Google Still Reliant On Text For Ad Placement

Plenty of multimedia options exist for giving a website or blog a unique look, but when it comes to placing AdSense units, Google needs text.

The advent of universal search enables search engines to deliver more than the ten blue links of days past. When an image or video relevant to the query is available, people may see those items appear along with the usual links.

This lead to site publishers, bloggers in particular, to embrace the idea of pictures being worth a thousand words with their posts. A new post might be an image or a video, with little added to the post in the way of text, beyond the typical enthusiastic 'check this out' message.

It turns out that doing this on a site running Google's AdSense units gives the search engine problems when it tries to drop ads alongside that content. As noted on their Inside AdSense blog:Bad targeting likely means far fewer ad clicks, and less revenue, for Google and the site publisher. Despite the passage of time, Google's business model has not changed from a need for text to place advertising. It's something to keep in mind before posting one's next cute hedgehog pictures.

AdSense Ad Review Center Goes Missing For Some Google Publishers

A WebmasterWorld thread reports that Ad Review Center, which helps Google AdSense publishers block advertisers, has dropped all the advertisers from showing up in the list.

But Google really did not hide all these advertisers from their publishers. It appears that based on how you actually access the Ad Review Center, you may see different options.

Russ noticed it seems to be a rendered bug of some sort. Russ had to click on the blocked tab and then re-click on the allowed tab. Once he did that, the ads showed up again.

I tried this myself and it is 100% a bug. You load up the Ad Review Center and the "Allowed" tab shows up empty. So I clicked on the "Blocked" tab and then clicked back onto the "Allowed" tab and the ads showed up again.

So this seems like a small bug that seems to be freaking out some AdSense publishers.

17 Google Tips for Web Businesses

Web site owners should follow these handy tips for using Google's Analytics, AdSense, and AdWords tools.

by Jennifer L. DeLeo
Buzz up!on Yahoo!

Whether you're a first-time blogger or you've owned a Web site for many years, chances are you're not doing it just for fun. Most everyone wants to make money with their online venture, or at least gain lots of exposure. If this is the case, then you may want to opt for some Google tools to track your success.

If one of your objectives is to have a lot of eyeballs on your site, you may want to set up an account with Google Analytics, so that you can track your Web site's referrals and run traffic reports. Next, you'll likely want to choose which advertisements are relevant to your site's content by using Google AdSense. This way, you can earn money every time a visitor clicks on these ads. (Yes, real money!) Finally, Google AdWords will help you customize your ads and choose the right keywords to make your site search-friendly.

The idea of using these tools may seem a bit overwhelming at first. That's why we asked the Google experts to provide PC Magazine with a list of tips for using Analytics, AdSense, and Adwords. Study them, because they may just help your Web site grow and profit.

How Do I Convert Web Traffic Data into Revenue-Generating Opportunities?

Understanding your Web site traffic will help you improve your site's revenue-generating potential by telling you what type of ads will work best on your site, as well as by offering advertisers proof that you're getting what amounts to prequalified sales leads. If you have ads on your site such as Google AdSense, AdBrite, or other off-server ads, you can set pricing and content requirements as you see fit. Be careful though about giving traffic data too freely: You don't want to compromise your users' privacy by selling their e-mail addresses (unless they provide their explicit consent), and you don't want to give away any information that might be of value to a competitor.For more on Web advertising, be sure to read What Is CPC-Based Web Advertising?

AllBusiness.com operates one of the Web's premier business sites, providing practical information and services for business professionals and growing businesses. See more at www.allbusiness.com.

Mention in-game advertising to video game fanatics and you’re likely to get one of two responses.

Mention in-game advertising to video game fanatics and you’re likely to get one of two responses. The first will be bitter complaints that lament the scourge cluttering their virtual worlds. The other will be an uneasy acceptance that harbors hope the included ads will somehow make future games more affordable. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, however, in-game ads are here to stay.

Watchers like the Yankee group predict the marketplace for gaming advertisements will exceed $1b by 2012 and few companies invested in ad sales will let that pass by unattended. For several years, companies like Massive (Microsoft (MSFT)) and IGN have been working to make ads streamed to consoles an accepted reality. Publishers like EA (ERTS) and Activision (ATVI) have signed partnerships. Advertisers are lining up and anxious to see results.

Wednesday, Venture Beat reported Google (GOOG) may be gearing up to dive deeper into the market. According to the article, Google has been quietly testing “AdSense for Games” for months. Their technology, the report says, can be applied to console games, local PC titles, web-based PC titles and cell phone games. Wider spread deployment, the article suggests, could happen quickly.

At this point there is no official confirmation or news to suggest if anything is imminent. It is possible, as the article also contends, that this will remain in Google’s labs.

If a launch does happen, it would help settle questions about what Google’s been doing with the technology they acquired with the purchase of Adscape for $23m in February 2007.

For the near term, AdSense for Games is a story to watch.

At the end of June, Google expanded Adsense for video into a distribution service (Metue coverage of that deal is here).

Google Talks AdSense to Games

Earlier this month, we reported that had Google launched "Lively", its own browser-based virtual world. This seems to be the search giants' initial foray into the booming gaming segment, where Google virtually had no presence.

