Shoemoney from webmasterradio.fm has a great interview with Brian Axe of AdSense. I was really amazed and impressed with the interview and with Brian.
(edit: I realize this crosses the line from commentary to rant… you’ve been warned)
My experience with adsense hasn’t been a good one from a customer service standpoint. I’ve worked with sites who have been banned without recourse and are left with dealing with under trained Google customer service types who make the Bush’s military tribunals looks like shining examples of defendant rights by comparison.
So in short, my experience with AdSense is that it is a great way to monetize a site, but they are arrogant, monopolistic and tend to stonewall if they suspect you of crossing them. In their defense, they likely deal with people all day trying to defraud them. The question they need to answer is, How many innocents should be punished to catch an offender? Is it better to err on the side of letting people defraud you, or is it better to err on the side of protecting advertising and never being defrauded? I don’t know for sure, but in my small-time, limited sample, Google appears Hitler-like in their treatment of small sites. I’m certain that one innocent was banned and pretty sure that 2 others are being truthful. Notice that Google would never ban anyone with the clout or Soap Box to fight back. My experience is with smallish, niche sites with no option.
All of that aside, the Podcast with AdSense manager Brian Axe was helpful. He discusses these trade offs and talks about changes to adsense policies here (MP3 Link).
My take aways:
- images beside ads tend to increase clicks but not ROI for advertisers and until Google has a way to protect advertisers from that, they will disallow the process
- Google is working on some process to allow publishers to click on their own ads to better understand their visitors experience (I’m very pleased and impressed that Google is addressing this. Axe’s perspective was perfect. In short: we know this should happen; we’re working on it; Until we get it, don’t click the ads)
- from Google’s perspective, the appeals process works great
- smartpricing is probably a good thing (they’re trying to differentiate between quality and low quality clicks… many advertisers avoid the publishers altogether because smartpricing doesn’t work. it should get better)