AdMoolah News and Views

AdSense announced that the Electronic Funds Transfer is now out of beta and available for publishers in 16 countries. I have been using EFT since they started the beta and really like the convenience of it.

Found via Digital Point Forums.

I came across a splog (spam blog) today that had what seemed like a dangerous element to it. This splog was simply copying entries from other RSS feeds and posting them to their own blog. (Of course, no credit was given to the original author.) However, I noticed one of the original entries had an AdSense for RSS ad on it, and this was also copied into the splog. I checked and the publisher ID in the splog matched the publisher ID on the original site. This means the ad is showing up on a site that the original publisher has no control over.

This seem particularly nasty because if the splog is violating AdSense Policy, the original publisher may be penalized for it. I’m sure Google is smart enough to know what is going on, but it certainly is something to watch out for.

You can get more information about fighting splog.

Dave Taylor has an article on his site about a new beta program from AdSense that ads an “Advertise on this site” link on ad units. When the link is clicked it takes the visitor to a page that talks about the referring site and has an invitation to sign up with AdWords.

I don’t agree with Dave who says: “This is very exciting news for those of us involved in the AdSense / AdWords world, and I’m looking forward to Google making it more pervasive”. I don’t want one of these links on my site. If an advertiser wants to put an ad on my site I want him to contact me directly. I don’t want to have to share the revenue with Google. I hope this will be an optional feature and not something that publishers have no control over.

Found via: ProBlogger

Soon, Google AdWords users will be required to create a Google Account to sign into AdWords. Currently Google accounts are used for things such as Gmail, Google Groups, and Froogle. This change will be done by January 15, 2006

This seems like a very bizarre move to me. AdWords users are primarily business users, while the other Google services are primarily consumer based services. I’ll be creating a new Google Account strictly for my AdWords account to keep it separate from my personal Google account.

Why would Google force AdWords users to do this? My guess is they are trying to consolidate all their user administration services to ease maintenance and updates.

I’m they’ll be doing the same thing for AdSense users soon.

Found via ThreadWatch.

The New York Times has an article explaining how it is starting to sell its own ads instead of relying on Yahoo to sell ads. This is good news for publishers because it means we are one step closer to getting a third alternative to AdSense and YPN. They are starting to sell ads on some of their own web sites, but will expand to allow other publishers.

Here are some interesting bits from the article:

Microsoft also expects to use its new system to sell ads on other Web sites, just as Yahoo and Google do with their systems.

The MSN system, like other search-based ad systems, will let advertisers specify how much they will pay each time a user clicks on their ad. MSN will also let advertisers bid different amounts depending on the characteristics of the user who sees the ad.

He said that once Microsoft had a large number of advertisers and had refined its ad placement formulas, it would be able to compete with Google and Yahoo to sell ads on other Web sites because it would be able to offer higher ad revenue.

Update: Microsoft has an official press release.

I recently reported on my first week with YPN. Since then, YPN seems to be doing better on this Vegas-themed site.

For the last 8 days, YPN has actually been outperforming AdSense by 15%. If you don’t include the AdSense Link ads, the advantage jumps to 35%. This jump in earnings for YPN comes from both a boost in both CTR and CPC. This could be because there seems to be an additional targeted ad in YPN now, for the first week there only seemed to be 2 targeted ads, now there are 3 targeted ads.

Over the whole 15 days, things are pretty close. I’ll have to keep my eye on the results to see who the long term winner is.

Darren at ProBlogger has a great post about the factor that affect CTR. His list of reasons are:

- CTR varies between topics
- CTR relates to Ad relevancy
- CTR can vary seasonally
- CTR varies between reader types
- CTR varies between ad design and placement options
- CTR varies depending upon other site design factors
- CTR varies depending upon other options to ‘click’

I think this is a pretty thorough list. The post has a lot more details on each point and is worth a read.

If you use Firefox (and you should), there is a great little Greasemonkey script that prevents you from clicking on your own ads.

Once its installed, if you try to click on your own ad, nothing happens. It could save you from those oh-crap-I-just-clicked-my-own-ad panic moments.

I highly recommend it.

Trying to increase earning by using the AdSense Competitive Ad Filter to block low paying ads doesn’t make sense. Google’s algorithms automatically display the ads that will make you the most money. This is in Google’s best interest because the more money you make, the more money Google makes. Trying to outperform Google’s algorithm is next to impossible. Google has much more information on the ads themselves and what works and what doesn’t work.

Let’s say you do some research with a click tracking script and you manage to identify an ad with a low CPC and you block the URL of the ad from our site. What could be wrong with that? Lots:

• What if this ad has a fantastic CTR? If this ad pays half of the other ads on your site put has a 3x better CTR, it would have made you more money than other ads.
• What if other ads from the same URL have a better CPC? Advertisers often have several campaigns going, each with different ads and CPCs, but the same URL. You could risk blocking a higher paying ad without knowing it.
• What if the advertisers change the bid price of an ad? Advertisers often change the bid price of an ad. They may find an ad was more effective than they thought so they are willing to pay more for it.
• What if there is a drop in ad inventory? Having blocked URLs could cause you to start displaying PSAs.

It’s obvious that Google appreciates AdWords users more than AdSense users. And why wouldn’t they, they’re the ones paying the bills. The AdWords team just announced that there is an AdWords forum available.

AdSense got a blog first and now they get a forum. I hope the AdSense team follows quickly and gets an AdSense forum going. I’ll be looking for a adsense-help Google group soon.