Is Adwords Dying?

Is Adwords Dying?

Rumor is that Adwords is losing it’s power. and the number of users are diminishing. Also another rumor is that the Adwords team knows this.
To me, this completely nuts. unless it’s just the current Economy. If so, then it’s kind of to late for that to be the cause. If for some reason, another company is offering their advertisement spots at a lower cost, cool. but the ads will not be seen by nearly as many people as they would be seen on Adwords. Google Adsense is the way that Adwords get seen on other websites. more sites are signed to Adsense, than any other 4 affiliate companies, together.
Maybe this is true. Maybe Google has been nipping and skimping here and there over the years on Adwords just as they had done with Adsense over the years. I do not know this. I don’t use Adwords, because I have nothing to sell. but I do use Adsense, and I have seen a huge decrease in payout. Maybe less people are using Adwords because of changes. I do not know.

But I do know what would help Google, or another Affiliate company out there that wants to try it.

A mix of adsense for search and adsense affiliate ads. with selective phrases. What this means is if google would let you have a user code like your typical affiliate code, (ok here’s a fake code for examples) like “x-011-0-11truxter” and say someone asked em to help them locate a specific item and item such as  duck food. So to help that person I would type “http://www.google.com/x-011-0-11truxter/duck+food+feed+mallard”. When a person clicks that link, the user would be directed to a search result page that shows food and feed for ducks and mallards. I then would be helping that user locate their item, I would in turn be helping Google send their ads out to users, and I would be helping the person who is in the most attractive link the user decides to click, and the best part, I would be paid by Google for my efforts. since  normally I would just search Google and send the user a link.. if i knew that much about ducks =-\ .

but as of now, there a bunch of sites stating that Google is not making  any money from Adwords.

Adbrite Vs Adsense 1 Year

Well all. It has been a year since our post about switching to Adbrite and dropping Adsense. ( We dropped Widget bucks fast)
We didn’t drop Adsense because shortly after that claim, our revenue dropped traumatically.
It is true, you never let people know you are being taken advantage of.
We took some tips from a site about Adsense and posted them.

Adsense report for one year

Adsense Results 1 year

And now the comparison

Adbrite report for one year

Adbrite Results 1 yr

It seems there is no pay out for people doing searches on the Google searcher. Or at least the pay out is not what we expected.

Google’s pay has dropped (from the way this looks). A Website that made just over $100 a year, split into 7 websites and took on 5 more writers, now only makes $17 year. We have to assume that the current crunch is also on Google. That $100 Was paying for the domain storage. but now, it does not look like this will be much fun any longer.
We are considering a bit of a change though. We are looking of stripping Adbrite from all of the sites except for one, and putting another Adsense ad code in their spot. It will have to be a bit of a slow change so we can monitor the activity. If the change does not go fast enough, then the opportunity of Google Adsense having contextual related ads could be missed. That’s one thing for certain about Adsense. Is the contextual advertisements are spot on. Adbrite is only close if you select the ads yourself. and well, close is not good enough. Close ads are not showing the readers what they may be interested in.
So now we will see what adsense alone does in 6 out of seven website.

See you all next year.

Oh and fyi, the $17 you see in ads revenue was just one site with 1 adsense ad on it. And the adbrite $4.5 is across 5 websites in three spots. per site. Clearly adsense is the better choice here.

Here’s an update to what my adsense account is doing. I think it’s just broke. I know I’m broke.

How Bing Could Squash Google

Adsense. What is the easiest way Google makes certain their people who pay to be in the search engine get seen ? they share the wealth.
Bing has yet to even begin to try that. all they have to do is make an affiliate program to share the adverts with the websites out there.
Totally remove the whole Silverlight program. That and adobe air have got to be the clunkiest pieces of garbage. I don’t care how you improve it. A perfect turd is still a turd. Quit forcing people to hold that turd. I don’t want it in my computer, I don’t want a turd in my hand. Simply put, If I have to install that program to use your software, I will stop using your software.

