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Adsense Strategies and Tips JenSense has the scoop on the Microsoft answer to Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network, Microsoft ContentAds beta. Jen says that Microsoft is looking for a few good advertisers who are interested in testing out the contextual ads on Microsoft’s BIG MONEY channels; “Selected advertisers just received invitations to participate in the new ContentAds pilot, which begins running this fall. The email invited advertisers received mentioned the various MSN properties than contextually targeted ContentAds would appear on, such as MSN Real Estate and MSN Money, as well as others linked from the main MSN portal.” Publishers out there hoping that Microsoft ContentAds will be the next contextual cash cow will have to be a bit more patient however, as MSN is taking the YPN approach of slowly but surely building a trusted network of advertisers and appeasing them via MSN and Live Windows Channel ads before even thinking about bringing in non-MSN properties into the mix. Content Ads is Microsoft’s next product that allows advertisers to place content-targeted, text-based advertisements primarily on Microsoft-owned properties including MSN Money, Real Estate, and many others within the www.msn.com portal. Don’t fret publishers as Jen says there is still hope: This could conceivably mean that ads for this pilot could also appear on non-MSN sites, meaning publishers might be able to get into this program before it eventually (and officially) launches as a full-service publisher program similar to Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network. This is pretty good news for publishers waiting for a new major player to come onto the contextual advertising scene, especially those who are looking for a small-scale publisher solution for those who don’t have millions of impressions a month. Question is, will there be room for another player in the market once the new Yahoo Search Marketing interface brings new options such as geotargeting and demographics into their contextual advertising options; which should expand Yahoo Publisher Network into its full potential as a major contextual player? These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and
discover new web pages. A recent thread at Digital Point Forums discusses the practice by some publishers of removing the "Advertise on this Site" call-to-action that is embedded in the ad layout. Some interesting reasons and thresholds are given, including one participant who advises: My advise is take it off if you're getting less than 5000 impressions per day per ad. Leave it on if it's more. High impressions ads tends to attract bidders to sponsor the ad space. For those of you in the game, you may want to see some of the arguments behind this Google-allowed layout edit. The discussion is found at Digital Point Forums. Microsoft won't let Google in without fight After much speculation, Google introduced Google Apps – a package that includes its e-mail, calendar, instant-messaging and Web site creation services. Later this year, Google plans to offer word processing, spreadsheet and collaboration tools. Although pricing has yet to be announced, Google Apps will be sold to corporate users while being free for individuals. For Google, the launch of a Microsoft Office-like suite is an aggressive strategic move that is part of the company’s efforts to diversify its revenue and profit growth from the ultra-successful AdSense program. The Office market is enormous so it represents a huge opportunity for anyone willing to take a crack at breaking Microsoft’s stranglehold on the business. With apologies to Corel Corp.’s WordPerfect business, there is little competition in the Office market. As a result, Microsoft’s Office business made a staggering US$8.3-billion in profits on sales of US$11.7-billion in the year ended June 30, 2006. Google must look at the business and salivate at the potential for a service that offers the same or better functionality as Office but delivered as a Web-based service as opposed to an expensive software package. Clearly, it is a colossal challenge knocking off a dominant incumbent or even gaining modest market share. But Google has a chance of being successful because it has a world-class brand, nearly US$10-billion of cash and tens of millions of loyal users. However, it will be far from a slam-dunk. Google’s track record beyond search has been, at best, spotty. While Google Earth and Google Maps have been well received, many of its other services (Okrut, Google Talk, Google Video, Google Spreadsheets, Google Base, etc.) have failed to capture the imagination of Web users. Social networking, for example, is all the rage as evident by the success of MySpace, but Okrut is nowhere to be seen. Google supporters may argue Google has outmanoeuvred Microsoft in the search engine and paid-search markets. While this is true, Google was an early entrant into markets that did not have a dominant player. The Office market, however, is different. Meanwhile, Microsoft is pushing ahead with the migration of its traditional software to the Web through its Windows Live program. This will include a Web-based version of Office. At the same time, Microsoft Office is installed in pretty much every corporate computer. It’s not as if many IT managers are looking for an alternative given Office works well and Microsoft has done