Referral ads by Adsense 

The other day I noticed in my adsense account that it had been ‘upgraded’ and that I had some new monetisation options.

Apparently its been live since June . I won’t say too much about what the program offers as much of it can be read over at the previous link, that said it might be useful to look at the headlines and make a little comment on each.

  • Expanded product inventory: Basically they’ve opened up their network and allowed publishers access to all manner of markets and products. Its almost like a Commission junction or a tradedoubler albeit without all the fluff and nonsense associated with having to ad extra code or apply for individual programs. In other words you can find the product and include it in your content.
  • Category and keyword targeting: This is cool, I like this. The ability to find and output ads based on keywords is very good indeed. On this page here for example, you’ll see that the referral ads I show are linked to the tags I use to tag this post. In this case adsense.
  • Ad unit optimization: A little bit of Google mumbo jumb in my book, but essentially they are saying that they’ll select best performing ads for your site. This would usually mean the highest pay ads or those that received the highest click throughs, or perhaps its the highest converting..hmmn, you know what? I’m not entirely sure which aspect they are referring to, perhaps its all three, maybe someone could clarify.
  • Better targeting for pages with multiple themes: Whilst I like the ability to be able to specify keywords per ad, I do wonder what they mean by all of this. A page with multiple themes that linked through to multiple ads might be a little thin content wise and might even look a little sploggy even. That said, I do like the ability to be able to specifically target ads via keyword, especially if m writing something about a variety of topics. The downside is of course that a page that contained multiple themes with big old links and ads to adsense type ads, might look a little suspect, but hey…
  • Greater compensation for high-quality traffic: Looking through the inventory, there all manner of products and services with different levels of compensation. Payments are based on CPA (Cost per action) rather than cost per click, so the value to the advertiser is greatly increased. This should in theory, mean that click throughs to such ads from highly targetted content should result in a greater number of sales. The quaility of the product is very important too, so I’d choose ones ads with a thorough eye and do a little evaluation of the product 1st.
  • Add your seal of approval: The fact that they allow you to make specific references to referral ads on your site is a great plus as it effectively opens you up to write good specific product related content.

    • So do I like it? Yes on balance I think its pretty cool. I think it might well lead to a whole lot more writing about various products and services in the blogosphere too. Savvy bloggers who write paid reviews that pay once, might decide that it could be more lucrative to write about products for which they could be paid for multiple times.

    I also touched on how it made it easier for affiliate marketers to sign up for new programs via a one code paste route, without the need to have to apply to individual programs.  It’s not so much of a big deal, but it can be a little bit of PITA sometimes having to mess about with hanging around waiting to  accepted into programs.  Its for this reason that I love the instantaneous way in which I can select an advertiser and write about them immediately.

    The ability to target individual advertisers, is a real boon for the  niche blogger presenting great opportunities for well written content that performs well.  Google’s huge market share in online advertising also means that I’ll have access to a consistent number of new opportunities.

    As content matures and ages.. 

    A potential downside  is that if you write content that is too specific to the advertiser you are reviewing then overtime, it could become a problem. What happens if the advertiser leaves the program or goes out of business? Any content you wrote would become effectively dead.

    Personally, I’ll probably stick with generic  safe bets on my blogs and stick to general related topics.

    If you really really liked this post you might even want to buy me a Stella Artois :D

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