the perception of an advertising method matters almost as much as the effectiveness of that method. Ultimately, advertising is about making money, no one disputes that, but I’ve always been of the opinion that how people perceive the method you use to advertise is as important as the effectiveness of the advertisement. Given that thought process, I always try to examine every potential advertising method from every angle. How will potential customers think of our company if we use a particular advertising method? What does that marketing community say about this method? What other companies, competitors or not, use this method, and would I want to be lumped in a group with those companies? If the answers to those questions were positive, I generally elected to use that advertising method.

The main question that I have now is whether my method of evaluating advertising venues is the right one. Do other people’s perception of the advertising methods I use really matter? Is it possible that only those who are involved in marketing or monetizing web sites even think about these things? In the end, doesn’t the advertising revenue matter more than the method used to generate the revenue, provided that method is an honest one? Could I be neglecting a viable money making method because of a personal prejudice? If I am, what is a better way to make a choice about the advertising methods I use?

To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure what I think about AdSense. I suppose, regardless of whether the ad is a text ad or an image or video ad, it is still, after all, an AdSense ad. Despite that fact, after seeing the different ad options available, I’m probably more willing to give this advertising method a try. I still won’t be putting up the text ads, but I may give a few of the image, video or referral ads a spin, just to see what happens.

Earlier today Google announced it would expand testing for video advertising, by working with two new music partners.

From the Inside AdSense blog:

Over the next few weeks we’ll be testing AdSense video distribution and sponsorship with a small group of publishers.

Google previously tested video ads on the AdSense network working with MTV Networks.

This time, we’ll be working with a larger set of content providers, grouping together video content from providers such as Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment together with quality ads and offering them as playlists which publishers can select from and display on their AdSense sites.

Reuters is reporting the new test will be based on a CPM model of cost per thousand impressions as opposed to the pay-per-click model typical for contextual links.

More from Reuters:

A Web site owner can select a video channel and embed it on a section of the site dedicated to running Google AdSense ads. Visitors then can click to watch ad-supported videos within the video channel on sites running the ads.

The Google advertising system splits the resulting revenue three ways to the video content owner, the Web site publisher and Google.

I like the idea of using the CPM model over pay per click. The prior test indicated a user would need to click to play the video and then further click to the advertiser site before publishers would get paid, which might not have worked well for publishers. I assume with the new model visitors will still need to play the video before an impression is recorded, but that seems reasonable.

As with my earlier post on the video ads I’ll reserve judgment until video makes its way to the majority of publishers, but for anyone who has a video related site the video ads look like a good fit. Google might not even need the publisher network to make this work for them given their ownership of YouTube and their deal to provide search and advertising to MySpace.

The Gray Line Between Content and Advertising

Aaron Wall has a short, but interesting post on how with the video ads Google is further blurring the line between ads and content. This also makes sense for Google since both Yahoo and MSN far surpass Google in content delivery. Aaron further mentions and links to articles on how Google might take their ads offline on billboards and tv and also in video games.

The melding of advertisement and content should come as no surprise and is something that has been happening for quite some time already. Think product placements in tv shows and movies or advertisers creating content around their brand like the Burger King mascot starring in a video game. Games like Second Life have spawned virtual businesses inside the game itself.

Merging content and advertising isn’t going anywhere. As items like Tivo make it easier for us to ignore commercials and interruption marketing falling in the wake of permission marketing we should expect the line to get even fuzzier.

For the record I don’t think AdSense is a scam and I’d like to make that clear from the start, but when I think about how to best profit as an AdSense publisher many of the tactics are designed to trick people into clicking or to at least hide the fact the ad is an ad. Is that honest? Is it a flaw in the system? Or is it business as usual?

The idea behind contextual advertising is that the ads are relevant to what you are currently looking at. You’re reading information on a site about astronomy and right there as you read is an ad for a telescope. Since the ad is aligned with your current interest you are more likely to click and more likely to buy. AdSense should in theory be sending targeted traffic to the advertiser and targeted traffic is worth paying to have.

But does it really send targeted traffic? Think about the Google Heat Map. Why do you think adds placed in areas usually occupied by navigation perform so well? Could it be that people clicking think they are clicking on a link to another page of your site and not an ad?

