Is Google AdSense Still The Contextual Ads Leader?
Google AdSense has long held a status as being the leader in contextual advertising. We’ve seen companies come and go, but Google seems to stay right up there on top. Despite some fluctuations in the Google profits in the first quarter of 2008 and the last quarter of 2007, AdSense continues to stand the test of time, and I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. There are some companies trying to emulate the Google AdSense success, but most are failing. They are failing because of the very bad ad-quality that exists in their system, this is something which they ultimately cannot resolve unless they get better advertisers.
Why Did AdSense Revenues Fall? And Why You Shouldn’t Be Worried. This is some very simplistic logic that the media failed to grasp when reporting about the recent drop in AdSense click-through rates. Google decided that it is only fair to give the advertiser’s a greater opportunity for more genuine clicks, and I totally understand this. So they reduced the amount of white space that can be clicked around a typical AdSense Ad. Previously the whole AdSense block could be clicked on, but this led to false and accidental clicks, so now, more valid clicks are being recorded, hence a marginal decrease in revenue as a result of less accidental clicks.
Google AdSense Has Some Competition: There are quite a few companies wanting to reap profits from the contextual advertising market, and why not, it is quite lucrative. The contextual advertising competition are companies like Yahoo Publisher Network, Microsoft Ad Center, IndustryBrains, ContextWeb and Quigo (AdSonar) technologies. Then there are the in-text contextual advertising companies whom also serve as a bit of competition to Google AdSense for publishers who are seeking a different experience, the major ones to date are Kontera, IntelliTXT, Vibrant Media and more recently Amazon Links and Chitika Linx.
The Problem with Google AdSense, You May Want To Get Packing…Yes, there is a problem with AdSense, quite a big problem actually. AdSense currently has a huge amount of advertisers in their database (directory). Some of these advertisers lead you to sites that are utterly disgusting and unworthy of a click. The problems lies herein, AdSense is being filled by less trustworthy and less reliable sites, you’re beginning to be brought to random sites that seem very scam-like and gray area. The other companies I mentioned above tend to have more quality advertisers because they target high profiles news and celebrity sites as opposed to blogs and smaller sites.
New Technologies Being Rolled Out By Google AdSense Developers, As Google tries to combat a few problems such as click-fraud and ad quality (which is what they are well renown for), new technologies are continually being unveiled. A recent update saw AdSense publishers being able to select various ads they wanted to be displayed and not allow other ads to be displayed, I think this is certainly a move in the right direction. Webmasters want to have a certain amount of control over what gets shown on their sites, so it is only logical to allow this to occur.
Google AdSense and The Future: The future for Google AdSense is still looking quite good, despite these problems mentioned above. The competing companies are failing to reap considerable profits as a result of a bad business model. Google has grown and developed into a huge company, they are backed by a range of profitable networks and services of their own. Other companies don’t have a firm foundation that they can rely on, they rely on a sole service which they provide, therefore they can’t sustain themselves in harsh times, they are bound to fail or not be very profitable.
Do You Think Google Is Still A Leader In Contextual Advertising? Why?