Well, looks like that will change soon, as initial reports indicate that Google has been quietly testing its "AdSense for Games" product for months. This according to sources is an in-game advertising technology that allows it to insert video ads into games. In demos of the technology, a game character can introduce a video ad, saying something like, "And now, a word from our sponsor". Google could launch the technology fairly sometime soon, since testing has been going on for a while now. Given that Google has been working on AdSense for Games since 2007, it's unclear why they haven't yet taken the plunge into the lucrative gaming pool. The gaming pool is occupied by established players like Double Fusion, IGA Worldwide, Microsoft's Massive, MochiMedia and NeoEdge Networks. Perhaps Google is waiting for some really innovative ideas to stir up the competition.

The Yankee Group predicts the gaming ad market will be worth $971.3 million by 2011. Google's top executives know that search advertising may not last forever, and in-game advertising could become a compelling technology over time as both games and in-game ad technology become more and more engaging.

Avoiding These Mistakes with Adsense

Don't you think it is fascinating that with so many Adsense publishers, all setting up hundreds of sites, they have absolutely no idea who their clients are? The first rule of setting up and maintaining a successful business is thorough knowledge of your client. Don't you think it is fascinating that with so many Adsense publishers, all setting up hundreds of sites, they have absolutely no idea who their clients are? The first rule of setting up and maintaining a successful business is thorough knowledge of your client.

Let's flip the coin and look at it from another angle. Google does not pay you for clicks on your site; the Adwords advertiser is forking out the money for your checks. The reason why he advertises is to sell a product or service or to drive people to his site for a subscription or whatever reason. He is doing it to gain a business advantage.

The question here is: Are you giving him an advantage or are you just costing him money?

You have heard "˜Adsense is dead' or "˜there is not so much money to be made from Adsense as in the past'. Most Adsense publishers think they have to set up a few more sites which will make up for the lost income. Dead wrong.

The reason for the downward spiral in Adsense income originates from untargeted ads on web pages. Most people would love to place the blame at the doorstep of Google, but this is not the case. The problem lies with the publishing of thousands of websites solely intended to get clicks, thus optimized for the search engine and not giving a second thought to the advertiser from Adwords.

The result from the misuse of Adsense is obvious. In most of the current Adwords information products one of the first warnings you are given when placing adwords ads is to remove the link to advertise on the content network. The reason is simple; the ads appear on untargeted pages leading to untargeted customers. This is a waste of the advertiser's money and a direct loss of income for the Adsense publisher. All the serious Adwords advertisers are not advertising on the content network, which in turn leads to less competition. The cost per click on a content page is far less that the cost on a generic page search.

Adwords and Adsense will never die and is and will remain one of the top income earners for many internet marketers.

So what now? The answer lies in improved sites with quality content. Play with the search engine not against it. If you want to compete with a search engine start your own. Not impossible, Google did it and succeeded.

So what exactly is improved content?

The keywords you are optimizing for should relate to your web content and add value for the visitor. This does not mean you have to write one thousand word pages all on your own. One to two hundred words per page will be fine as long as it answers the question or part of the question that the visitor was searching for with the search term. From there on the page can lead to Adsense ads and a click on the link will be a targeted visitor for the advertiser.

You also do not need to write each page yourself, you can still use PLR content and articles for your sites just make sure that the main question that the visitor would have when searching for that term is answered and lead them further to more specific information through Adsense ads.

Can you imagine the joy on your face when receiving a five figure check from Adsense, and think of the joy you would place on the face of the Adwords advertiser also receiving a five figure payday?

Once you have your site set up correctly there are a few elements that you need to give attention to. The truth about Adsense placement is that there is a trick to it. For high CTR your ad placement must be highly optimized.

I have seen this myself in testing different Adsense placement methods. One placement for all does not work. On certain pages it would be higher up and on others it would be lower down.

It is all dependent on the content of the page and the question you should ask yourself is at which point in the content is the visitor the most likely to want more specific information. If you write your content yourself you should write it in such a way that you give information and then raise curiosity, and it is at that point where your ad should appear for the first time. By utilizing this method and keeping your content targeted you will receive many clicks and your Adwords advertiser will receive the targeted visitors he wants.

Are you beginning to see how important it is to get the content and your ads right Now, let me ask you this: Are you one of the Adsense publishers who are costing advertiser's money or are you one that actually help make advertisers money?

Click Fraud Index reports biggest surge of botnet-generated pay-per-click fraud to date in the second quarter

JULY 28, 2008 | First the good news: Click fraud dropped ever-so slightly last quarter, from 16.3 percent to 16.2 percent. But the bad news is that botnets were the force behind over 25 percent of all click fraud traffic in the second quarter, according to the latest numbers on pay-per-click fraud reported in the Click Fraud Index.

The numbers -- logged by the Click Fraud Network, a group over 4,000 online advertisers and ad agencies and reported by Click Forensics -- also revealed a slight decrease in the average number of fraudulent pay-per-click ads found in search engines such as Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network. The average for the second quarter was 27.6 percent, down from 27.8 percent in the first quarter.

