Google AdSense Issues

Google AdSense is a free advertising program that lets bloggers and other Web site owners place contextual advertising no the pages of their Web sites. The idea is that a blog about food, for example, might have ads for cooking ingredients and dishes. The chances that a reader will find the ad useful and click on it increases because the subject material of both the content and the ads are related—most of the time.

MediaPost’s Media Daily News reports today that Evan Coyne Maloney of the politically conservative blog Brain-Terminal.com is finding ads from the other end of the political spectrum on his site, and he doesn’t appreciate it. The Google AdSense program is smart enough to serve up political ads, but not smart enough to have have understood the blogger’s political leanings.

Nate Elliott, a JupiterResearch analyst, said that advertising on blogs is challenging because most blogs have small, very specific readerships. To get the big audiences that marketers are looking for, advertisers can aggregate onto a group of blogs, but that could lead their very different audiences to clash.

This is an issue every blog publisher thinking about using contextual ads should consider before turning them on.

Thanks to The Blog Herald for the info.

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 01/07 at 01:29 PM • Blogging Tools
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Comments

  1. I figured that out quite some time ago.  I figured that any time one of my conservative readers clicked on a liberal *pay per click* ad, it was money out of the other side’s pocket and in mine.  What’s the big deal?

    On the other hand, the fact that Adsense ads click through rates on blog pages is abysmal compared to nonblog pages (where it’s really good)makes me question the viability of blog advertising other than as institutional ads much like billboards. Billboards are just rented.  For blogs, the space rental model is probably the way to go.

    Posted by Tom Hanna on 01/07/05 at 05:05 PM

  2. I have found that AdSense is the better one and have made a buck or two from it. Generally good how you get related content ads. I’ve even started a blog about it @ http://learnwithandy.blogspot.com/ Excit.ing though making money from blogs.

    Posted by Andrew on 03/20/07 at 12:08 AM
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