Zac Echola is muffin but trouble

Uncategorized: My love/hate relationship with Google Adsense

Published on 20/01/09
by Zac Echola

Nearly every Web site outsources their advertising, or a portion of it, to Google Adsense. Some, like Jeff Jarvis, even advocate it as a better way for news brands to make money online.

It makes sense and it doesn’t.

Love

Adsense does one thing well: contextualized text links with absolutely zero overhead costs. Because of this, Adsense is an appealing way for publishers to make money online without having to figure out the business. Publishers need only focus on publishing.

Hate

News organizations devalue their own advertising and waste ad space by displaying Google ads on their pages, near other higher CPM ads. Why buy a site or a newspaper network at a higher CPM through a sales rep or a site’s online ad purchasing when you can buy ads on the same pages (and more sites) through Google?

The infuriating thing about Google is that you have little idea what your cut is per ad, only the CPM you can infer based on meticulously tracking revenue week to week or month to month. Only a company like Google can get away with that kind of vagueness.

Compromise

Sell your ad space first. Ignore the lure of Adsense until you need it. Adsense is a tool, not a crutch.

Use Adsense and similar services like Yahoo Publisher Network and others for remnant ad space.  If your sales staff can’t keep up with impressions on your own sites, that’s when you need to outsource. Light a fire under your reps’ butts.

Don’t run house ads. They’re a waste of time and money (Especially if your ads are served through a vendor that takes a cut per CPM) and a waste of potential money you could make through remnants. Find better ways to promote your advertising solutions. House ads are fine for print. They utilize space. Online, people won’t notice or care. Plus: “Your ad here” is pretty hilariously tacky and makes people question the value of purchasing an ad on your site. Appearances are everything.

Use multiple vendors. Track everything. If Google Adsense is giving you a lower CPM week to week than Yahoo, dump Google.

There’s a whole host of remnant sites out there (These are just a few; Some have minimum requirements, but most small dailies and small networks should be able to easily meet them):

Lastly, this is a corrolary to not selling all your impressions per month. If you can’t keep up, drop ad spots. There’s no need to sell 5-10 ad spots on a page if you can’t do it on every page. You’ll burn through impressions far too quickly that way. I’ll probably touch on this more in another post soon.

The end. Or is it?

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