Using Adsense To Stop Internet Explorer
April 27, 2006
Someone created a new website, the Explorer Destroyer in which they are agressively trying to get people to make the switch to Firefox in pretty unfair ways. They are also making money using Adsense to do this.
What they are doing is recruiting people to put up the adsense buttons to get firefox and everytime someone does they will pay you $1. The problem is they are also trying to get website owners to change their websites to block anyone using IE.
How it works is you get scripts from the website which will be a download link on your website to download Firefox, a splash page or the best one yet, completely blocking them from your site until they download and use Firefox. I might be a tad harsh but it almost seems like blackmail. You want to visit my website then do this first.
So if you find you can’t get into certain websites that may just be the problem. Millions of users prefer Firefox and there is nothing wrong with that. I do have a problem when you decide to push your likes and dislikes on me. I use IE because it’s what I’m used to. I have Firefox but just never completely took to it because some pages just do not show up well.
But now you are telling me that I can’t visit your site if I don’t use the browser you TELL me to? Then I guess I won’t visit your website. For any one thing, there are hundreds of websites. I don’t like being bullied online or off.
Also Adsense discourages it’s users from suggesting that people click links. So they can find their accounts banned for soliciting people to download Firefox via the Adsense link.
Ad Spending on Blogs, Podcasts, RSS to Hit $50M in 2006
April 15, 2006
According to a study conducted by PQ Media, ad spending on blogs, podcasts and RSS will reach $50 million this year.
The report found that blog, podcast and RSS advertising are the fastest growing segments of the alternative media industry. Spending on user-generated online media expanded at an aggregate 198.4% to $20.4 million in 2005, and is expected to grow another 144.9% to $49.8 million in 2006.
By 2010, that total is expected to be a whopping $757 million — with blog advertising making up 39.7% of the total and podcast advertising comprising 43.2%.
Which marketing categories are the most profitable? Technology, automobile, and media. Last year, these three accounted for more than half of total spending on user-generated online media.
Source: BtoBonline
Images + Adsense = Increased CTR
April 13, 2006
Placing images next to Adsense ads has successfully increased the Click-through rate on many sites. If you’re using this tactic, though, make sure of one thing: that the image can’t be construed as being part of the ad it’s next to.
Let’s say you place an image beside an ad, and the image looks like it’s part of the ad. Visitors will probably click through based on that image, erronously thinking that they’ll end up on some sort of product page. This results in a number of unqualified clicks to advertisers’ ads.
When the people at Google see this happening, they “ask that the publisher place a visible border between the ads and the images, to make it clear that the images are not being served by Google on behalf of the advertisers. We generally do not ask publishers to remove the images completely, we just ask that they add borders to avoid confusion.”
So, to head off unqualified clicks and Adsense compliance warnings from Google, think about adding those borders ahead of time…
Sources: SE Round Table, Jen Sense
Maximizing Adsense Revenue
April 12, 2006
WebmasterWorld has a great article on how to maximize your revenue with adsense using smart pricing. The author gives you his top four ways to do just that. For more read the entire article.
(1) Collect relevant information including EPC data, AdWords PPCs, and identify which pages are using SmartPricing the most.
(2) Improve your EPC - lots of ways to do this.
(3) Watch and monitor your results over next several days
(4) Remove the ads from the low paying pages and direct them (some how) to the higher paying pages.
Apply To Blogotive
April 5, 2006
Ever heard of blogotive.com? Neither did I until two days ago. Blogotive appears to be a marketplace that puts bloggers and companies together. The twist is instead of slapping up ads that these companies send to you, you get to make the ad to fit your blog and then get paid.
There are a few different ways to make money with this new site and those are just mentioning the company or product on your blog, writing and putting up their ad and soon even ghost blogging, which is posting to blogs for big companies.
