SMJ Solutions

My Adsense Experiment

January 23rd, 2007

Google followers have long since known that Google isn’t a search company, it’s an advertising company. The search technology is really just a better way to deliver relevant ads. Its advertising programs (AdSense and Adwords) have revolutionized online advertising. Once heading down the annoying road of popups, popunders, and animated hit the monkey ads, online ads have become more gentle text-only ads and much more relevant thanks to Google AdSense.

I have been working a project lately which required some investigation into online advertising. Let me tell you a little more about my AdSense experiment and how easy it was to set up on this site.

The project I am working on is an online community site, code named Big Trophy Cat. I think it has great potential, but it’s not something I want to fund out of my own pocket (read: my wife won’t let me fund another side venture). A subscription model doesn’t really make sense, I can’t rely solely on donations from users, and since I’m currently employed as an Oracle Analyst I don’t have the time to chase down advertising myself.

One great thing about AdSense is that once you’re approved, you can put AdSense ads on any number of your sites, but all the earnings are combined into your one account. So, while SMJSolutions.com doesn’t generate enough traffic (yet!) to make any significant money, it was a great test case for putting Adsense in with Big Trophy Cat. I can also take time to figure out what ad formats are successful and design the layout of Big Trophy Cat with that end in mind.

Simple Setup

Setting up Adsense was really easy. I applied for an account using SMJSolutions.com as the main site. I was approved within a few hours (it could take up to two days), and could begin picking and designing the ads to go on my site.

Robust Reporting

Adsense does a great job of letting you know how your ads are doing. The reporting system is flexible and easy to use so you can get relevant data about your site. The one thing I haven’t figured out yet how to do is find out which specific ads are being clicked on.

Another great reporting feature is the custom channel. You can define custom channels to track pages, color schemes, ad formats, placement on pages, or any other type of metric you can imagine. Using channels appropriately provides a great tool for analyzing the advertising performance of your site.

Flexible Formats

Adsense offers a wide variety of shapes and sizes of ads that can easily be integrated into your website. You choose the ad format, customize the color scheme of the ads, and Google gives you the code to paste into your website.

However, AdSense isn’t just delivering contextual text ads, it’s a whole suite of advertising tools. There are currently three different types of advertising you can do with your AdSense account: AdSense for Content, AdSense for Search, and Referrals.

AdSense for Content is the bread and butter of the AdSense program. It is the delivery of relevant ads based on the page content.

AdSense for Search puts a Google search box on your site that users can use to search your site or expand it to the whole web. You get credit for the ads that are delivered as a result of the searches.

Referrals are simply ads for Google products or services. You may have noticed the AdSense referral button toward the top of this page. If someone reads this article and decides to sign up for AdSense though clicking the referral button, I can get credited for referring that customer to Google AdSense.

Real Revenues

One of the major reasons I chose AdSense over other online advertising networks is the trust of doing business with an established, public company like Google. Smaller, independent ad networks may pay better per click, but may also not be around for long and may run off with your money. Or worse, it may suddenly decide to run a punch the monkey campaign on your site.

The issue of trust is a major issue for me because online advertising will be the main source of revenues for project Big Trophy Cat.

I read through some of the AdSense success stories and found several examples of non-huge sites that are making real nice revenue numbers through AdSense. It was nice to see some of those bigger numbers especially considering the pennies that SMJSolutions.com has earned from AdSense so far.

Few Flaws

Because Adsense works so well and is so easy, there are a lot of made for Adsense (MFA) sites that exploit the system. As a result, man “junk” ads are in the Adsense system which point to these MFA sites, most of which you don’t want to be associated with your site. Sites like adsblacklist.com identify MFA culprits and show you how to use your competitive ad filter feature in your Adsense menu to block ads from these sites.

Click fraud is a problem that some have predicted will shake up the whole internet and impact the entire economy.

Flaws do exist in the AdSense world. Issues like click fraud and MFA sites are real concerns. But at the end of it all, Adsense provides a great option for webmasters to generate revenue from their websites.

Entry Filed under: Web