a fairly commendable job of introducing upgrades (which, in turn, lead to more revenue opportunities). With a large customer base and a huge lead, Microsoft has little to be concerned about in the near-term from rivals such as Google, Sun Microsystems Inc.’s OpenOffice, or Web-based start-ups such as Zoho, ThinkFree and Zimbra. That said, Microsoft can’t afford to be complacent about competition. No doubt, it will do everything it can to educate corporate customers why Office is a superior product to Google Apps. And you can bet Microsoft will make it very easy for large corporate customers to stick with Office with a variety of incentives. For Google Apps to have a shot at success, Google will have to attack the market from a number of different fronts. With Google Apps being free for individuals, it should be able to make some inroads with people willing to use a Web-based service rather than a software suite that resides on their computers. For businesses currently using Office, Google may be able to attract users by offering Google Apps as a less expensive alternative. It could also position Google Apps as a tool that makes it easy for people to share documents over the Web. Needless to say, the war between Google and Microsoft will be a positive for consumers given that competition encourages innovation. The idea that Google is willing to take on Microsoft in the Office market may also encourage other companies to enter the fray. While there is clearly a lot of excitement about Google Apps, everyone needs to take a deep breath before getting carried away. Given what’s at stake financially for Microsoft, there is no way the software giant is going to let Google grab a foothold without a fight. Should PBS Just Say No to AdSense? Brett questions: After all, PBS is the king of public content and public subsidized content
via tax dollars. Should they have any relationship to advertisers at all?
Let alone having to disclaim them? NEW YORK In a reflection of the increased demand for Web video ads, eMarketer has revised its forecast for the segment. The New York research firm now expects $650 million worth of streaming ads in 2007, up from the $640 million forecast last November. The researcher believes $1.7 billion will be spent on Web video placements by 2009, $200 million more than it originally projected.
EMarketer said the "media frenzy" over Web video, highlighted by the runaway success of YouTube, would lead to increased opportunities for streaming video ads. Most Web video ads on high-traffic portals AOL, MSN and Yahoo are pre-roll units, viewed prior to clips. However, others are experimenting with new forms. YouTube earlier this month introduced a new ad model that lets users choose what ads to watch, a tactic that Google is also using in its AdSense network. EMarketer forecasts video placements will make up 8 percent of all Internet ad spending in 2010, up from 2.3 percent today. "As more TV networks make their content available on the Web, deep-pocketed traditional marketers will better see online video as a necessary piece of their campaigns," David Hallerman, an eMarketer analyst, said in a statement. Microsoft Invites Advertisers into ContentAds Pilot According to Jennifer Slegg, this could mean that ads for this pilot could also appear on non-MSN sites, meaning publishers might be able to get into this program before it launches as a full-service publisher program similar to Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network. This is good news for publishers waiting for a new major player to come onto the contextual advertising scene, especially those who are looking for a small-scale publisher solution for those who don't have millions of impressions a month. ContentAds will also be utilising demographic targeting, geo-targeting and
incremental bidding tools for all advertisements as well, so advertisers
will have full flexibility on their ads appearing through ContentAds. Many prefer to use open-source CMS that can be downloaded for free Many users, independently from their technical background, may need to There are different ways to go about it. The most common is to start working
as part of the developers community, sign up for the forum and Some however, especially beginners and non tech people, may still need The book entitled "Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals and Community
Websites" written by David Mercer, published by PACKT More and more people, irrespective of their roles and background, are learning about open source CMS. This book may be right for them. Thirathep Chonmaitree an IT lecturer and would be Drupal adept downloaded
the application and used the book as a guide to help him This book is the guide in creating online systems using Drupal. It explains
how to set up Drupal on your machine and also guide you through the basic
concept of Drupal in setting up the blogs, forums, Is the book written to support any particular environment? The author does specifically focus on Windows platform. The instructions
in this book focus on Window platform only, however, the author actually
touches on Unix platform a little bit in the Intended Audience? The manual is not specifically addressed to a technical audience, as no
specific pre-requisite level competence is recommended, but as the chapters
unfold it becomes clear that some Windows administrator This book has 10 chapters with one appendix, divided into different parts.
