Warning: The following commentary is not made from the role of an expert as much as a publisher and interested observer.
Advertising is all the rage these days on blogs and I have tried many different programs, as have others. Some of these programs have done well on some sites and not on others. Others don’t work well at all. Plus, there’s a lot of debate swirling around advertising and what best practices are.
For the sake of getting up to speed, there are two primary types of website advertising: paid placement and contextual.
Paid placement advertising comes in a variety of forms and does not always mean you get paid to place the ad. Some advertising, such as Text Link Ads (aff) or BlogAds pay when advertisers buy adspace on your site while others like Pheedo pay per impression (times the ad is viewed in a browser).
The other major type of advertising is contextual advertising, where ads are automaticaly served based on the context of the page that the ad is on. Google Adsense and Yahoo’s Publisher Network (YPN). These ads are pay-per-click (you get paid when someone clicks).
Contextual advertising has been very popular since Adsense was launched back in 2003 (I think).
Recently, though, I wonder if the contextual advertising paradigm is dying. More and more publishers (website owners) are successfully selling paid placement ads (sponsorships and gaining memberships to the paid placement agencies) and making a whole lot more money than contextual advertising is providing.
Case in point, a few months ago, I started to hear a low murmur in the publisher community as Adsense revenues began to drop. There was a lot of speculation over why ads weren’t converting as well (converting being successfully attracting clicks and paying decent money for those clicks). Where once, clicks were valuing at 50 cents or more on this site, they have dropped to 5 cents which ultimately caused me to drop Adsense from this blog. It was no longer worth it to me to inflict advertising on readers when conversion rates were pitiful on better content. I’ve seen this trend on other sites I own too, some much more narrowly focused and more attractive to the high-paying (niche) advertisers.
YPN has done even more poorly. After a month of serving YPN on this site, Yahoo still served ads about mortgage refinancing and off shore prescription medicine. Hardly the context of this site and thus the problem was with getting clicks, not necessarily the pay rate for those clicks. (For what it’s worth, my experiemnt with YPN gained higher dollar-per-click rates but fewer of them).
Then I played with Clicksor, a relatively new ad company that acepted Technosailor into its program. Clicksor had some clever widgets (inline contextual advertising in the form of smart tags), but they too never hit the mark in terms of gaining clicks or having a decent payout.
Darren posted about eBay’s new contextual system this morning and the general consensus I’m hearing is it probably won’t work. I don’t know how well they will convert, but the initial numbers make it look like a fairly worthless program in terms of value.
I wonder if, given the fact that more bloggers can make really good money and get really good advertising without a lot of effort, combined with the low quality results of contextual advertising that at least I’m seeing, contextual ads are a dying breed?
What do you think? I particularly want to hear from blogger or site owners that have a lot of experience that they can bank on recently. How are Adsense and YPN and other contextual ad agencies performing for you recently?
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Matt 06.15.06 at 10:24 am
Interesting post, thanks for it. I hope for my and many others sake that Contextual advertising is not dying. I think over time advertising methods with continue to grow and evolve, and it’s upto the bloggers to move with this and keep up.
Of course adsense etc works better with different sites like you say, I run a number of blogs, and the CPC vaule I get ranges from 1cent to about $2.
To answer your question directly, adsense has been performing perticually well for me recently, and for one of my sites, earning about $25-$35 CPM (please remove this info if against google’s ideas.)
I have no decided to target low paying sites, but popular ones with blog ads, text links etc, and high paying sites with adsense / chitika.
Matt 06.15.06 at 10:24 am
Interesting post, thanks for it. I hope for my and many others sake that Contextual advertising is not dying. I think over time advertising methods with continue to grow and evolve, and it’s upto the bloggers to move with this and keep up.
Of course adsense etc works better with different sites like you say, I run a number of blogs, and the CPC vaule I get ranges from 1cent to about $2.
To answer your question directly, adsense has been performing perticually well for me recently, and for one of my sites, earning about $25-$35 CPM (please remove this info if against google’s ideas.)
I have no decided to target low paying sites, but popular ones with blog ads, text links etc, and high paying sites with adsense / chitika.
Darren McLaughlin 06.16.06 at 7:42 am
Thankfully, context sensitive ads are not dead, or I’d have trouble paying my bills :)
I think the days of “slap an ad on” and make money are gone forever, though. The average website is not an ideal candidate for these types of ads, and you have to spend a great deal of time tweaking them to make money. It’s been said before, and it’s true, that an ugly website makes the most money, and this is a fact. If people find the info they’re looking for, they don’t need to click on the ad.
But I wouldn’t give up on these ads yet. Try YPN, if you haven’t already. I’ve tried to become less reliant on Adsense, and I have been, but I still pull the majority of my money through context sensitive ads.
Darren McLaughlin 06.16.06 at 7:42 am
Thankfully, context sensitive ads are not dead, or I’d have trouble paying my bills :)
I think the days of “slap an ad on” and make money are gone forever, though. The average website is not an ideal candidate for these types of ads, and you have to spend a great deal of time tweaking them to make money. It’s been said before, and it’s true, that an ugly website makes the most money, and this is a fact. If people find the info they’re looking for, they don’t need to click on the ad.
