AdMoolah News and Views

Google has announced the beta of a new AdSense referral program. They have announcements for the beta test from both the publisher and advertiser side of things.

The program allows advertisers to offer publishers a pay-per-action model. This is more like an affiliate program, publishers only get paid when a visitor you refer actually takes some action such as signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product.

This program takes Google a step beyond what their competition, like YPN and MSN adCenter is doing, and puts them in direct competition with companies like Commission Junction. It will be interesting to see how the competition reacts.

Right now it looks like publisher need to select individual ads to be displayed on their site. I would guess that at some point Google will combine the contextual aspect of their AdSense ads with the referral program and allow ads to be automatically selected for publishers. This is the approach that companies like Turn.com and AuctionAds are taking. Update: I found out Google does allow you to select a keyword, and Google will automatically rotate through a variety of ads for that keyword.

You can sign up for the beta as a publisher, or as an advertiser. I have signed-up. If I get accepted and find out more details, I’ll be sure to let you know.

There have been reports of Google testing a large variety of different ad formats over the last month or so. I’m sure they are testing these to see which ads get the best click through rates and the best conversion rates. Even though Google is the leader in the online advertising space, it’s good to see them still trying different things to tweak the system. This makes it better for both advertisers ad publishers.

Here is a summary of their recent experiments. I’m sure there are more of them out there too.

New Google Logo tests. Google has been experimenting with different logos on the ads for a while, this is the latest incarnation. From SEO Roundtable

This is a tabbed ad. Lot’s of potential here to do all sorts of interesting things. These kind of remind me of Chitika ads that are tabbed. See more screen shots at Stanley Shilov’s Blog.

This is being called a Horizontal Image ad. Similar Vertical Image Ads have been spotted in the past as well.

AdSense ads where the headline text is in italics have also been spotted. This is a pretty subtle change, but I’m sure Google can pick up even the smallest change in the CTR between ads.

This is also a good lesson for publishers: keep experimenting. If Google is still experimenting with ads after all these years, publishers should be doing the same thing. Try different ad and affiliate programs, try different colors, formats and placements. You can never be sure that you have the best combination for your site.

Students in an Iowa State University statistics class recently used data from AdMoolah in a group project. Hadley Wickham, who teaches Statistics 480, had the students collect data and then attempt to answer questions based on the data. Two of these papers have been published on the page outline the requirements for the project.

Some of the students had some interesting questions and conclusions.

One paper attempted to answer the question: “Is there a difference in earnings between categories, sub-categories, language and page view/page rank?” The conclusion reached was:

The analysis of the Google AdSense data resulted in more questions than answers. The main dependent variable used in the majority of the sectional analysis was average earnings. Earnings were found to be dependent upon seasonal effects (through quarter of year)and upon assigned PageRank score of the website. Increased earnings could also be captured if a website was published in either English or Danish languages.

Read the full paper here.

A second paper also had some interesting analysis. My favorite part of this one was an analysis of how more page views per visitor effects results. They found “a negative relationship between the number of times the page is viewed and the amount of earnings”. That is, having more page views makes your average eCPM go down.

Read the full paper here.

I think this project was a great idea. These are the kinds of questions I had in mind when I started AdMoolah, and these student did a good job of providing some rigorous analysis of the data. I’d like to thank Hadley Wickham and all his students for the work they put into this.

A common complaint among publishers is that the AdSense program policies are unfair; they allow Google to unilaterally cancel an account and keep all the earnings made by the publisher. The Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has now ruled in favor of these publishers. After studying the case for a year, the KFTC ruled Monday that Google must change these policies.

The KFTC began looking into this after a website, Humor University, had its account canceled and had about $26,000 taken away by Google. Humor University is now filing a lawsuit against Google Korea.

Here is an article about this from the Korean Herald.

The article has a quote from Humor University’s CEO Lee Jung-min:

“In the lawsuit, I’m considering seeking the unpaid ad revenue only, even though the reputation of our website might have been tainted because of the illegal click claims.

I find this kind of dubious. How would Google canceling the account effect the reputation of the website? Google doesn’t make public which websites have been canceled. If that information got out, it was the publisher’s own fault. If anything, taking AdSense ads off a site would increase its ability to monetize the site.