Similarly, why does common advice recommend blending ads into your content? Again it’s to make them look less like an ad. Much of the advice to improve click through on your ads is to reduce the chances that someone will think they are ads. Are we really sending AdWords advertisers people predisposed to buying the advertiser’s products or are we engaging in a thinly veiled form of click fraud?

Quadzilla has an interesting post today about how how you can increase your AdSense profits by observing people lacking in tech savvy.

These people don’t know about adsense or affiliate links. They can’t tell the difference between what (to you) is obviously spam and a relevant link. They stumble through the web hoping to somehow land where they want to be.

Take a look at the list of the basics Quadzilla mentions and think why they work and whether or not they work in the way an AdWords advertiser would like them to work. Think too of some other tactics to increase CTR like

• placing ads near icons
• placing ads within your content
• placing ads in common navigation locations

and ask yourself why they work and why less web savvy people are more likely to click them.

Aaron Wall wrote a post a few months back about the factors affecting AdSense CTR and earnings saying many of the same things including:

Dumb or naive people are less likely to realize they are clicking paid ads when they land on your page.

Aaron goes on to mention some common signs of intelligence or lack of intelligence such as having sites on topics geared toward kids or misspellings and misuses of language, any of which can be used to improve your AdSense earnings. He also mentions how on average a Google user is probably more savvy than someone who searches through MSN. I know the CTR from MSN and AOL searchers has always been higher than the CTR from Google searchers for this site.

If people are clicking because they are naive or because you’ve done a good job of making your ads look like content, is the system working the way it was intended? Are these people targeted in any way? If you place AdSense on a site for children is it even remotely realistic to think the person clicking an ad is likely to buy?

I mentioned at the start that I don’t think AdSense (or YPN or any form of contextual advertising) is a scam. Assuming the system is working the ad should be related to what’s on the publisher’s site. A person clicking on a link, any link, is showing an interest in what might be on the other side of that link. The person who clicked the ad for telescopes on the astronomy site is interested in astronomy and is going to be more likely to purchase one than someone without interest in astronomy. That should be true regardless of whether they realized they were clicking on an ad.

Maybe the naive clicker is a little less targeted than the person who knew they were going to land on a page selling telescopes, but they are still more targeted than some random person who happens upon an astronomy site. Advertiser sshould also be paying less for clicks on the network than at the search engine itself so the value of the click may be in line with the cost of that click.

You could even argue that the naive visitor will end up being more likely to buy than the savvy visitor. They should at least be easier to convince.

There’s still something about it that doesn’t quite sit right with me, but I don’t think it has to do with AdSense itself. It’s more something about taking advantage of those less savvy shall we say.

I’m curious what you think. Is something wrong with the concept of contextual advertising? Does it really send the kind of traffic advertisers are paying to get? Or is it all just business as usual, no different then using celebrities to push products or implying promises that no product can deliver?

I mean it couldn’t be me. I put the ads on my site. I put them everywhere I could. What am I supposed to do if Google can’t figure out what the page is about? I added the word asbestos on the page enough times. So what if my site is a free download site. That page is about asbestos and that’s a high paying keyword. I’ll bet Google is even keeping traffic away from my site on purpose so they can keep all the money.

I was reading on this forum how you need to go after the keywords that pay the most so I did. I made a page about auto insurance quotes, and one about college loan consolidation and one about refinancing mortgages. Just like all those lists say, but Google gets it wrong all the time and I don’t make anything. They just keeping showing those stupid free download ads. I know I have those downloads all over the page too, but that’s what my site is about. But I put those good keywords in too. Those ads never show up though.

I saw awhile ago this guy Markus made like over a million in a few months, but he was lucky. He had a lot of traffic and a dating site. I’d start a dating site too if I knew more about how to program one. Man if I had that traffic I’d be rich too. Why can’t I have a dating site. Those things practically come with their own traffic. Every one I’ve ever seen has lots of people already on them. And those people looking for dates will click on anything. It’s not fair. Just because I can’t program I can’t have a dating site. I could make easy money with a dating site.

