Adwords and Adsense II

Recently I wrote about how adwords and adsense form one of the best combinations around. Some recent changes have resulted in Adwords Becoming a better choice for advertisers and adsense becoming a waste of time for publishers.

Suppose you have a product to advertise and you use google adwords. These will be displayed on the search results page. If you chose content targeting your adds will also be displayed on websites that are part of the adsense ad network.

Until last week you paid the same rate for ads that are shown on the search page as well as those displayed on 'content targeted' websites. At Rad Inks we found that content targeted ads had an appaling conversion rate. Apperently thousands of advertisers share this feeling and have opted out of content targeted ads.

This was reflected in recent months in continously decreasing revenue for adsense publishers. For example though this site sees roughly 20% growth in page views each month, I haven't seen a similar growth in revenue.

In an effort to encourage advertisers to spend more on content targetting adwords has now announced that you may pay much less for these click throughs than for search results click throughs. That's all very well for the advertiser but for the publisher it means the few clicks that you get will give you even less money than you used to earn.