First part is the introduction, including installation and setting up Drupal
on your machine. Here readers will find some In chapter one, the author actually put the reader into the world of Drupal
with his easy-to-understand introduction. Chapter 2 and 3 are dedicated to
explain the the development environment including the installation and configuration.
He then adds some functionally into Is the book useful? The book is definitely useful for beginners and the novices of the internet, also to those who are systematic in their approach to application development. How could it be more useful? One important point of having a book like this one is to have some tips
and tricks for user to get excited with. It is deliberately important to
advance the knowledge of the novice user in knowing more Are there enough illustrations? The illustrations seem secondary since it is not a step-by-step instruction book of Drupal. Are the instructions for installation and development sufficient to get the job done? The instructions are not really clear enough. The reader needs to find some more information based on each environment in order to set up Drupal smoothly. Does the book give any additional knowledge to what is available on the web? Definitely not!!! The website does have a lot more uptodate information
about Drupal than the book. The drupal.org web site actually has a wide range
of coverage in the installation tip and trick into setting up Drupal. Compare this book to other manuals you may have used before There is the different approach in writing the manual. It depends on Is this book enough to get started? Yes, I think so. The beginner should actually receive enough knowledge in
creating a web site using Drupal. What other knowledge would be beneficial? A little bit of system administration and web site developer knowledge Should readers buy this book? Yes, no, why? Yes if you are a beginner. This book gears its content in helping someone
gets started on the web site development using Drupal. No if you are serious
CMS developer. You cannot find high technical description about CMS of Drupal
in this book. ShoeMoney blogged that at the Arbitrage Issues session at SES San Jose, during Q&A time, Kim Malone of Google said that the AdSense team may use AdWords conversion data to determine which sites are trying to fraud advertisers and users (often named Made for AdSense sites - MFAs). "Kim explained that in many cases they are using Adwords conversion data to tell what MFA sites were actually converting for advertisers. She said using this data helps them easily identify arbitragers." To me, this doesn't sound a 100% right. The Google web search team said time and time again that they would not use this data for any organic ranking purposes. I know the AdSense team is separate from them and is even more closely related to the AdWords team, but to use that data for purposes of detecting MFAs? I am not so sure about this. Anyway, I trust Jeremy heard this but I suspect Kim Malone of Google didn't mean for this to come out. Either way, I would love to hear back from Google on this topic. Google AdSense Sued by Suspended Publisher Steve Bryant at eWeek reports that a woman has sued Google after she was suspended from the program for clicking on her own ads. Theresa B. Bradley filed a lawsuit against Google for $250,000 for fraud and misrepresentation, even though she admits she clicked her own ads "to verify that the advertisers were not selling competing products". The site in question is BravaCorp.com, and she claims it took her staff 100 hours for "placing and reviewing HTML code for Google AdSense" on her site which seems to have under a few dozen pages. In addition, Bradley is also claiming her "brief business relationship with Google caused her irreparable harm by damaging her reputation and the reputation of her products and services." Google responded to Bryant that "the suit is without merit and that the company would defend itself vigorously". However, Bradley did not reply to requests for comment on the lawsuit. Bryant notes that Bradley also sued Adsense is beginning to make a huge impact on the affiliate marketing industry today. Because of this, weak affiliate merchants have the tendency to die faster than ever and ad networks will be losing their customers quickly. If you are in a losing rather than winning in the affiliate program you are currently promoting, maybe it is about time to consider going into the Adsense marketing and start earning some real cash. is readily providing well written and highly relevant ads that are closely chosen to match the content on your pages. You do not have to look for them yourselves as the search engine will be the doing the searching for you from other people's source. You also don't have to spend time in choosing different kind of