AdMoolah News and Views

Today MIVA launched a new self service advertising platform for publishers call MIVA Monetization Center (or MIVA MC).

MIVA MC includes three different advertising options for publishers.

1. Content Ads. These are similar to the AdSense and YPN that we all know. One unique thing about them is you can choose to have them contextually driven, or keyword driven. This is a feature that a lot of publishers wish Google had, so it could be attractive for a lot of people.
2. Inline Ads. These ads are underlines words in the content of the website. When a visitor hovers over the underlined test, an ad is displayed. I personally find these ads very annoying and wouldn’t use them on my own sites.
3. Search Ads. These can be used to display ads in search pages on the publishers own site. This seems very similar to AdSense for Search.

One bonus for small publishers is that the payout is only a $25 minimum and can be done via PayPal.

Another point in their favor is that there is no exclusivity clause. They don’t mind you having ads from another network on the same page. Since their Content Ads have a keyword option, they should be allowed on the same page as AdSense as well.

Another great thing is that they will be letting the publisher know what the revenue split is.

Unfortunately for international publisher, keyword driven ads, search ads and revenue spit transparency are available only to U.S. publisher right now.

I have filled out an application and will experiment with them if I get accepted.

Update: I have been accepted into the program. It took less than 4 hours!

There is going to be yet another pay-to-blog service – SponsoredReviews.com. There are several existing services such as ReviewMe, PayPerPost and LoudLaunch that are very similar.

They mention a few differences that make them sound like they may be interesting:

• Lower Transaction Fees – that’s always good for the advertisers and bloggers.
• Manual Pricing – This could be good for advertisers finding good deals from bloggers who are willing to lower their prices

They should be launching in a few weeks.

The Performancing/PayPerPost deal I blogged about a few days ago is being canceled. I’m not sure of the details, but Nick Wilson of Performancing said the deal “proposed by PayPerPost just isnt right for us or our community”.

Update: The PayPerPost blog is reporting that “We listened to our Posties and other Metrics users, dug into the Metrics platform and regretfully found that it wasn’t what we were looking for right now.”

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.

Performancing, who runs an advertising network I personally use, and who I’ve mentioned before, is being aquired by PayPerPost, the blog advertising network who I have also mentioned. TechCrunch broke the news today.

Performancing has 28,000 users, most of who are bloggers. This fits in perfectly with PayPerPost’s business model. PayPerPost has been getting some competition from ReviewMe lately, and this should help give them a boost.

Two services which allow bloggers to be paid by advertisers for posting about products, PayPerPost and LoudLaunch, both announced recently that bloggers will be required to have full disclosure for paid posts. This follows an opinion issues by the FTC last week that they will look into deceptive word of mouth marketing campaigns on a case by case basis.

LoudLaunch also announced recently that they are beginning to accept applications from both bloggers and advertisers and the service will be launched on December 26.

A third get-paid-to-blog service, ReviewMe launched last month and has required full disclosure from the beginning.

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.

The FTC had been asked to look into the practice of “buzz marketing” by the anti-advertising group Commercial Alert. In response, the FTC issued a staff opinion (pdf) yesterday that could effect how business is done online. The practice in question is paying a consumer of a product to make claims about that product. While the FTC didn’t think there was any need to add any new guidelines, they feel that word of mouth marketing could not use deceptive practices and each complaint could be handled on a case-by-case basis. Basically, it boils down to people endorsing a product without consumers being told up front that they have been paid to promote the product.

This has some real consequences for doing business on line. Services like PayPerPost, which pay bloggers to write about products without requiring a disclosure, will need to change their practices. Even if an individual blogger writes about a service and includes an affiliate link, I could imagine this could be considered a “deceptive” practice. Jason Calacanis has also recently been looking into claims that some PR firms are paying top Diggers to vote stories up. I could see this falling under this general area as well.

It has always been my policy on this blog that if I have any type of paid review or affiliate link, I will clearly mark it as such. Obviously going forward, this will be a good practice for everyone. Full disclosure has always helped earned the trust of readers, and now it may also keep you out of trouble with the FTC.

I first read about this at CopyBlogger.
Read more: Washington Post Article, Word of Mouth Marketing Association press release

Yahoo has announced that all new advertisers who sign up for a Yahoo Search Marketing account will get access to the new advertising platform, nicknamed Panama. I think this is a big step forward and shows they are pretty confident with their new platform.

On the other hand, I am an existing YSM advertiser, and I still don’t have the new platform. Why would Yahoo show preferential treatment to new advertisers and leave older advertisers out in the cold? Should I be offended?