Advertisement Networks: Another Business Eco System Normalized
By LawrenceThe other day I wrote about Google and its complicated relationship with its adwords clients and adsense partners. That was just the start of our effort to revise and streamline the website. Simply put, I have hired a team to update the website so that several goals I have in mind can be reached. One of the few things that has to be taken care of is streamlining the ad placement on the site. And I’ve learned something very interesting about this money making frontier.
Lessons Learned About Ad Placement On The Net
First thing I’ve learned is that we’ve been doing the ad placement on the site completely wrong. Obviously we may have a pretty good looking design but it is not friendly towards ad placement on the site. So, that part is changing behind the scene almost everyday.
Second thing I’ve learned is that there are quite a number of ad networks out there like Google Adsense. We’ve been told to sign up with many of them and place all their ads on the site to see which ones will pay us better. Hence, all the ads you see on every page now. Hopefully, within a month or two, we have some statistics on hand so that we will choose the ones that pay best and go from there.
Third thing I’ve learned is that none of the ad networks has been upfront on how they pay for the ad placements. All of them are vague on how they count the number of ads shown and if there are certain number of clicks on the ads have happened. From what I gather, this non-black and white approach seriously marginalized the publishers of content on the net. Only those with very high volume website traffic can have a more equal ground to communicate with these ad networks including Adsense.
What Is Real
The ad networks are guarding their formulas because they have to deal with something the old-time ad agencies do not need to – fraud. In old days, ad agencies can tell from the number of copies a publication has printed will be the number of ads placed there. Even though many copies may be going straight to the trash can, the number is still a piece of hard evidence. Fast forward to the internet age, there is no such thing as hard evidence. There is really no good way to tell if the ad was really shown to a human. A click may not be a real click at all. If the ad networks fail to identify the fake ones from the real ones, they suffer the consequence.
This is where the reputable high volume websites get their leverage as they are trusted by the ad networks while all the small time bloggers are treated as suspects regardless. There is no such thing as innocent until proven guilty. There is no balance of power between the ad networks and the individuals who want to make a living through blogging or whatever content they choose to create.
This is why we have not seen that many new super star bloggers like before. The feedback loop is now mostly broken. Majority of new bloggers who are not ad placement savvy will not be able to make enough money to drive them to push harder into the next level. The pay rate is so low comparing to several years ago that someone has to have 5 to 10 times the traffic to generate similar amount of money from ad placement on their blog or website.
In short, another money making frontier normalized into regular business eco system again.
