Your complaints about Google AdSense?
I'm organizing a panel for the Executive MBA program at Wharton School of Business. I'd like your input before we hold the session, and will recite quotes from you during the session, which will be attended by MBA faculty, Financial Times (FT) and more.
Is Google AdSense outdated? Why or why not?
What direction is online advertising going in? Is there room for improvement?
Answers (6)
Ali S.
Scaffolder at 28 Digital | Some kind of Digital Agency
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Mostly, the point of a banner ad is to project a brand image. For that reason, any kind of ad that isn't based on something visual is risky. AdSense needs to be more relevant to the pages in which you see them - offering real products and solutions based on the content of the page rather than the "hit and miss" messages you often get.
There's a confusion between conversion to sales and exposure - Google charges more if more people will see the ad, but what is really needed is a targetted ad which will generate sales.
Marissa,
I (and other folks at Chitika) are big fans of AdSense. It's very good but far from perfect.
The biggest problem I see with AdSense, which Chitika easiliy fixes, is too many publishers are running multiple AdSense units on the same page. This can create 2 issues - 1) a poor end user experience 2) a lower eCPM.
Thousands of our publishers will tell you - AdSense + Chitika > AdSense + AdSense
Links:
Clarification added May 7, 2009:
Sorry for the grammatical mistake in the first sentence above
Hmm. Several questions here.
My major complaint regarding AdSense is the lack of any visibility into their ad pipeline and, thus, the complete absence of any way to predict future revenues.
My secondary complaint is the lack of an ability to refine the ads that are shown in your ad slots. They're starting to release some fixes for this after the "Yes on 8" California election ads snafu that happened last election.
Regarding Google Adsense being outdated - clearly this is not the case. They have largest ad inventory of any ad network by far. With the introduction of Google Ad Manager and the acquisition of DoubleClick (and the addition of DoubleClick Exchange) will further their benefit.
The latter questions are too broad for a rapid response.
B
Erik H.
Global Marketing Director, Commodities, Petroleum, Minerals, Trade, Chemicals
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (1)
Google AdSense (Content Ads) is not dated, we enjoy some very good B-to-B conversion rates with Google Adsense across global geographies and languages, and at a lower price per click than Google Search Ads. BUT it takes some focused work to get things optimized. Aggressive Filtering with negative search terms really helps limit the number of wasted impressions, reduces casual clicks and raises conversion rates. Click fraud is another concern. For both click fraud and conversion reasons I tend to completely ignore China for Content Ads on Google. We also price our ads at the low end of the spectrum... since we are looking for potential clients requiring precise technical services we don't lose the key targeted group, but do reduce casual visits. Text Ads have the best success for us in terms of format options. My biggest complaint with Google Adsense is with the Placement Feature.... the sites that they have listed or have made agreements with, for example in Energy, just to cite one situation, are of poor quality. I have complained in the past to Google and get the standard corporate-speak about working to improve the service. So far, I see no improvement in the quality of choices. When they include recognized trade journals and websites I'll be more motivated to really get aggresive with Placement Ads. Overall, Adsense is MUCH better than just 2 years ago... with more room for improvement available.
Imho, the product is more complicated than it needs to be. Proof is the hoards of Adsense experts that've popped up to help people customize or optimize their campagns.
Anytime you need a specialist to use a product properly, it's gotten way too complicated.
Marissa, we make money as a virtual brokerage - we partner with agents and share their commissions when they sell a home.
We experimented with Adsense for a while though, and we found that what little money we made was from people offering our same service - real estate search. We would have loved complimentary ads (e.g. mortgage ads), but there wasn't a good way to get Adsense to deliver them short of blocking every competitor's ad as it sprung up.
Adsense is fine for filling remnant inventory on ad-driven sites, but it isn't smart enough to use along other ways of generating revenues.
