Advertise Space - Blog Avertising

It seems that most marketers agree that keyword targeting is a great way to get the right message in front of the correct targeted audience.   Unfortunately sometimes keywords can be their own worst enemy.   Like the classic example of airline ads showing up on news sites that have a breaking story about a plane crash.

My favourites include:

- A Crime blog with a keyword targeted ad on “how to be a true GUN Pro”

- Philippine travel blog with ads for landing Filipino wives

- A blog about the perils of having cancer with a Bikini girl screen saver ad

The truly most tasteless targeted ad I’ve seen:

- Macro Cats site, with a targeted Google ad for a ‘Dying cat’ ring tone.

What about you, have you seen any poorly placed advertisements?

Chad

Yup, Google makes billions of dollars off search advertising and there stock price is pretty solid, so why do I think search marketing/advertising is on its way out?  And to clarify, this is for advertising on the search engine itself, not through the millions of publisher sites.

Well, super savvy early adopters don’t use search engines to find great sites and products.   When was the last time that you went to a search engine and looked for a great site or a specific product?  If you answer is, “all the time”, then you don’t fall into the super early adopters category.  

These elites are using their power circles as reference tools, asking friends and their ‘online semi-acquaintances’ for suggestions and referrals and also giving out unsolicited advice in a constant never ending stream.   Just like the best jobs are not listed on job boards or super exclusive restaurants and nightclubs don’t need to advertise or sometimes even have a external facing street sign, power marketing won’t include a search engine component.   The best blogs are not found Googling, they are usually found from referral links or other blogs talking about a great post, and sometimes you just stumble upon them, literally.   Social circles are becoming the new holy grail for advertisers to get in front of.   Personal recommendations from friends and colleagues.   

Gone will be the days of going to Google or Yahoo and typing in ‘graphic designer’, ‘plumber’, ‘compact digital camera’, or Hawaii vacation’.   The savvy are already twittering, twirling, and plurking these questions from their power circle.   And so will you…if you have any friends.

While I’m doubtful that I will have a part II until there is a seriously updated version, I thought I’d leave it open anyway.

So, anyone who has read my previous rants on why I hate Google AdSense part I, and part II might be more than a little surprised that I’m writing this post.

Is there anything really to Love about AdSense? Sure…

1. Anybody is welcome. Yes, if you are super small have almost no traffic you can still get in. It’s like a nightclub that has no bouncers, no age restriction and no dress code. Anyone can get in.
2. No discrimination. All international traffic is A-OK. A lot of advertisers and ad networks are not interested in certain countries, especially 3rd world countries where the value of a visitor or click is sometimes virtually useless. Google wants it and can monetize it.
3. Set it and forget it. Probably one of the lowest maintenance things you’ll ever have to do to make at least some money off any blog. Even if you only do a few blog posts, and give up blogging completely for the rest of your life and never go back to you own site, it still might generate some traffic and money for you.
4. They Pay on time. If you ever have enough traffic on your site to reach that $50 minimum you will get paid, and it will show up each month like clockwork. (Which makes me also ponder…How many millions or 10 of millions of super small publishers never hit that min payout? Where does all that money go…Google Vault?)
5. It gives you a benchmark. I use AdSense as a floor benchmark, I kind of always see it as one of worse case scenario if you can’t monitize your banners any other way. Pubmatic also now has an AdPrice index that gives you guidelines of what you should be earning, and it breaks it out depending on your blog size.

So I know there are tonnes of raving fans…What do you love about AdSense?

1. Don’t hijack the page. Full page takeovers are even more obnoxious and intrusive than pop-ups. At least most pop-ups can be blocked. Never force someone to view an ad. Everyone should have the choice to view or ignore any advertisement, anywhere.

2. Don’t use sound. Banners should for the most part not make noise of any kind. Unless perhaps it is a movie trailer ‘AND’ the user has initiated the action. This means that they have either rolled over it and/or clicked on it. If not, don’t play sound. EVER. If you site using flash embedded with sound, remove it. Nothing makes a user close a site faster than music blaring. (Except maybe un-intentionally opened porn at the office)

3. Don’t go NASCAR. Pick a set number of banners and stick with it. Don’t just keep adding banners because you can sell them. 6-8 should be max. If you have to make more money, up the price instead of adding more.

4. Don’t sell pop-ups! These should have been wiped from the web years ago. They fucking piss everyone off. They are visual spam. They suck, bottom line. Don’t use them. Period.

5. Don’t pretend they’re not ads. Doing a paid review on your site is an advertisement. If you were paid, it is an ad. Disclose it.