One guy was telling me I should set up these channels or something to track things. What would it matter to know that all the ads suck? I can already tell I’m not making anything. Besides that would have taken a lot of time to add all my URLs and create the new code. I’ve already got the ads on the site. What am I supposed to take them down to put up the code again. I mean I’m not making any money. I already know that. Knowing how bad I’m doing is just going to make me feel worse. It’s not going to make the ads pay more and get clicked more. And I put the ads everywhere I could think of already. There’s no more room for more anyway.

I’ll bet Google isn’t reporting my real clicks. They probably just want to keep all the money themselves. I have to be getting more than two clicks a week. I get something like 50 hits every day. More than two of them must be clicking. I’ve got ads all over the page. How could you miss them? Yeah, Google’s keeping my clicks. Invalid my ass. Those clicks are real, but they just keep all the money and don’t tell me. I even complained about it once in an email, but Google never got back to me.

I read on one blog about making the ads blend into the page. Like that guy knew anything. How are you supposed to see them and know they’re ads if the look like everything else? Yeah, right I’m going to take the advice of someone who doesn’t even have AdSense on their site. I bought that ebook instead. Now that guy knew what he was talking about. I saw his stats too. He was getting mad clicks.

I did everything he said. I followed his system. I used all those high paying keywords and placed the ads where he did. I even used the same colors he did, but it still didn’t work for me. I’ll bet I’m in the sandbox. That’s just not fair that Google tries to keep people like me down. If it weren’t for me clicking on all their ads they wouldn’t even be making money in the first place.

I hardly make anything when someone clicks anyway. I hear Google keeps like 95% of the money and tries to screw the rest of us. Figures. The ads are on my site you know. I should be making 95% of the money. It’s not like Google made my site. I did that. I copied my friend’s site. Even used some of his content since it sounded good. The rest I got from those article sites. Google didn’t do any of that. Why should they get to keep all the money.

The worst is just when I started to make some money they banned me. I didn’t click on my ads at all either. I’m not stupid. I only used my brother’s computer or the library. I had my girlfriend click most of the time. There’s no way I clicked my own ads. At least not a lot. Google was just out to get me. They keep me from making any money and as soon as I figure out how to make some they kick me out and keep all my money. Man they suck.

I could have been rich if it weren’t for Google.

AdWords advertisers and AdSense publishers are both greatly aware of the problem of click-fraud and invalid clicks. We can add those who are perpetrating the invalid clicks, though of course for different reasons as their concern is more along the lines of how to get away with it. Click-fraud has made it to the mainstream as well with media coverage of the recent lawsuit by advertisers against Google. So how is Google doing when it comes to detecting invalid clicks?

Google reported Friday on the Google blog that as part of it’s recent $90 million click-fraud settlement they agreed to have an independent evaluation of it’s methods and procedures for determining invalid clicks. Dr. Alexander Tuzchilin, Professor of Information Systems at the Stern School of Business at NYU was the independent expert and you can find his report about whether of not Google’s efforts to fight click-fraud in this PDF

I just read through the report, all 47 pages of it and it makes for some interesting reading. At least if you like this sort of stuff like me. Maybe it’s just my scientific background from years as a Physics and Engineering student. Or maybe I’m just a little weird. Either way or simply because of my interest in search engine advertising I found the paper a worthwhile read. The report is a little dry as you would expect of any paper of this sort, but not too technical and easily understandable.

It starts with a little history of the internet in general and then more specifically a brief history of search engines and Google, followed by the AdWords and AdSense programs. It discusses the problem of invalid clicks for both programs each of which have different motivations for making fraudulent clicks. The report continues by discussing the difficulty of detecting or even defining invalid clicks and then some general concepts about what Google is doing to combat fraudulent clicks.

Google can collect a lot of information about the clicks, whos doing the clicking, and what happens after the click, but they can’t know everything. Even more a certain amount of intent by the clicker needs to be known in order to determine the validity of any given click.

The ultimate findings of Dr Tuzhilin are that what Google is doing to fight the problem is reasonable though there are some places where he believes they could be doing a little more. While not perfect, given the difficulty of defining the problem and the difficulty of ever being able to determine 100% of invalid clicks, Google is doing a reasonable amount to prevent click-fraud.

If you’re interested at all in the subject of click-fraud you might want to check out the PDF even if only to skim it for the details that concern you most.