Get yahoo off of Clicksor. I used to clicksor with all sorts of hopes of having an alternative to the goliath. I never made one red cent. Not one penny. I had a relative call me and tell me they clicked some ad on my old site, they said they bought something from one of the ads and never got their product. They thought I controlled it all. Clicksor never even noted the click. I did not tell my relative 700 miles away to click it. it was months later when I found out they did. Once they got tired of waiting for their products.
Clicksor then dropped me and said I didn’t have enough traffic. I had 200-2000 people a day. It fluctuated.

So having yahoo tied into something like that, surely isn’t helping them at all. Having a program where websites serve their ads for them will profit Bing and the website owners and would allow competition to Google’s adsense. Truth is adsense needs competition, they are getting a bit diva/spoiled princess.

When a person uses a search engine, they don’t want to be told how to search. People do searches like they think. They type it like they expect it to work. Not like they are told a search engine should be. Bing can do this if they just look at the most common searches. They all look like a question. Bing has this information. Google has this information. Yahoo, I have no idea why yahoo quit like that.

If you have suggestions for Bing or Yahoo post them here in a response.

No adsense app for android

Checking your adsense account on an android phone is pointless. You can see nearly all of the page with the browser, except for the totals. There is some guy who made an adsense ap but he sells the full featured one for like $.99.
This is pathetic. The phone is made by google. I can imagine what people see on adwords. Probably not a whole lot. I do not understand why google themself have not created this app. Could be a very useful tool.
I have tried with the web browser and with opera, no luck in seeing my page view count. I am forced to using the hit count that came with wordpress and subtract 35% because for some reason google adsense seems to do that.
Oh well, at least adbrite let’s me see my stats …. with the google browser.

Adsense Down 4/10/10

Yeah that’s convenient. Actually they gave us plenty of warning. There was a highlighted text area in our account that stayed pretty static on every page. I do have to say this about adsense, ” They plan their outages and let you know at least a week in advance” .

Google AdSense

The AdSense account interface is temporarily unavailable due to system maintenance. AdSense is expected to be down from approximately 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time on April 10, 2010. Please note that your earnings will continue to be tracked as normal, and your ad targeting will not be affected during this downtime. We apologize for any inconvenience.

AdSense Ain’t a Linear Game

Bullet  Points to focus.

Good ol’ Zipf

You can’t predict.

Things change

Traffic has limits

Ad inventory has limits

Self-competition

High velocity means lousy control

Taken from here

Help in understanding why your income from adsense sucks

Really that was a great post about 5-6 years ago when he wrote it. but now you can’t say “Adsense” because, well no one uses adsense any-longer. There is no money in it, google has shut down the income as if they monopolize the internet. So the site designers go elsewhere.

But you can use his tips on other advertising companies, like adbrite

Here is someone who sees what I see

Adsense is tanking

See I see these people talking about $500-$5000 a day in traffic. I think that is nuts. I don’t see that kind of money, that stuff is way way way deep in my adsense crushed dreams.  One guy responds about bidvertiser, really, I never saw a dime from bidvertiser.

Comparing to affiliate companies to Adsense

Yeah, big money

Look at that pay out.

Comparing Two Affiliate Programs To Adsense.

WidgetBucks – I gave the company a go to see what they can do for my income. I have to say. Not much. After two months of having them on my site, it showed no traffic, no clicks. Nothing. So I left it alone for a month or so longer. I increased the rate of my content, increased the value of my content. Waited the whole month and did not log in to watch my income there flat-line. after that month had passed I tried to log in, and it refused my email address and my password. Now i don’t want to make the assumption that they finally made a profit from me and banned my account or something, because the ads surely continued to update.

But after that I had to do a search in my self  constructed toolbar and found some scary results for the word “scam” So to be fair I had to do an alternative search in hopes of positive results. Seems there are plenty of results for both, so I am indecisive enough to say, I will not bother signing up again.

Crazy enough, I never got an email telling me I was banned or kicked out.

Google Adsense – for two years straight I made really amazing fantastic money. Adsense was the place for the little guy to go and make money doing online the things he loves doing. Exactly what I do. I was making a really good average. Never once would I game the system because the money was to good. I did them a favor by getting their ads out to the targeted public, and they did me great for making good ads that were relevant to the content I was writing about. Their contextual content is most reliable, and so correct in targetting markets related to site content.

