Google’s New AdWords Features and Its Effect On Publishers
Web search leader Google Inc. said on Monday advertisers could now choose the Web sites that carry their ads and it was introducing animated graphical advertisements.
This can work out very well for both sides.
What this does is allow for advertisers to select sites on which they want their ads to appear. They can either enter in the URLs of specific sites, or they can perform a keyword search to find sites on which to places their ads. Google will return a list of sites similar to the URLs people select, or a list that matches with the particular keywords. Advertisers can then select sites from those lists.
So if you have been building sites that focus solely on high-paying keywords (*raises hand*), advertisers are now even less likely to advertise on your site if it isn’t relevant and professional. Many of the top advertisers already steer clear of blogs and content sites and simply keep their ads on Google’s search results page. However, now even more advertisers will stay away from your site if things are not done right. Of course this is just speculation on my part.
But what happens if your sites are picked by advertisers? Well this can be a very, very good thing because advertisers now are competing for the same inventory which drives up the costs of popular keywords. For example, one advertiser pays $40 per 1,000 impressions to advertise on Widgets.com. If Widgets.com gets 5,000 pageviews daily, and that advertiser is willing to pay for every pageview every day of the month, then the only way for another advertiser to get viewed on the site is by outbidding the current advertiser. So while the old AdSense system lowered the price of clicks because everyone was able to get asbestos ads on their sites, this system can raise the price of clicks if you are fortunate enough to be selected by the advertisers.
I am guessing that many advertisers that decide to take the CPM route will run searches for sites and pick the most attractive sites for their ads to appear on. However, it would be great if Google provided stats along with those sites showing what the impressions and CTR are for the site so that advertisers don’t go around wasting their money overtesting.
How this will work out revenue-wise for publishers has yet to be seen, but overall I am guessing that it won’t have that much of an effect at all. Google will make more money without disclosing the revenue split and we will continue to use AdSense. Really all you can do is worry about how well your own site is performing.
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POSTED IN: Google Adsense
14 opinions for Google’s New AdWords Features and Its Effect On Publishers
The Star
Apr 25, 2005 at 9:17 pm
It may be your speculation Scrivs, but it’s on point.
I’ve spent a great deal of my time explaining to my clients the importance of having a good, professional, and well thought out website - now I feel many people who just throw up crappy sites will feel the heat when their revenue drops.
Scrivs
Apr 25, 2005 at 10:25 pm
Oh the irony of AdSense. One of the ads I am now seeing is for Casale Media, the top-paying CPM ad network (according to them).
Ryan Latham
Apr 25, 2005 at 10:33 pm
I don’t know; today was pretty crappy for me as far as AdSense goes…I hope it isn’t these new and improved changes that is causing the effective CPM to be so low. If it is…damn you Google…just when I was getting close.
Scrivs
Apr 25, 2005 at 10:37 pm
On the flipside this is one of my best days this month outside of the ones where we got Boing Boing or Slashdotted.
Ryan Latham
Apr 25, 2005 at 10:46 pm
I don’t know…must just have visitors clicking the low paying ads. I mean so far this is my highest traffic day this month, and the click-through rate is around the same as it always is (way too low) however I see that comparing it to a statistically similar day…I’m doing about a quarter of what I expected.
Scrivs
Apr 25, 2005 at 10:47 pm
Just sounds like the higher paying advertisers have run out of inventory since it is the end of the month and the lower advertisers get to reach the top of the ad boxes.
Ryan Latham
Apr 25, 2005 at 10:50 pm
Yeah…that’s true…I forgot that it was so close to the end of the month. Just like the terrible cops need to get their quota (my ass is likely to get a ticket this week), the good ones have already met their quota and can slack off a bit.
MM
Apr 25, 2005 at 11:29 pm
I doubt Google will display impression and CTR information for potential advertisers. This way, anyone who gets an advertiser account will be able to know how much each publisher earns and this is scary.
A meaningful way will be Google letting advertisers to see how their CPC ads perform on specific sites. This will help advertisers to make better decisions.
Darren Rowse
Apr 26, 2005 at 3:31 am
end of month things do tend to die off a bit for many sites…..
Good post Scrivs
MarkB
Apr 26, 2005 at 4:04 am
I reckon this is a brilliant new plan by google…
Sure it’ll probably make a bollocks load of spam sites lose their revenue, but i’m all for quality over quantity.
Big up 2 Google! I think long term this will definately improve the quality of sites of web because the spam sites and ‘one-hit-wonders’ will lose revenue and pull their sites.
Viva!
Leon Ho
Apr 26, 2005 at 8:05 am
Good post. IMO, for large web sites and blogs, I think you will benefit from this (especially niche sites). However you may run across all unrelated site because advertiser may utilize this service as marketing for their brand (i.e. they don’t care the click-through, they only want brand their products/services to your visitors).
For small web sites and blogs, we will see lesser high price bid ads running through our sites. The reason being those high bidder will move (or at least try) to CPM site targeted model and see if they will benefit from it. This will continue until the model is proven cost ineffective…
I have also posted some comparisons on google’s new service with those good-old CPM ad network (4 years ago) on my blog. It is just like history rewind itself.
Keith
Apr 26, 2005 at 8:48 pm
Seems to me, that if they provide stats, this could be really good for those with high traffic and really hurt those with low traffic.
I know if I were to advertise this way, I’d be concerned about eyeballs on my ads as well as relevancy.
Mike
Apr 26, 2005 at 10:54 pm
Same here. Last 2 days were way, way down.
bobit
Apr 27, 2005 at 8:04 am
still waiting
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