More reading:

Top 5 most annoying Internet ads of all time

The world of annoying ads

1. Before you start: Make sure the URL you choose contains keywords relevant to the topic of your blog.
2. Use the title tag correctly. It should contain the blog name and a very concise description using target keywords.
3. Use your ‘about us’ section correctly. It should contain a power summary of what your blog is and what it covers, also containing second level target keywords.
4. Know thy competition. Check out a similar blog in your space that ranks higher in the searches than your blog does for your target keywords. View their style, format, meta tags, title tag, category list, blog roll etc. See what they are doing differently that favours the SERP’s
5. Don’t put your blog on a sub page. People tend to link to your main URL more often, so you will get more link backs that way.
6. Don’t use the ‘more’ feature. It breaks up your post which makes it harder for the search bots to understand (think fragmented hard drive) “I recommend full-text RSS feeds to get loyal users. Partial feeds get more page views, but not as much love.” –Matt Cutts
7. Check out Keyword searches. Look for relevant keywords for your blog and check the monthly search frequency of each. AdWords keyword checker
8. Avoid generic category names. Use category names that are also relevant keywords for you blog avoiding generic names. (Photos, fun, other, miscellaneous. etc.) Also limit the number, don’t tag everything.
9. Use keywords in URL path. Use a dash / or underscore _ and avoid using spaces.
10. Don’t duplicate content. Search engine robots are constantly scanning all sites and looking for exact copies of content and deleting the copies from the SERP’s. If you are referring to another post, try to write it in your own words. When quoting someone, quote small snippets and not entire paragraphs.

My favourite SEO blogs:

Search Engine Land I’ve been reading this for year. Danny Sullivan is one of the best in the business and I’ve seen him speak a few times.

Marketing Pilgrim Andy Beal another veteran of the industry along with a few other bloggers including Janet Meiners.

SEO tradeshows you may wish to attend:

http://searchmarketingexpo.com/advanced/

http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/

Ok this is still one thing that really irks me. Every person that I’ve ever met from any ad network has the exact same pitch. “We have the best CPM’s in the industry” Wow, how is it that everyone has the highest rate? There can be only one number one. Give us a real CPM. What is a real CPM you ask? $10. Now that is a CPM. $1 is not. One dollar is what crappy remnant house inventory sells for. Zwinky quality. Don’t give me a buck. Give me at least $5, or don’t bother pitching me. Even AdSense has you beat if you want to pay $2 and then request frequency capping and/or pass backs on non-US inventory.

OK so what is the solution for these ad networks who all copy each other and all claim the same thing?

- Come up with a different model. Stop following everyone else and innovate.

- Pick a niche space and own it. “Go Green Ad Network” (Doesn’t exist, at least I don’t think so?)

- Raise your qualifications. Increase the quality of your publishers and you can charge a higher CPM’s. Stop accepting anyone into your network, just to raise you ComScore numbers and inflated fluffy reach.

- Sell ads at real CPM’s and then actually pay out a good percentage to your publishers. (Casale Media is doing 70% at the moment)

So who is actually at the top? That’s what I’d really like to know. Which ad network constantly out performs all others? Leave a comment if you’ve had any success and got paid real money from anyone.

3rd party services like Pubmatic and Rubicon will eventually answer this questions for all of us and settle the score once and for all and the cheap networks will fall…

OK the long overdue follow up post to my last year’s shit storm post on why I hate Google AdSense: 

- The Rich get Richer. Well it’s a joke really that the only ones making any money are the owners of Google. If you are the one actually producing any of the content that they get rich off of, most likely you are still a broke ass. It is the sheer gap of wealth from the amount of money being printed to the actual publishers that makes me the most angry. With a 200 billion market cap, they could pay their top ONE MILLION publishers $100,000 and still have 100 billion left over. No but Google Officers like Doerr are cashing in 43,475 shares for a cool $30,000,000. He must need a new set of rims for his hummer?

- The Poor get Poorer. Yes, you guessed it. If you have been using AdSense as your only source of blog income you now know that AdSense blindness is setting in on your readers and they are clicking less and even if they do click, CPC’s are down. The money you used to buy your daily coffee with is now only paying for the soy milk upgrade.

- Lack of customization. Color palette change, rounded edges. Wow. Some customization. In the gaming world it’s common place to be able to customize your character to look almost identical to you or anyone you like, and this coming from much smaller development companies, let alone a billion dollar behemoth. Too busy counting their money I guess. I mean when the geek sitting in the cube next to you is worth 4 million on paper, why work? He is too busy twittering and checking out his net worth.

- Loyal promoter? We don’t need you. OK so you’ve been doing a money making blog for years and sending tonnes of fish over to the big shark as an affiliate referral. They pay you a bounty and then suck millions out of your referrals, but now depending on where you live, they might not want your krill. edit  - (OK they fixed this since I wrote this post a while ago, but now they still don’t accept certain countries.)

- Still only a CPC model.  Wherever there is someone paying for a certain call to action there is a way to game the system.   Yes, click fraud is alive and well and Google really doesn’t care that much about it, especially since the buzz about it has died off over the years.  Why not let the publisher decide what format to charge?  CPM, flat rate?  Adify.com allows these options for publishers. I’ve always preferred flat rate, and you can’t game a fixed price.

- Follow our rules or else. Want to sell your own text links on YOUR own site. Forget it. Cutt’s will even get you to sell out your own mother down the river for making money on the side. Big G will come down on your ass like a Columbian Coke lord on a cocaine farmer for chewing on leaves…