AdMoolah News and Views

Yahoo! today announced to its publishers and advertisers that it has introduced “Quality Based Pricing”. This seems like it is very similar to Google’s Smart Pricing.

From the Quality Based Pricing FAQ:

What is quality-based pricing?

As part of the evolution of the Yahoo Search Marketing advertising system, we now include an assessment of the quality of our publisher’s traffic when you are charged for a click from that source. Depending on the quality of the traffic from the partner or publisher where the click came from, the cost of your click can be automatically discounted by a certain percentage.

This means that many publishers will see the amount they earn on each click go down. The initial impact may be limited because Yahoo is introducing it to a limited set of keywords, but the number of keywords effected will increase over time.

There are constant complaints about smart pricing in AdSense forums, I have a feeling we will start seeing similar complaints on the YPN forums as well.

I have an Smart Pricing FAQ that tries to explain Smart pricing as much as possible.

According to an article from the BBC, Google will be updating its policies to include essay writing sites in its list of sites that are not allowed to advertise using AdWords. Starting next month, Google will no longer allow ads for “academic paper-writing services and the sale of pre-written essays, theses, and dissertations”.

Google, commenting on the change, says its advertising policies are “developed and evaluated based on multiple factors, including legal and cultural considerations plus user and customer experience”.

And a spokesperson said that the advert ban was expected to be applied across Google’s global network.

Of course, the essay writing companies aren’t too happy, while the universities are applauding the news. To me this ban seems kind of arbitrary. I don’t think these ads provide a poor user experience and they bring in money, so it’s just a matter of Google deciding that this industry is “bad” somehow. What industry is going to be next? Of course Google is allowed to reject any ads they want to, but does it make good business sense?

If you are a publisher who happens to have a site that includes these types of advertisers, I’m sure there will be a dip in AdSense revenue starting next month.

It’s been so long since I’ve heard any news of Microsoft’s potential competitor that I had almost given up hope for it.

But John Battelle, had some interesting words to say about the Microsoft/aQuantive deal:

I did have a very interesting talk today with Yusef Mehdi, who ran the aQuantive deal for Microsoft, and Brian McAndrews, the CEO of aQuantive. What struck me most was the commitment to have a solution that counters AdSense, but with a richer suite of services for both publishers and advertisers. Microsoft is really committed to this business, but they have work to do to productize and integrate this acquisition. More soon.

That’s promising.

JenSense is reporting that Google is disabling arbitrage publisher accounts as of June 1st. Some publisher are getting emails stating that they have a business model that is not a good fit for AdSense, and their accounts would be disable. The publishers will get to keep any money they make before June 1st.

One thing that is not 100% clear is what exactly determined which accounts got the emails. Reading a thread at Webmaster World, which includes comments from many webmaster who received the email, it is not clear what the exact problem was. Were they banned strictly for doing arbitrage, or was it because it they had MFAs (Made-For-AdSense websites)?

My personal opinion is that Google is cracking down on accounts that have sites which provide a bad user experience. We all know those websites that have very little content and the ads are the only obvious way to leave the site. Kim Malone has already stated that Google does not like these sites. This is from a Search Engine Watch article:

Kim Malone, Director of Online Sales & Operations for Google, gave the generic search engine response. “We’re interested in a positive user experience,” she said. She did share, however, that misleading users is not acceptable. For example, you cannot offer something for sale in a PPC ad and then direct consumers to a landing page full of ads instead.

Google has nothing against arbitrage itself. It is possible to do arbitrage, and still supply a good user experience. I have a site where 25% of my traffic comes from AdWords. Almost all the income from this site is from AdSense. But, I know this is a good user experience because users who get to my site from AdWords spend an average of over 5 minutes at the site reading an average of 10 pages each. All the content is unique and relevant to the ads that I display. Google’s AdWords system also recognizes the quality of the user experience, because most of my keywords rank a “Great” quality score. The quality scores measures the relevance of you page content to the keywords you use for your AdWords ads. This great quality score allows me to keep my bid prices very low. The high page count per user at my site means I don’t need a huge CTR on each page to make a profit. For example, if I pay 5 cents per click on my ads, and I have a page CTR of 3.33%, and my pages per visitor is 10, I only need to make 15 cents per click to break even. Add to that the fact that the user has had a good experience at my site and is likely to come back and recommend it to others, I am way ahead. I don’t think Google would complain about this type of arbitrage.

I think one source of confusion is that many people equate arbitrage and MFAs. This is because almost all MFAs engage in arbitrage, and most arbitrageurs use MFAs site. But, as I have shown above, it is possible to do arbitrage in a way that provides users with a positive experience.

The other question is whether or not this will be good or bad for publishers. There are a few factors at work here.

First, Google’s disabling of many MFA arbitrageurs accounts means there are going to be fewer AdWords advertisers as well. Fewer advertisers means less competition, and lower click prices. That’s bad for publishers.

Next, eliminating MFAs from the AdWords advertising pool and making the user’s experience better means people may be more likely to click on ads in the future. If someone has an experience where they click an ad and are led to a spammy page with more ads, they are less likely to click on ads in the future. That’s good for publishers.

Finally, some advertisers do not use the content network because they do not want their ads to appear on MFAs. Banning MFAs from the system will mean more advertisers are willing to use the content network in the future. That’s good for publishers.

So, I think there may be a slight, initial dip in publishers earning as the MFA arbitrageurs leave, but in long run I think things will even out.

Update: Shoemoney has a video on the subject. He says many big time arbitrageurs have not been kicked out of AdSense.