You’ve seen it before. Someone starts a thread at (insert your favorite webmaster or seo forum here) complaining that Google has unfairly banned their AdSense account. As much as they insist they did nothing wrong usually a little digging reveals either they or someone they know was clicking on the ads a little more than they should have been. Still there are publishers who’s accounts have been banned through no fault of their own. If that’s the case what can you do to be included back into the program?

Not having been banned myself or knowing anyone directly who has been banned I can’t say from experience what will work, but I’ve always assumed you wanted to be as polite and humble as possible and offer to supply Google with anything they want in their investigation. After that you just wait and hope you get the response that all is forgiven.

While I might not have experience in the matter and hope I never get any, Jason from yfs1 has written an excellent guide on what you can do if you have been legitimately banned. He speaks from experience having been wrongfully banned and later re-included. His advice is good and hopefully it will help if you find yourself in a similar situation

The links:
AdSense Reinstallment Guide
Examples of emails to Google
Summary of the AdSense TOS

And for those that don’t like summaries here are the links to the full AdSense Terms and Conditions and Program Policies

I’ve been seeing the question raised a lot recently about how site owners can make their AdSense ads more relevant to their pages. Often the answer is just patience. It can take some time for AdSense to understand what your site is about when you first join the program, but in time the ads do become more relevant. In most cases it’s probably a matter of days, but you may want to give mediabot a week to explore your pages.

I’ve generally found the ads on this site to be very relevant to the page topic with the occasional off topic link showing up. Usually a refresh or two of the page is enough to increase the relevancy of the ads. Of course there are times when patience isn’t the answer. If you’re in the situation where waiting hasn’t brought with it a solution to the relevancy problem there are still things you can do to help AdSense along.

Improving AdSense Relevance

Most of the same things you would do to optimize a page for search results will also apply to the AdSense ads. Keep your page on topic and make use of your keywords throughout your page, perhaps paying particular attention near where the ads will apear on the page. I wouldn’t spend too much time over thinking your keyword density, but if you stay focused writing a page about custom muscle cars it’s likely you’ll mention enough terms to get some ads about them. If you jump around and write about several topics it’s possible you can be throwing AdSense off much the same way trying to target too many keywords on a single page can dilute the optimization of each.

As with typical seo you want to include your keywords in your page title, headings, URL, outgoing links, etc. All should give cues to mediabot what your page is about and what ads the page should be served. I’ve seen others claim that mediabot will pay more attention to your meta keywords than the more general Googlebot and that using keywords in your meta tags will help generate more relevant ads. I tend to doubt this as I would think both bots look at meta tags in much the same way. Feel free to knock yourself out and optimize your meta tags if you want, though. If it means anything I haven’t been using meta tags on the blog pages where I use AdSense and have never had a problem with ad relevancy.

Another thing to consider is your site in general. Not everyone agrees, but I’m of the opinion that AdSense goes beyond the single page to get an understanding of the topic of your site. I think this is one of the reasons it can take AdSense a few days to get things relevant when you first start placing ads. I’ve also written several post where I’ve used a running example throughout. The topic of the page itself might be seo, but the dominant keywords were on digital cameras. The ads still came back as seo ads. It’s possible that the use of seo related keywords in the page title and page headings and on the page itself were the determining factor, but I suspect AdSense does look beyond the given page.

Chances are if you’ve written about a single topic within your overall site topic and have made good use of keywords in your page titles and page heading you will see relevant ads,, but if you’re still having problems you can try to use section targeting. AdSense lets you use the google_ad_section_start and google_ad_section_end tags to let them know where you have gone off topic on your page and which sections of text to ignore when determining what ads to serve.

Google cautions that using the tags isn’t a guarantee and it can take up to two weeks before the tags are taken into account on existing pages. You’ll also still need to allow AdSense to read significant blocks of text with the tags. This isn’t about turning all your text off with the exception of one or two words you know pay more per click. The concept is more to have certain sections of the page ignored if you happen to go off topic for a paragraph or three.

Another option, though one that might not be as successful, is to block irrelevant ads. You can prohibit up to 200 ads from appearing on your site and if all your efforts still bring off topic ads simply block them in your AdSense account. It’s no guarantee the ad that replaces the blocked one will be any more relevant, but it’s worth a try and does at least keep one irrelevant ad from being displayed on your site.