ads for different pages. makes it very easy for you, with no codes to mess around for different affiliate programs. You will be able to concentrate on providing good and quality content, as the search engines will be the ones finding the best ads in which to put your pages on. You are still allowed to add Adsense ads even if you already have affiliate links on your site. It is prohibited, however, to imitate the look and feel of the ads for your affiliate links. One of the things you can do, however, is to utilize 's custom palette to customize your ads, making them to appear a part of the web page itself. The idea here is to match background and links to match the theme of your site. People on the internet today are trained to click on a link that is blue, and if your ads have the same theme as your web page, it makes the ads appear to be a portion of your "content." You can also filter up to 200 URLs. This gives you a chance to block ads for the sites that do not meet your guidelines, and also block competitors. Remember that it is unavoidable that Adsense may be competing for some space on web sites that all other revenues are sharing. Owners of small sites are allowed to plug a bit of a code into their sites and instantly have relevant text ads that appeal to your visitors appear instantly on your pages. If you own many sites, you only need to apply once. Then ,you are issued a unique "publisher ID", which can be used on any site you currently own. A small snippet of Javascript is placed on your site in the location you wish the ads to appear in, and generally speaking, the ads from Goggle will appear in minutes. This ends the hassle of having to apply to many affiliate programs, and keeping track of many different URL's and user ID's and passwords. As ads are very easy to customize, and can be placed anywhere on your site you wish, you can experiment with placement, colors, and themes. Many tricks are available to the resourceful webmaster, including adding images in conjunction with your ads to make them more noticeable. The payment rates can vary extremely. The payment you will be receiving per click depends on how much advertisers are paying per click to advertise with the use of the AdWords. Advertisers can pay as little as 5 cents and as high as $10-12, sometimes even more than that too. Some savvy lawyers are currently paying as high as $75 for advertising the keyword mesothelioma! And you, as the ad publisher, are earning a share of that money generated. If your results remain stagnant, it can help if you try and build simple and uncluttered pages so that the ads can catch the visitor's eyes more. It sometimes pay to differ from the usual things that people are doing already. has many tutorials, including a "heat chart" which shows you where the best placement for ads are. You will need an account to access these tutorials. Sign up for an Adsense account at https://www..com/adsense/?sourceid=aso&subid=ww-et-awhome&hl=en_US. It is also a refreshing sight for your visitor once they see something different for a change. It is still wise to look at other people's information and format your Adsense in a like manner. A wise old business axiom is to "find a good business model, then copy it." Let others do the hard work for you, and learn from a successful site. Just think about it as doing yourself a favor by not having to work too hard to know what content to have. Look to sites that have high page rank, and carefully observe their layouts, their content, and placement of their ads. A little time spent doing research can put dollars in your pocket down the road. Publishers have the option of choosing to have their ads displayed only on a certain site or sites. You can also have them displayed on a large network of sites if you so desire. now has the option to allow other people to advertise on your site. This only makes good sense. If you are marketing to a tightly defined niche, you can place your own ads, written by you, on site that allow this option. The choice is yours, depending on what you think will work best to your advantage. It is important to note that you cannot choose certain topics only. If you do this, search engines will not place Adsense ads on your site and you will be missing out a great opportunity in making hundreds and even thousands of dollars cash. Topics to be avoided includes gambling, firearms, ammunition, tobacco or drugs. If you are being offered more cash in exchange of doing Adsense with these kinds, it is just like signing your own termination paper. With all the information that people need in your hands already, all you have to do is turn Adsense into your own cash cow. It all boils down to a win-win situation both for the content site owners and the webmasters or publishers. |
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