Google’s Interest Based Advertising

Posted by Grizzly on Apr 7th, 2009 | 109 comments

Today is the final day for Adsense publishers to update their Privacy Policy in response to Google’s new initiative called Interest Based Advertising. I had mentioned that I don’t recommend opting out of using Interest Based ads and a few readers seemed concerned about this. I thought a short post to clarify my thinking was in order.

(note – this site is not associated with Google.com or Google Adsense and you are encouraged to visit Google directly for more information.)

The idea behind Interest Based Ads is to increase CTR and conversions in regards to Adsense. The current Adsense model is based on Targeted Placement ads and while it has helped Google keep their Advertisers happy in the sense that they save money by not paying for poorly converting clicks (smart pricing) it has not had the effect of increasing Google’s revenue or in increasing the advertisiers overall sales. Ultimately Google needs to increase revenue without loosing advertisers in the process. Moreover Google wants to increase it’s advertising inventory and the best way to achieve this is by getting advertisers to buy more advertising. To do this they will have to provide better ROI to the advertisers.

Hence… Interest Based Ads. The premise being that a large portion of adsense page views are shown daily to untargeted visitors who may be reading any given site for any number of reasons but not necessarily because of any particular interest in the subject matter. Think of people who follow links from one article to another and end up on a site that has little to do thematically with the site they began their journey on. In most cases these visitors are never going to click on an ad and for the few that do they are unlikely to lead to a conversion for the advertiser. The question is – what if such users were presented with ads relevant to their search history rather than ads relevant to the current page they are browsing? Could Google entice more clicks and could this lead to higher conversions for the Advertisers? We will find out…

As for Publishers this should not be viewed negatively as there is a potential upside and escpecially for those publishers who don’t drive primarily targeted traffic to their sites. Given the fact that Google will decide whether to show targeted ads or Interest based ads to any particular visitor means this should reduce the likelyhood of a publisher being smart priced as G can’t hold the publisher accountable for poor performance of Interest Based clicks. (or it shouldn’t as the performance or lack thereof is not in the publishers hands)

To put it simply Google is trying to increase CTR where it feels it can and is not likely to penalize Publishers for poorly converting ads that Google displays on their sites beyond the publisher’s control. The real upside is that publishers may see a nice increase in CTR and earn more revenue even from low paying CPC ads without being smart priced in the process.

Whether this pans out or not I recommend everyone at least take part and test it before opting out. There is nothing to be gained by not giving it a shot. It may not work for some and one can always opt out later.

For those of you driving mostly social traffic this is what you have been waiting for – Google like everyone else is trying to convert social traffic. It is a huge market and so far has proven hard to monetize. Will Interest based ads work? Who knows but if it does publishers will see much better returns from their Adsense accounts. If it doesn’t then publishers are no worse off than they are now. And that is why I recommend everyone give this a trial period in order to evaluate the results. If your earnings tank – opt out but at least find out first.

Cheers

Griz

What Part of Making Money Online Don’t You Get?

Posted by Grizzly on Mar 21st, 2009 | 142 comments

Site Build It Review or wtf was yesterday’s post really all about.

I tell people I make money with Adsense by driving targeted search engine traffic to my sites. I explain how to rank on top of the search engines using anchored backlinks. I tell people that social traffic is useless for making money from Adsense.

My friends thank me for all this free info by posting screenshots on forums like Digital Point so that I get a flood of useless traffic and an avalanche of troll emails.

Why Forums are for Losers – What exactly don’t you understand?

I ask people if they would like to join a private forum and discuss topics that aren’t meant for public consumption. A week later a particularly useful network I mentioned is de-indexed. I guess I charged too much?

I ask people if they would like to be included in a little program I want to start. 374 people tell me they are “in“. I send them an email asking for a little info and tell them that they will have to help others. Everyone is fine with that.

Yesterday I asked them to help someone else. Site Build It Review

They responded with comments and emails telling me they don’t agree with what I’m doing. They want to know why I’m not being constructive? They want to know why I’m wasting their time? They want to know why I’m not posting about the “I’m In” program. They want to know why I am trying to replace a serp page full of useless affiliate reviews with a page full of real reviews for a program that is outdated, unnecessary and relieves noobs of $300 a year just for a website. They want to know how to get ranked in the serp’s themselves – can I show them how? Basically all I read in the comments (I deleted all of them) was why was I wasting their time instead of helping them. Of course they were right – there was nothing in yesterdays post that could teach them how to rank on top of the serp’s. Nothing that would lead them to think that helping others might just be the way to making money online. There was nothing in it for them. And that is a good lesson learned. It’s nice to know just how much people appreciate all the free legit info I have handed out over the past two years.

Btw – Lissie is now ranking on page 1 for Site Build It Scam and will see some traffic on her blog. Of course this isn’t what I’m about… or what I try and teach people or what people want me to help them with. Noooooo…

374 people are “IN“… nope, I don’t think so.

Not surprising the regular crew of friends who are in this to succeed didn’t let me down. They came through, they always do and they once again showed why they are succeeding in this business. Everyone created a legit post that was fair and balanced – far more useful for searchers interested in SBI than any of the fake reviews. (and yet some of you thought this was wrong?)  They showed their creativity in working it into their existing sites – related or not. I was also impressed with a couple of newcomers who took the time to create a new lens or blog just for the occasion.

So let me ask everyone – if you were me, who would you spend your limited amount of time helping? Who would you trust? Should I continue to help all those people who email me regularly with questions who didn’t lift a finger to help someone else? What would you say to the people who email me the most asking me for help and had the nerve to complain about my post?

I’m not vindictive or bitter – just a bit relieved. I will continue to post useful info in my blogs.

To my friends – thanks and you know who you are. (RT, Trent and a few others – you’ve always been in and don’t sweat it – I never filled you in) You will be hearing from me.

If you have missed Vic (I have) you can hear him here – Yup, People Do Not Appreciate FREE

and check out Allyn’s Video Site Build It! Video

Cheers,

Griz

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