It will be interesting to see how Google responds to this. Will they try to fight it, or will they change the policies? And if they change the policies will it effect publishers worldwide, or just in Korea?

Good news from AdSense, the referral amounts for publisher referrals has been changed for the better. There is now a two-tier system in place. If a publisher that you referred reaches $5.00 within 180 days, you will receive $5.00. If a publisher you referred reached $100 dollars you get $250. This is a nice jump from the previous $100.

This seems to be effective retroactively to some degree. I see a $5.00 referral already in my account, although I’m not sure how far back they have applied these new amounts.

As usual, JenSense had the scoop on the official word, although I saw Darren mention it first.

Update: AdSense has posted about this on the Inside AdSense blog and there are some additions to the publisher referral program:

If, in any 180-day period, you refer 25 publishers who each earn more than $100 within 180 days of their respective sign-ups and are all eligible for payout, you will be awarded a $2,000 bonus (bonus payouts are limited to 1 per year).

They also have changed the AdWords advertiser program:

• When an advertiser you refer spends $5 within 90 days of sign-up (in addition to the $5 sign-up fee) you will be credited with $5.
• When that same advertiser spends $100 within 90 days of sign-up, you will be credited with an additional $40.
• If, in any 180 day period, you refer 20 advertisers who each spend more than $100 within 90 days of their respective sign-ups, you will be awarded a $600 bonus (bonus payments are limited to 1 per year).

They also included details on how past referrals are effected:

These rules will also apply to users that you have already referred but who have not yet reached one of the new earning/spend thresholds. For example, if you referred an AdSense publisher who has currently earned $2.00, you will be paid $5.00 if that publisher reaches the $5.00 mark. But, if you have referred an AdSense publisher who has already earned $10.00, you will not be paid $5.00 retroactively for that referral reaching the $5.00 mark. However, should that publisher eventually reach the $100.00 earnings mark within 180 days, you will be paid $250.00.

JenSense, again has the scoop on the new AdSense policy changes: It’s official! You can now run AdSense on the same page as other contextual ad programs

So it seems that Google tightened things a little by not allowing similar looking ads to appear on a site, but at the same time loosened things by allowing other contextual ads on the same page. Note however, the YPN’s terms do not allow YPN to be on the same page as other contextual ads, so you still can’t run AdSense and YPN on the same page.

Thanks to Jennifer for staying on top of this for us. Know we just need to figure out how different ads need to be in order to be considered different looking.

Google has updated their AdSense program policies. There are many small changes, but there is also one major change: If publishers use ad networks other than AdSense anywhere on their sites, they must now make sure the ads look different. JenSense has the details of all the changes and a special post on the competitive ad policy.

This is going to effect many publishers, myself included. It is currently standard practice to run A/B tests with Google and other ad networks. You randomly rotate Google ads with ads from another network using the same formats and color schemes, and see which one performs the best. This will no longer be possible. It is also common to display ads from other non-contextual ad networks in formats that are very similar to AdSense. Again this will no longer be possible.

This is going to cause a lot of confusion and questions for publishers. There has been a lot of debate on the forums about how acceptable it is to display an image close to an ad. I think trying to figure out what is acceptable for competitive ads is going to be even more difficult. The new policy states:

In order to prevent user confusion, we do not permit Google ads or search boxes to be published on websites that also contain other ads or services formatted to use the same layout and colors as the Google ads or search boxes on that site. Although you may sell ads directly on your site, it is your responsibility to ensure these ads cannot be confused with Google ads.

But what is considered the same color, if you have AdSense in dark green and Chitika ads in light green, is that different enough? If you always use leaderboards for AdSense and skyscrapers for Yahoo, is that different enough? Is adding a border enough?

There is going to be a lot of talk about this on the forums and in blogs. People are not going to like this.

Well, I’m going to be busy the next few days trying to figure this out and implement the changes on my website. AdSense has never performed very well for me on AdMoolah, so I think I’m going to switch to Miva MC to give it a try.

Here is some good news for publishers who have been having problems getting correctly targeted ads on their sites – Google is testing the ability for publishers to specify negative keywords for ads.

One publisher who was given the chance to test this new feature had this to say:

I can’t tell to much, except that i was given the possibility to give a series of terms for which they broad matched and didn’t show ads.