But I wouldn’t give up on these ads yet. Try YPN, if you haven’t already. I’ve tried to become less reliant on Adsense, and I have been, but I still pull the majority of my money through context sensitive ads.
Michael Hampton 06.18.06 at 12:20 am
It really depends on the target demographics of the people visiting your blog. I’ve definitely seen a drop in AdSense revenue over the past few months despite rising traffic and steady click-through rates. The only thing I can figure is CPC has dropped. And the only way that would happen is if advertisers are bidding lower. Then again it may well be that summer is a slower time for this type of advertising.
I’ve also made quite a bit of unexpected money from affiliate links lately, but as much of what I blog about isn’t related at all to products and services, I have few opportunities to use such programs.
I’ve experimented as well with paid-placement ads such as Adbrite and Text Link Ads, and been thoroughly disappointed.
Is contextual advertising dead? I doubt it. But I’ve also got my eyes open to make sure that if it DOES die, I’ve got something else.
Michael Hampton 06.18.06 at 12:20 am
It really depends on the target demographics of the people visiting your blog. I’ve definitely seen a drop in AdSense revenue over the past few months despite rising traffic and steady click-through rates. The only thing I can figure is CPC has dropped. And the only way that would happen is if advertisers are bidding lower. Then again it may well be that summer is a slower time for this type of advertising.
I’ve also made quite a bit of unexpected money from affiliate links lately, but as much of what I blog about isn’t related at all to products and services, I have few opportunities to use such programs.
I’ve experimented as well with paid-placement ads such as Adbrite and Text Link Ads, and been thoroughly disappointed.
Is contextual advertising dead? I doubt it. But I’ve also got my eyes open to make sure that if it DOES die, I’ve got something else.
Shirazi 07.07.06 at 12:20 am
While reblogging your thoughts, I was wondering about ads on TV or in print. Huge revenue is paid just to keep the product (or idea) in front of the audience. There is no guarantee that anyone who sees the costly ad on TV or in print will make a purchase. Is there?
May be they can think of some ways to keep the ad and pay for page loads without counting clicks.
Shirazi 07.07.06 at 12:20 am
While reblogging your thoughts, I was wondering about ads on TV or in print. Huge revenue is paid just to keep the product (or idea) in front of the audience. There is no guarantee that anyone who sees the costly ad on TV or in print will make a purchase. Is there?
May be they can think of some ways to keep the ad and pay for page loads without counting clicks.
Laura Ramos 07.07.06 at 5:13 pm
I am intrigued by your comments on the lack of relevant ads served by YPN. Is this a matter of sparse inventory or poor editorial control? It doesn’t appear that Yahoo is using any decent crawling and matching technology if the ads are that far off. Not that I advocate a pure tech approach (see my comments on Forrester’s blog at: http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2006/07/does_contextual.html) but I was wondering if you thought they would do better with greater volume/variety of ads or that they aren’t paying much attention to relevance at this time.
Laura Ramos 07.07.06 at 5:13 pm
I am intrigued by your comments on the lack of relevant ads served by YPN. Is this a matter of sparse inventory or poor editorial control? It doesn’t appear that Yahoo is using any decent crawling and matching technology if the ads are that far off. Not that I advocate a pure tech approach (see my comments on Forrester’s blog at: http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2006/07/do...) but I was wondering if you thought they would do better with greater volume/variety of ads or that they aren’t paying much attention to relevance at this time.
ian collier 07.31.06 at 9:11 am
Is contextual advertising dead??
Well, we are a company that provides a number of automated skins for domain owners looking for a quick and easy content rich web site. As contextual ads become more widely known [as ads], the average web surfing user is becoming increasingly sceptical (call it cynical) to the validity of certain sites. In simple terms, with the amount of unavoidable parking sites / web site coming soon sites out there (full of sponsored links) average surfers have become tired of filling the pockets of lazy webmasters.
So what is the solution?? As an incidental, we have found that blogs specialising in a niche market can achieve a maximum of 15 - 20% click through. Those blogs “made for adsense” and chasing the high ppc terms achieve a lowly 1 - 2%. However, the key to achieving the highest revenue (despite lowering rates) is simply in the use of blending. Play around with your layout and your contextual ads until you find the right mix…
ian collier 07.31.06 at 9:11 am
Is contextual advertising dead??
Well, we are a company that provides a number of automated skins for domain owners looking for a quick and easy content rich web site. As contextual ads become more widely known [as ads], the average web surfing user is becoming increasingly sceptical (call it cynical) to the validity of certain sites. In simple terms, with the amount of unavoidable parking sites / web site coming soon sites out there (full of sponsored links) average surfers have become tired of filling the pockets of lazy webmasters.
So what is the solution?? As an incidental, we have found that blogs specialising in a niche market can achieve a maximum of 15 - 20% click through. Those blogs “made for adsense” and chasing the high ppc terms achieve a lowly 1 - 2%. However, the key to achieving the highest revenue (despite lowering rates) is simply in the use of blending. Play around with your layout and your contextual ads until you find the right mix…
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