They decide they are going to take over some buggy company that no virus scanner liked (no names sorry, check your history lol) and post some claim about the value of a click, and suddenly on I am seeing 1 cent for every ten dollars I used to see. I am seeing 1 person crawl my page in their tools area, while in my administration area of my website hosting service I am seeing over 200 people. They remind me of another advertising company that was sold a couple years ago, to some obscure brand, just before they got sued for  gaming their customers.

So i used google to see what that is all about . Here are the pros and here are the cons.  Probably not smart that I used google to do that search, maybe I should have used bing.

I think these final days of Google being top, has gone to their heads, they forgot the little guy. I have since removed myself from their services. It seems a tad bit fishy to me.

AdBrite– These people are everything  that adsense used to be. These people are everything that we used to wish Google was. They have page view counts identical to what my webhost shows. I love these guys and I do recommend you use them. They have a fair pay rate and they do what you need them to do.

Of all the companies I have tried through the past 16 years of internet content, adBrite is the number one choice for me today. Down side is it is a manual content set up, it’s not going to magically scan your page and know what ads to display, you have to select the topics. So a ranting website may change topics so often that the ads might not work well. One topic and it’s easy and aces.

but hey if you know something that compares or have an opinion on the subject that I or other readers of this site need to know, let us know, post it to us in the reply section down lower. it’s free and you do not have to create an account. I welcome comments and a difference of opinion.
Example of an Ad (ok it’s a real ad):


Google Changes it’s Notification emails

I actually never got any notification.. Is that just for the people who actually make money with Adsense? Adsense paid me like 200 bucks out of five years.

Dear Publisher,

We are writing to let you know that we’ve changed the options for which kinds of emails you can receive from AdSense. In addition to our existing newsletter and survey categories, we’ve added three new categories to help you make the most of your AdSense account.

If you choose to opt in to all five categories, you’ll be eligible to receive personalized help from AdSense specialists, event invitations, beta test offers, and giveaways from AdSense and other Google products. The updated categories are:

*Customized help and performance suggestions*
Receive suggestions from members of the AdSense team for changes you can make to improve performance and earn more from your site.

*Newsletters*
Receive newsletters with optimization tips, best practices, and other information to help you get the most out of your Google AdSense account.

*Google market research*
Receive invitations to test new features, surveys about Google AdSense, and opportunities to provide feedback about your experiences.

*Special offers*
Receive news about AdSense promotions, events, and giveaways.

*Information about other Google products and services which may be of interest to you*
Receive news and special offers from other Google products such as coupons from Google AdWords and other offers we think will benefit you.

If you’re already opted in to receive newsletters and surveys, we’ll automatically update your preferences to the new newsletter and market research categories.

To opt in to the new email categories or opt out of your existing categories, just sign in to your AdSense account. You’ll be presented with instructions to take advantage of this new opportunity.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

You have received this mandatory service announcement to update you about important changes related to your AdSense account preferences.

Why did they chose the 1st of April to announce this?

I mean when I got the notice, it was almost ten Oclock in Texas. Didn’t take it seriouse till 11:30 when I got the email..

Google retires AdSense referral system

I have used AdSense for a long while now. I have yet for one person to join the AdSense program through a referral link on my site. At least not reported. Then again, none of the affiliate programs I have ever signed to have let me know that anyone used my link. I do know that when i am looking fro a new advertiser for my site, I do check into the “hey try us” links. Can we trust DoubleClick yet?

But as the title stated, here is the email I received today:

Hello,

Thank you for participating in the AdSense Referrals program. We’re writing to let you know that we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August. We appreciate your patience during this transition and here are some alternative options to consider:

* Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For further details, please visit this site. *AdSense for content ads: If you have less than three AdSense for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the referral ad units with standard AFC ad units.

If you currently use referral ads, either to promote Google products or offerings from AdWords advertisers, AdSense Referrals code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August. We encourage you to take the following steps before the product is retired:

* Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your ad space. * Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create and save all reports related to the referrals program on your desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign information

Why is this happening? We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program. If you have any additional questions, please visit our Help Center.

Sincerely.

The Google AdSense Team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about the retirement of an AdSense feature.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Looks like that side money will not be coming, even if it never came anyway.