Of course, as with all new testing at Google, there is no word on when this feature will be available to all publishers, or even if it will ever be available.

I think this is a good step forward for AdSense. I know I initially had problems targeting ads on this blog, because all the ads were about “blogs”. Having a negative keyword filter would have helped out a lot.

Originally found via ProBlogger.

One source of constant confusion and debate in the AdSense community has been the placement of images next to ads. Many people discovered that putting images right next to ads caused an increase in the CTR of ads. Google, however has come back to publishers and told them that they are not allowed to do this, and ads that appear physically related to the ads are not allowed.

Google has now posted a blog entry that clarifies AdSense’s image policy.

Here is what I believe is the main thrust of the policy:

We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads. If your visitors believe that the images and the ads are directly associated, or that the advertiser is offering the exact item found in the neighboring image, they may click the ad expecting to find something that isn’t actually being offered. That’s not a good experience for users or advertisers.

Many publisher have tried to put a thin line between the images and the ads, but according to Google, that is not good enough:

If the ads and the images appear to be associated, inserting a small space or a line between the images and ads will not make the implementation compliant.

So, the basic rule is, don’t try to fool your visitors. This is still a subjective judgment, but try to view your site as if you were a Google engineer, and ask if it seems acceptable or not.

Smart pricing is a constant source of confusion and frustration for AdSense publishers. Although no one except Google know the details of smart pricing, this FAQ attempts to distill the AdSense community’s best guesses at what is going on. I’ll try to keep this post updated with the latest information.

What is Smart Pricing?

Smart pricing is an attempt by Google to ensure that AdWords advertisers are getting a good Return On Investment for their advertising. Usually when an advertiser places an add the y want whoever clicked that ad to take some action such as buy a product or sign up for a newsletter. Google tries to determine if a user from your site is likely to result in the desired action or not. If not, they lower the price of click from your site. Here is an explanation from Google (written from an advertisers point of view):

Google’s smart pricing feature automatically adjusts the cost of a keyword-targeted content click based on its effectiveness compared to a search click. So if our data shows that a click from a content page is less likely to turn into actionable business results — such as online sales, registrations, phone calls, or newsletter signups — we reduce the price you pay for that click

What Factors Effect Smart Pricing?

That’s difficult to say. Google gathers lots and lots of data, and they could be using any of it to determine how much smart pricing to apply. They did say this much: “We take into account many factors such as what keywords or concepts triggered the ad, as well as the type of site on which the ad was served.”

Does Smart Pricing Effect Just One Site or an Entire Account?

It appears that smart pricing effects the whole account. All of the sites on a single account are equally smartpriced. See One Poorly Converting Site Can “Smart Price” an Entire AdSense Account by JenSense for details.

How Do I Know if I Have Been Smart Priced?

There is no way to tell for sure. If you see a sudden drop in the CPC values you get over you entire account, this may indicate you were smart priced. However, a drop in earning doesn’t necessarily mean you been smart priced. Here are some other reasons why your earnings may vary.

Is Smart Pricing Permanent?

No, it’s not. Google readjusts the amount of smart pricing on an account once a week.

How Can I Get Rid of the Effects of Smart Pricing?

The type of traffic you get can effect smart pricing. Try to make sure the traffic on your site is in “buy” mode.

For example, take two different sites about digital cameras. If you have a site about photography tips, people are not really looking to buy cameras. They may be mildly interested in checking out new camera models, so they may click on ads, but they are really not ready to buy. However if you have a site about digital camera reviews, many of the people on the site will be actively looking to buy a camera. When they click an ad, there is a good chance they will be buying. The photography tip site may be smart priced because the traffic just doesn’t convert as well as the review site.

Also keep in mind that accidental clicks will never convert well. If a lot of your click come from visitors click on ads because of some “tricky” placement of ads on your site, you will likely be smart priced.

I Noticed a Drop in My Average CPC. Was I Smart Priced

Not necessarily. There are many reasons why average CPC can drop. Advertisers could be lowering their bids, a major advertiser in you niche may have dropped out of a bidding war, some CPCs vary seasonally, an ad might be displaying on your site that has great CTR but lower CPC than the average in the niche. With so many variances in CPC, it’s hard to tell what is really going on.

Please comment on this entry to let me know what is missing or incorrect.