Reasons The Ads Might Not Be Relevant

If you’ve done all of the above you’ll most likely be seeing relevant on topic ads, but if you’re still having issue you may want to consider a few things. It may be possible that your topic is in such a narrow niche that there are few to no ads to serve the page that are on topic. It’s not likely at this point in time, but it’s possible. You can always type your keywords into Google directly and see if any paid ads appear on your topic. If there aren’t any you may be out of luck until some advertisers in your niche sign up for AdWords.

It may be possible that your page doesn’t have enough content to determine what would be a relevant. If your page consists of a few images and a single line of text or is a series of unrelated links you may not be providing enough information. If this is the case the answer is an easy one. Provide more content for mediabot to spider and you should get better ads.

You may also want to look beyond your content to the outlying page header, footer, sidebars, and navigation on your site. Mediabot is reading more than your main content so it’s possible AdSense has been picking up on some less than relevant words you use outside of the main content. Many bloggers have received ads for blogging due to the mention of blog related words in their sidebar, menu, and even page title. If you think this is the reason for the lack of relevancy in the ads use section targeting to keep the focus on the page content.

One other thing to consider is that AdSense is having a momentary problem The system works well, but it’s not perfect. There are days where the ads don’t seem to be working well for me, but within a few hours or a day at most everything is back to it’s usual relevancy. It’s always possible the system has encountered a problem or is just in the middle of an update. There was a weekend in February I think where ads were down for much of the weekend when I believe a major update was going on behind the scenes. Again a little patience can go a long way.

Contact AdSense

As a last resort you can always contact the AdSense team through their contact form and ask them . I’ve had several contacts with the AdSense team (see my last post on google_hints) and they’ve always been very helpful. You may get an automated response from time to time, but in general it’s always been a real person on the other end of the email. Ask the team to take a look and see if they can determine why the ads are lacking relevancy. Keep in mind that the AdSense team probably gets a lot of email, so be polite and give them some detail on your problem. If you’re rude or don’t give them much to go on I wouldn’t expect a great response.

Most of the time the answer is simply patience. Give AdSense some time to understand your site and keep your site and pages on topic and the ads should become more relevant. If not try some of the ideas above and as a last resort ask the experts at AdSense. It’s still possible you may not get relevant ads, but if you follow the above tips the ad relevance should improve.

A couple of weeks ago a thread was started at Webmater-Talk asking about an apparently new AdSense Hints Code. The code itself has actually been around for a little while. A debate ensued over whether or not publishers were permitted to use this code with myself taking the side that the code was reserved for specific publishers only.

The code in question allows the publisher to tag their pages and tell Google what kind of ads they would like to see displayed. I had never seen the code prior to the aforementioned forum thread so did a little searching for google_hints on Google itself to find many other forums that had been discussing the very same topic over the last year or so. While many in those threads agreed it was an invite only piece of code there were others using it and swearing by it’s ability to help them earn more.

I figured the best way to settle the dispute was to ask the AdSense team directly. As an aside I’ve always found the AdSense team to be extremely helpful when asking them anything and have usually gotten replies within a short time frame. James from the AdSense team sent this in reply to my question:

Thanks for your inquiry. The feature you’re referring to is one of several features the Google AdSense team is currently testing for a very limited number of publishers. At this time, we are not able to offer these features to other publishers. Should we offer these features to additional publishers in the future, we will be sure to notify you at that time. I appreciate your understanding.

Seems pretty clear to me and basically what I had assumed prior to asking for the clarity.

Some Thoughts About google_hints

While the matter is settled that publishers can’t use the code at the moment without a direct invitation from Google, the mention of the code being in beta test got me thinking about whether it would be a good idea. On the surface it’s sure to be something publishers would want to add to their AdSense code to gain greater control of the ads that will appear.

I’ve found Google does an excellent job of displaying relevant ads contextually and the longer you stay with AdSense the more relevant the ads seem to get. Still there are some who complain they never get relevant ads to appear on their site. Usually the pages in question haven’t provided all that much content for mediabot easily explaining the less than relevant ads. While many of these sites are made for AdSense (MFA) sites some are pages that simply didn’t require a lot of content. Being able to tell Google what ads to display on that page could certainly be helpful. And even if Google is getting it right it would be nice to have the ability to tweak the ads a little.

