Donna Bogatin a ZDNet blogger just posted a great article on Google Adsense and the ‘Web2.0′ business model. In the article Donna touches on an issue I have had for quite some time, Google Adsense’s utter lack of transparency in their revenue sharing model with publishers. It feels good to read that I am not the only one concerned about Adsense’s cheeky business model.
As Adsense has grown over the years since I took I hiatus from blogging, I have always watched as an outsider and pondered its value only intellectually but now as a blogger, I have had to get ‘real’ and decide how I want to make money or if I want to make money.
In Donna’s post she refers to the sections that caught my eye a while back:
…………AdSense will automatically display the text or image ad(s) that will generate the maximum revenue for a page - and the maximum revenue for you.
Who buys a product or service with the terms we will give you ‘the maximum revenue’ as a commitment?
I wonder if I publish with Adsense and clients know about this non-sense agreement, do they question whether they are paying for a knowledge professional or a foolish purveyor of snake oil?
Google also refers to how due to the ‘targeted’ nature of their ads they will help to ‘enhance’ a publishers content. Now I don’t know about you, but that just sounds silly. I don’t know a single person content producer or otherwise that if they could find a better way of making money without annoying the audience so much they would.
I absolutely am behind Donna in the belief that selling ads directly is the best method for both publisher, ad seller and even the viewer. That way the ad seller gets the right audience at the right time and the publisher gets exactly the ad that complements their content and because it complements their content so effectively maybe the viewer is tempted to buy instead of irritated.
Ping THIS!
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