AdMoolah News and Views

Ask.com announced that it is going to be launching a new contextual advertising network that seems very similar to AdSense or YPN. The contextual network will be initially restricted IAC’s (who owns Ask.com) web sites such as CitySearch, Match.com and Ticketmaster. As soon as next quarter, though, they will open up the network to third party publishers.

Search Engine Land has some additional details that sound interesting:

The publishers will have two unique features that are not currently available in the Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network. Publishers will be able to set “page yield thresholds” and set “relevancy thresholds.” There will be levers to allow publisher to determine if they want higher paying ads or if they want more relevant ads with these levers.

That sounds like a great opportunity for publisher who want more control. It also seems that publishers will have more control over the look of the ads than is currently possible in AdSense or YPN. Publishers will be able to control “background color, font, layout, graphics”.

Overall, this sounds very promising. The promise of more control over the ads will be very appealing to many publishers who often gripe about the lack of control in AdSense. And , as always, more competition in this space is always good for publishers.

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.

A new ad network launched today called AuctionAds (aff link). It is a joint venture between ShoeMoney Media (Jeremy Schoemaker’s company) and MediaWhiz (who also owns TextLinkAds). The system allows publishers to display EBay ads based on keywords.

The system seems very easy to use. I signed up and in just a few seconds managed to get the JavaScript code to produce an ad like this:

They also have an referral program that pays 2%. Referrals are made whenever someone signs up for the system after clicking on the “Ads by AuctionAds” in the ad.

Payment for AuctionAds is done via PayPal with a minimum payment of $10.

I have a feeling this advertising option will be useful on sites that sell consumer goods. It seems like this would make it a direct competitor to Chitika. Overall it looks like a good option for publishers who want to experiment. So if you want to sign up, click on the “Ads by AuctionAds” in the above ad

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 careful reading of Google’s announcement about click fraud reveals that they really say nothing about the levels of actual click fraud.

Google was careful to comment only on the level of invalid clicks that they actually catch, not the level of click fraud itself. Here is what Google actually says
1) It’s automated invalid click detection find less than 10% of the click are invalid.
2) Manual reviews of invalid clicks reported by advertisers accounts for fewer than 0.02% of all clicks.
3) What they are talking about is invalid clicks, not fraudulent clicks. Fraudulent clicks are a subset of invalid clicks.

So, lets say there are 10,000 click in the system. Google will automatically filter less than 1000 of these clicks as invalid. Advertisers will report some number of clicks as invalid. After manual investigation, Google declares fewer than 2 of them are invalid clicks. But in actual fact, there may have been 2,000 invalid clicks in the system. Google and the advertisers just never noticed them. I’m not trying to say that the actual level of click fraud is 20%, it’s just that it could very easily be somewhere above 10%.

A lot of headlines about this story are very misleading. For example Danny Sullivan’s headline on SearchEngineLand is “Google: Click Fraud Is 0.02% Of Clicks“. Google never makes any claims about click fraud, 0.02% number really is really the number of invalid clicks found after manual review as a percentage of all the clicks in the system.

Search Engine Roundtable’s headline was “Click Fraud is 0.02%, Invalid Clicks 10%, $1B Lost To Click Fraud Yearly“. Again Google claims nothing about click fraud let alone 0.02% click fraud. This headline makes it seem like almost no invalid clicks are fraudulent clicks, which again is wrong. Google said nothing about what percentage of invalid clicks were click fraud.

Again, to be clear, Google never argues what the actual level of click fraud is, just the levels that they identify as invalid clicks.

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?

A few months ago, many high profile bloggers in the SEO community started using the MyBlogLog Widget on their pages. This included people such as ShoeMoney, Andy Beal, and GrayWolf. People were excited about building their communities and the opportunity to network with other blogger. I also joined up in December and placed the widget on my blog.

Soon, however reports of MyBlogLog spamming started rolling in. People were adding links to their networks via automated scripts, people came up with automated ways of getting their pictures at the top of high profiles blogs. People discovered how to automatically add others as co-authors on their blogs.