But the big red flag in the report was the increasingly automated nature of click fraud, with botnets pumping out an average of one fourth of all such fraud in the second quarter. "Although click fraud rates were relatively unchanged in the second quarter, we found that the methods used to commit click fraud have become increasingly more sophisticated and difficult to detect," said Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics. "The threat from botnets is the biggest concern as they have grown to cause over one quarter of all click fraud. Online advertisers should be extra vigilant in watching for traffic from botnets in their search marketing campaigns."

Danny McPherson, director of security research for Arbor Networks, says he's not surprised by the latest botnet numbers. "I know many of the core content folks are quite concerned with bits and click fraud, and suspect there is a great deal more abuse there then folks actually realize...it's extremely hard to detect if done right." McPherson says.

Meanwhile, China, Russia, and France were the main hotspots for orchestrating click fraud outside of North America, according to the Click Fraud Index, with 4.3 percent coming from China, 3.5 percent from Russia, and 3.2 percent from France.

Will Google's Knol be a force for evil?

If you missed the recent news it appears that Google has gone, in effect, head to head with Wikipedia, but with differences.

These differences are that Google’s new online encyclopedia, called Knol (derived from the phrase “unit of knowledge”), has a focus on authorship (Wikipedia articles are not credited to individuals) and frames the articles with Adsense advertisements thus “monetizing” the service. Moreover authors will get a cut of the revenue. You can find the blog post by Udi Manber, Google’s VP of Engineering, that announced the general availability of Knol here.

The logic behind Google’s move is obvious: With Wikipedia having become the pageview generating monster that it is (about 5% of search results link to its articles), and with its grass roots consensus style authorship, the opportunity to create a commercial version of the concept that gives authors ownership and revenue for their work is commercially compelling. The way editing Knol articles works is, by default, "authorized collaboration" where an author submits an article and anyone can suggest changes, but only the original author can allow those changes to be made. The alternative is "straight collaboration" where a lead author starts an article and specifically invites other people to edit the piece with the same rights she has.

Authors can choose to license their contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution License (the default), the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License, or an "All Rights Reserved" license.

All of the WYSIWYG editing tools are built-in to the Knol user interface, and by some strange marketing quirk even though you can’t yet add images or videos to articles (an incredible omission!) you can add cartoons from the archives of The New Yorker!, I find that seriously weird.

Users can search Knol’s content directly and as the articles are indexed along with the rest of the Internet, Knol content will turn up in general Google searches. Beyond searching Knol’s content, users can also write reviews of articles and rate them.

This brings up the question of whether Google will show favoritism for its own content over Wikipedia or for that matter over any other knowledge repository. It’s very early to try to analyze this and the answer is anything but clear so far. You can bet we’ll all be watching very closely for indications of evil bias.

Google's Former Product Director Joins the Board of MarketShare Partners

LOS ANGELES, CA, Jul 30, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Leading marketing sciences firm MarketShare Partners (MSP) officially announces the appointment of Gokul Rajaram to its board.
Rajaram joins MSP's board after nearly five years at the helm of Google's AdSense product management team. Heralded as the "godfather of Google AdSense," his extensive experience in the online advertising industry will be instrumental as MSP rolls out its breakthrough automated marketing mix and modeling tools to the marketing industry.
"My professional passion has been around optimizing marketing effectiveness and driving ROI via our efforts at Google. MarketShare Partners has created unique breakthrough tools around automated marketing mix that are unprecedented," said Gokul Rajaram. "MSP's solutions will drive massive change in the industry and I'm excited to be part of the team."
"MarketShare Partners is very pleased to have Gokul join our board," said Wes Nichols, Managing Partner of MarketShare Partners. "We became friends though our work with Google and have been impressed with his visionary perspective of where this industry is moving. He will be instrumental at helping MSP become the authority in this rapidly expanding field of marketing effectiveness."
Rajaram most recently served as Product Management Director for Google AdSense. He worked at Google from January 2003 to November 2007, helped conceive and crystallize AdSense in early 2003, and played a key role from its launch to its growth into a multi-billion dollar product line. He also helped drive a number of Google's acquisitions, including DoubleClick, AdScape, and dMarc. Earlier in his career, Rajaram worked as a technical architect at Juno Online, where he developed the back-end advertising system that drove much of Juno's revenues and helped it go public in 1999. Rajaram has an M.B.A. from MIT Sloan, a M.S. in Computer Science from UT Austin, and a BTech in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur where he received the President's Gold Medal for being Class Valedictorian.
MarketShare Partners is the leading marketing sciences firm focused on strategic models and tools that drive resource allocation optimization, marketing ROI and effectiveness. Serving global brands -- including nearly half of the Fortune 50 -- from seven locations, MSP is expert at developing dynamic and econometric models to quantify interactions between all business drivers that impact revenue -- not simply marketing or media drivers and well beyond simple media mix modeling. MSP has also developed a suite of advanced expert systems for small and medium business, media companies and marketing agencies, helping guide better decision-making through the latest in marketing science. Find out more at www.marketsharepartners.com.
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SOURCE: MarketShare Partners