On this site I think AdSense does a great job of displaying relevant ads, however since I’ll generally write on the same few topics all the time the same ads will appear over many pages. Some of those pages don’t perform particularly well as far as the ads are concerned and there’s a part of me that would be happy to have a chance to tweak things a little to serve different yet still relevant ads to the page in question.

As nice as the google_hints code might be it still seems to me like something Google should never release into the public for all publishers. Ot at the least only release the code with limited ability to affect the ads that get served. They are just too much like a meta keywords tag for AdSense and given the abuse meta tags have been given over the years there is no question many site owners would be tagging all their pages for words like mesothelioma and asbestos in hopes of those high dollar clicks. Those publishers might not get a lot of clicks, but they would probably get more money and given the value of each click it’s easy to see where the temptation would be greater to get clicks by any means possible fraudulent or not.

The google_hints code could probably be most workable if Google were to display the ads for the most part way they currently do and use the hints code only to refine what they find through spidering the page. For example if I were to write a page on web design and use the google_hints code to direct Google to display ads for graphic designers as opposed to web designers. Or maybe I suppled a hint of web application programming or something similar so the ads would complement my own services instead of competing with them. The ads themselves would still be relevant, though perhaps slightly less than were they for web design like the page.

Another and perhaps even better use for google_hints (or a completely new tag) would be to allow publishers to let Google know what kind of ads not to display. That would alleviate the concerns of many who refrain from using AdSense in fear of sending visitors to competitor sites. While Google does allow you to block up to 200 specific URLs it might be better to let them know you don’t want to see ads on certain topics even if those topics are relevant to the page in question.

google_hints sounds like a great piece of code for publishers to give them greater control over the ads that AdSense displays on their pages. I fear the spam and abuse they could easily generate though. At the moment only a limited number of publishers can use the code so the abuse problem will likely be limited, especially as I would think Google is keeping a close eye on those sites while they test. As much as I might like to have that greater control it’s still probably best for this code never to make it into the general public as is. Webmasters were never able to control themselves when it came to meta tags and I don’t see why the situation would be any different with google_hints. However used in a limited fashion or with one or two modifications google_hints could be a great new addition for publishers looking for greater control over the ads on their sites.

Thanks to stOx at Webmaster-Talk.com I learned earlier today that Google has begun testing Cost-Per-Action ads through AdSense. The new ads seem like the next wave in advertising for Google and based on the information I have come across it sounds like a good idea.

At the moment it’s invite only and the invitation comes straight from the AdSense team to your inbox. Until that changes there’s no reason to look for ways you can use the new ads on your site. For now a select few will have the ads and Google says it has based the invites on which sites match up best with the current advertisers. At the moment the ads will come from a limited group of high quality advertisers, though I’m sure after the test period is over the ads and the sites which can display those ads will be open to more advertisers and publishers.

How Cost-Per-Action Will Work

The basic concept is simple. Publishers place an ad on their site and get paid when someone clicks on the ad and then performs some action on the other site. The action might range from making a purchase to filling out a contact form and generating a lead. Advertisers will only pay when the action is taken and instead of just for the click.

Publishers will be given more control over the ads and be able to choose the specific ads they want to display as well as being able to use language to promote the ads a little more than is currently allowable such as ‘I recommend this product’ or ‘Try JetBlue today.’ There will still be limits as to what you can say and Google is quick to mention they are allowing the promotion in part because the program is currently in testing.

For Advertisers

The main benefit to advertisers would seem to be that they pay based on the action instead of the click. It’s much easier to make a fraudulent click than to perform a fraudulent action. If the goal of those committing the fraud is to profit from displaying an ad it’s not exactly cost effective to have to make a purchase in order to collect a percentage of the purchase price.

Additionally as an advertiser I would much rather pay because someone has actually bought something or at least given a strong indication they will buy something than to simply have them visit my site. I’m sure the cost-per-action will be far greater than the cost-per-click, though I also suspect the ROI will also be greater for the cost-per-action ads.

For Publishers

The main benefit for publishers will no doubt be a higher payout for each successful action that starts through an ad on their site. The greater flexibility over the ads will also be of benefit allowing publishers more control over what ads they want to display on their site and I suspect more options in incorporating the ads into their site.