I’ve always been interested in using Feedburner for my RSS subscriptions, but I always thought it would be a pain to switch all my existing subscribers to the new feed. Then, a week or so ago I saw a post by Shoemoney, saying that he had switched to Feedburner. I realized that I didn’t was still subscribed to his old feed, but was getting new updates. I did some investigation and found that Feedburner has a cool WordPress plugin that redirects the existing feed URLs to a new Feedburner link.

So I am now using Feedburner for this blog, and I think I’ll start switching some of my other blogs over too. I like the tracking that they give you, and there are a lot of features I think I’ll experiment with too. I never knew how many subscribers I had to this blog. Now, as can be seen from the widget below, I know I have a little over 200 subscribers.

Autopilot Moneymakers are programs that make it very easy to earn money on your website. Sign up for the program – cut and paste some code, and your done. Sure, there are sometimes ways to make more money – direct sales and affiliate programs, for example – but they take significant effort to sell properly. Webmasters and bloggers love autopilot moneymakers because they don’t have to put a lot of effort into getting revenue, they can concentrate on making better websites.

The five programs listed below are among the favorites of bloggers and webmasters, they are the proven money makers. (Most of the links are affiliate links.)

AdSense

This is the best known program of its type. It’s ubiquitous on the web and is often the first program considered for new sites. It works well on a large variety of sites. AdSense has options for CPM (payment per impression), PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and PPA (Pay-Per-Action).

Yahoo! Publisher Network

Yahoo! Publisher Network is Yahoo’s attempt to catch up to Google in advertising on third party websites. it is currently in beta and limited to US publishers. Many webmasters report targeting issues, but many also report earning that are far better than they got with AdSense. It is worth giving a try to see if it works in your niche. YPN uses PPC ads.

Check out Yahoo! Publisher Network

Chitika

Chitika ads are interactive widgets that display keyword targeted merchandise for sale. They work very well for websites that are geared toward some specific consumer product. Chitika uses the PPC method for payouts.

Chitika Overview

AuctionAds

AuctionAds is a relatively new network, but there have been a lot of good reports about them. They display EBay ads that are targeted to the content on your website. Like Chitika, they are good for websites focus on consumer goods. Auction ads uses CPA.

AuctionAds Homepage

Text Link Ads

Text Link Ads are a little different from the other programs on this list in that they don’t display full ads that pay per impression, click or action. You insert Javascript on your site and advertisers can purchase a simple text link on a monthly basis. This makes Text Link Ads a good compliment to other ad programs.

Go to Text Link Ads

This post is part of ProBlogger’s Top 5 Group Writing Project

Google has started beta testing what have been dubbed “Gadget Ads”. These are AdSense ads that go beyond text or image ads. Gadget ads are widgets that advertisers can create. Widgets are like mini-applications that can run on a publishers site. The idea is that the ads will be much more interesting and engaging that standard ads.

To get an idea what gadgets ads will look like, you can take a look at Google’s Gadget page. Now imagine what an advertiser could do with this type of interactivity. There could be some interesting and creative ads built with this technology.

These ads will come in standard AdSense sizes, and will be available on a CPM or CPC basis. Like usual, there is no word on when these would become available to all publishers.

Even though Google is the clear leader in online advertising, it is great to see them always innovating and trying new things. More options for publishers means more revenue possibilities for publishers.

Found on Niall Kennedy’s blog.

One of the more interesting blogs I have been reading lately is John Chow’s. He has a blog to teach people to make money online. He has an interesting arrangement with his readers where if they do a review of his blog, he will link back to you.

One of my favorite things about his blog is that he is very upfront about how he makes his money. His figures for April are very impressive, his blog pulled in $11,702.66 in revenue. His biggest earner was ReviewMe, at $4,500. He spent about $566 in ads, so his profit is over $11,000. I think that’s pretty good for a single blog.

Sometimes I find the large number of his ReviewMe postings a little annoying, but he always mentions the fact that a posting is a ReviewMe blog at the top of the post, so it’s pretty easy to skim past it if you want to. I also usually skim past the posting about cars (I am much more interested in motorcycles, particularly MotoGP), but overall I find most of his posting interesting to anyone who is a web publisher.

I am thinking of trying to start a similar, “review my blog and I’ll link to yours” here.

After reading a post on CommunitySpark, I have decided to remove the nofollow attributes from the comments on this blog. I don’t get very many comments on this blog, and I’m hoping this will encourage people to comment a little more.

I am using the Nofollow Case by Case plugin to do this. I have spam under control with the Spam Karma plugin, so allowing non-nofollwed links should not be a problem.

Comment away!

Google just posted an entry on the Inside AdSense blog about avoiding accidental clicks. They warn against placing ads close to interactive elements on your website.

Some implementations that could lead to accidental clicks include placing your ads:

- In close proximity to Macromedia Flash games
- Under pop-ups or download prompts
- Near site navigation controls on your pages, such as drop-downs or menu links

This looks like another issue that is going to cause a lot of confusion and concern amongst publishers. It also goes directly against the advice Google gives about optimization: “Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page.” So which is it? Do we place ads near navigation or not?

I can understand where Google is coming from with this. If you make it difficult to click on something on your site because it is so close to an ad, that could bring accidental clicks. But, this latest warning just seems way to vague.

This will be similar to the “Don’t place images besides ads” policy that has created so much confusion in the past. I’m sure there will be a lot of complaining in he forums about this one. My advice is to do what is reasonable – as long as you aren’t trying to trick your visitors, things should be OK.