AdMoolah News and Views

I just read Tim Flights post: Rotating YPN and AdSense is a Bad Idea

It basically says that rotating between AdSense and YPN with every page view is a bad idea because it confuses the YPN bot and cause Run of Network (RON) ads. “PSA”s (It seems that’s what YPN calls the ads like vonage.com and flowers.com for some reason).

I’m not sure if I agree with this. When I rotate ads I usually get 2 or 3 on target ads and 2 or 3 off-target ads. So it seems like YPN knows what the page is about, they just show relevant ads in only half the ads, as if they don’t have enough inventory to fill all four or five ad positions in the ad unit.

I would be interested to hear more experience with this and to see if YPN has anything to say about it (they really need a blog). I might try experimenting with this a little myself.

(Found via ProBlogger)

Update: YahooSarah has cleared up the PSA terminology confusion on a Digital Point Forum post. They are actually RON (Run of Network) ads.

Update: Paul M, the YPN Developer with a blog, has fixed Tim Flight’s problem by having him re-enter his blocklist.

No matter how good something is, it’s human nature to ask for more. My experience with the AdSense program has been great; its relatively easy to set up and revenues are increasing for me as I experiment more. However, that doesn’t keep me from wishing for a few more features:

• Payment via PayPal. Every month I end up transferring the money from my bank account to my PayPal account. Having the AdSense earning go directly into PayPal would be convenient and get it in there a few days earlier. I’m still wondering if Google isn’t doing this because they are working on their own “Google Wallet”.
• More reporting. I’d love to see AdSense report on which ads are being clicked on. It would be good to know what visitors to my websites were interested in. I’d also like to see AdSense be able to report exactly which URLs on my site are producing clicks. Channels are a bit of a pain to manage and 200 of them aren’t enough. I know there are scripts that allow you to track this, but they are often inaccurate and having anything happen between a click on my site and AdSense makes me a little nervous. Google has this information, why not make it accessible to publishers?
• Creating new channels without leaving the Ad Layout Page. Fairly often I start entering information into the Ad Layout page and then when I get to the Channel Selection drop down I realize I forgot to create a channel. I have to switch to the Manage Channels page and lose everything I have already entered into the Ad Layout page. A simple little pop-up or Ajax widget would allow a new channel to be created without switching pages. Yahoo Publisher Network does it nicely.

What features or upgrades would you like to see?

AdWords advertisers can now target sections or pages of a site:

Site targeting places your ads on individual sites in the Google content network. Site sections take that one step further by placing your ads on only one section or even one page of a site. If you sell football shoes, for instance, you might choose to advertise only on the sports section of a news site rather than placing ads across the entire site.

What does this mean to publishers? It means having good content with well targeted pages is even more important now than it was before. Advertisers want to be associated with high quality content, and this will allow them to do it. Content remains king on the web.

Found via: Search Engine Journal

Google has what seems like reasonable tips for using AdSense on Forums, but that had one strange piece of advice:

Be sure to blend the ads nicely, so they don’t appear overly intrusive – but don’t blend them so well they mislead your users!

I’m really not quite sure what that is supposed to mean. I guess that there are some questionable techniques like using images next to ads, but I don’t think those would really work with a audience of repeat visitors to a forum.

JenSense is reporting that Google is making good on the checks they missed out on. They are issuing checks, via DHL, to all the publishers that were affected by Google’s goof up between AdWords and AdSense account.

I’m really glad that Google is making things right. I really want to believe that the publishers in the AdSense ecosystem are important to them.

JenSense is reporting that Google has had a bit of a mix-up, and sent some checks out to wrong addresses or payees. Google somehow cross-pollinated information from AdWords account into AdSense accounts.

If this happened to me I would be very, very upset. It is a clear violation of the Terms and Conditions that says:

You shall be sent by Google within approximately thirty (30) days after the end of each calendar month that Ads are running on Your Site and/or Search Results Pages if Your earned balance is $100 or more.

For me, AdSense is not my primary source of income, but for those people who depend on AdSense income, this would be a very serious issue.

This is the first time I have heard of Google making such a big mistake. As Jennifer pointed out, with competition coming from YPN (and soon, Microsoft), this is not the time to be screwing up.

I hope Google does a mea culpa and sends out checks to everybody who was affected.

Its the beginning of the month again, so let’s see some earning for September. Just go to the AdMoolah Input Page to submit your monthly totals

I hope it was a record month for you!