One of the highest profile bloggers talking about these issues was ShoeMoney. He was pointing out flaws and also pointed out a way people could surf the web pretending to be any member of MyBlogLog they wanted. This action got him banned from MyBlogLog. This caused many other bloggers, including Andy Beal and GrayWolf to boycott MyBlogLog.

The ban was a surprising move by the MyBlogLog, they are a focused on helping bloggers so you’d think they would “get it”. They should have embraced what ShoeMoney was doing and thanked him for pointing out the flaws. Instead, banning a high profile, popular member from their service caused a lot of backlash. Bloggers are a tight-knit bunch, and they should have known doing something like that was going to get them in hot water. MyBlogLog did finally do the right thing and unbanned ShoeMoney, but I think the damage is already done.

To add to their public relation problems, bloggers such as JenSense, have been reporting that MyBlogLog is keeping track of click data on AdSense and YPN click-throughs. Most webmasters consider this data very private and do not like the idea of giving it away for free. Again, this news is spreading through the blogger community, and the reaction is negative. I guess MyBlogLog could help things by allowing users to opt out of this option, but again, I think the damage is already done.

MyBlogLog has definitely slipped, and I’m not sure that they can fully recover. This is a good opportunity for competing service, like Explode, to gain some ground. I personally have taken MyBlogLog off my site, and am thinking of trying out some alternatives.

In December Yahoo announced a major reorganization, and part of that reorganization was the creation of the Advertiser & Publisher Group(APG), which is where there Yahoo Publisher Network now belongs.

Susan Decker, Yahoo’s CFO recently sent an email to all Yahoo employees, which got leaked and published at TechCrunch. Here is the part of the memo that talks about YPN:

Yahoo! Publisher Network (Supply Channels). Our publishing customers are a critical component of the ad network ecosystem, and we are committed to driving and expanding monetization opportunities for this important customer segment. I have asked Hilary Schneider to lead the Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN) organization. I also want to thank David Karnstedt, who stepped in to lead this group while also leading direct search sales, and enhancing the overall connection and strategy of this group to be more aligned with advertising customer objectives. This team will be instrumental in developing and executing our global strategy of becoming the leading search, display and listings-based ad network by securing ad inventory on off-Yahoo! publisher sites. This off-Yahoo! inventory will complement the Yahoo! network inventory and enable our demand channels to offer our advertising customers not only the broadest array of marketing products but also the most robust and high quality audiences as well. As part of his responsibilities for the online channel, Rich Riley will drive the strategy around customer acquisition and retention of small publishers, supporting Hilary in this capacity.

I’ll try to break this down a little to see what it means for YPN publishers.

We’ll I’m glad they want to “committed to driving and expanding monetization opportunities” for publishers, but that really sounds like a lot of corporate-speak that means absolutely nothing to anyone. The whole memo was full of generic business terms that really did not shed any light onto what is going on. I think someone needs to give a copy of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (aff link) to Yahoo executives if they want to have any chance of actually communicating something.

The next part that might say something interesting is the “global strategy of becoming the leading search, display and listings-based ad network by securing ad inventory on off-Yahoo! publisher sites.” Obviously Google’s AdSense is the current leader and Yahoo wants to try and make a dent in this. It’s good news for YPN publishers and those wanting to become publishers that Yahoo is serious about this and sees it as a real opportunity for growth. I would assume they want to grow by getting more publishers signed up, and getting existing publisher to display more ads. The best way to do that is to make sure the program pays well.

The next bit I found interesting was “offer our advertising customers … the most robust and high quality audiences as well“. Yahoo’s current strategy for getting the “highest quality audiences” is to restrict publishers to show the ads to mostly US based users. Obviously this restriction gets in their way of their global strategy of becoming the leading ad network. Their going to have to figure out how to monetize those international clicks somehow.

Overall it seems like good news, they seem dedicated to making the YPN program work. But I think the reorganization is probably bad news for people still waiting for YPN to come out of beta. Switching people around will only delay getting things into top shape over there.

Yahoo Publisher Network has updated their policies to allow only 3 ad units per page. I’m not really surprised by this, AdSense has had this same policy in place since I can remember. I’m sure this has to do with their recent change to eliminate duplicate ads in multiple ad units on the same page. If a publisher had 15 ads on their page, it would be difficult to fill all those spots with relevant ads.