On the downside for publishers is the fact that more action needs to be taken in order to get paid. There will also be a certain loss of control since much of the success over whether the action is taken is out of the control of the publisher This loss of control may lead some publishers to not adopt cost-per-action. Of course this will probably depend on the actual return. If the ads payout 10 times for an action what other ads pay for a click it may well be worth it to give up some of that control.

Cost-per-action ads are most likely a swing in the favor of advertisers who have been hit by fraudulent clicks. Advertisers are the backbone of the whole AdSense program since without them there’s no money flowing through the system. All of us publishers may complain if we don’t like the system or if it doesn’t pay as much, but chances are we’ll still take the money and continue to use the ads. More than likely publishers will have the option to use the cost-per-action ads if they want or continue to use the cost-per-click model as they currently are. And for now it’s not even clear if all publishers will even be gven the option to use the new cost-per-action model as it’s still invite only.

As with all things in testing and many things with Google only time will tell whether or not the new advertising model is a success. It’s hard to see how advertisers will object to paying per action as opposed to per click and as long as publisher revenue remains roughly the same I doubt most will object either. Should I become one of the lucky ones invited to join the program I would gladly test out the cost-per-action ads in order to see how well they’ll work.

Resources

Google Launches ValueClick Killer
Google Testing Pay-Per-Sale AdSense?
AdSense Testing Cost Per Action

It’s been rumored for a few months ever since GoogleRumors found one such AdSense video on the entertainment site The Superficial. This morning the New York Times reported that Google is taking steps to place video advertising on on it’s AdSense network. Google isn’t currently adding the video, but says it is considering doing so in the future.

The technology for the ads seem destined to come from Lighteningcast which was purchased recently by AOL. Lighteningcast has developed technology to enable mobile video advertisers to insert contextual advertising into both real-time and on-demand video content. Seems right up Google’s alley.

The video ads will not play automatically, but will require the play button be pushed before the video starts. I wonder how well this will work for advertisers, both those creating the video commercials and those displaying them on their websites. Will people click the play button to watch a video? Will site owners want video incorporated into their sites?

There will most likely be a certain amount of clicking out of curiosity when the ads first appear, but will those clicks last. Will you click to start a commercial you don’t have to? You might if the initial image you see looks interesting enough. It’s not like you couldn’t stop the ad once it started. At least I assume there will be a stop button. Something tells me that even if not right away advertisers will find a way to get us to click. If you’re on a web page about Nikon digital cameras you might click on an image showing one of those cameras to get a better look at one or just for more information.

What about site owners? Would you want to have commercials running on your site. It’s one thing to place a few links on each of your pages. They can easily be made to blend into the site and don’t have to take up too much real estate depending on the ad format you choose. It will be harder to blend a video into your site. I have a hunch it will come down to how much site owners can make from the video ads. If you’re finding those videos are bringing in twice the revenue of the text links ads which one will you most likely include on your next page?

It’s certainly an interesting idea and as someone who does have AdSense on my site I would be willing to at least see how one of the ads looks on my site and give it a chance to see if it works. I’m not overly excited about them though.

In a similar vein Jensense reported back in January that Google had begun testing rich media ads on part of it’s advertising network. The rich media ad tests were site targeted as opposed to contextual so perhaps it’s likely that’s how the video ads will used as well. By the way I hate the rich media ads as much as Jen does.

I’ll reserve judgment on video advertising until I’ve seen more examples and how they integrate into sites. One thing that has been clear for some time is that Google does seem to have a pretty good handle on making advertising work online. Before AdWords and AdSense was anyone really having success with online advertising. Sure, it existed and it’s not like Google created contextual advertising, but had you ever heard of a click through prior to Google.

I do have mixed feelings about video advertising, but I am willing to see what becomes of them. For me it will come down to some of the details of how it all ends up working. How much control will I have over the ads I place on my site and how well the videos themselves are made? Will the payout come as soon as the play button is clicked or will the entire video need to be watched? Will there be embedded links with in the videos that will count as the clicks? It is hard though to imagine that the future of the web won’t include more video than we see now.

Have some thoughts of your own?