Computer Research

Clickable Areas in AdWords vs AdSense

Google once changed the top AdWords in their search results so that only clicking on the title of an ad – the link itself – you’d be taken to the advertiser’s site. Google said they did this (along with a change in ad colors from light blue to light yellow) to “help decrease the likelihood that a user will unintentionally click on an ad.” However, AdSense ads displayed on other sites are still clickable anywhere, including the blank areas, as shown in above screenshot of Digg.com. Doesn’t that mean (by Google’s logic) people are more likely to unintentionally click on an ad... which are the kind of clicks which take away from the advertiser’s budget mostly without benefit?

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Google Criticizes Moore’s Sicko

It’s unusual for a Google department to do peppered movie reviews. In Google’s health advertising blog – which is, well, trying to sell Google ads to the health industry – they talk about Michael Moore’s movie Sicko:

<<While legislators, litigators, and patient groups are growing excited, others among us are growing anxious. And why wouldn’t they? Moore attacks health insurers, health providers, and pharmaceutical companies by connecting them to isolated and emotional stories of the system at its worst. Moore’s film portrays the industry as money and marketing driven, and fails to show healthcare’s interest in patient well-being and care.>>

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but all I can say is bad, bad Michael Moore! Now go invest in Google ads to, as Google puts it, “manage” your “reputation.” One of several areas Google determined to get particularly little focus in the often “sensationalist” media coverage are the health industry’s “philanthropy efforts,” so I guess if you’re involved in that it makes sense to shift some of your philanthropy budget over to Google. As Google’s Lauren Turner goes on to say ...

<<We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message.>>

Update: The discussion continues now that Google’s Lauren Turner posted a follow-up (after the story went on to Boing Boing, TechCrunch, ZDnet, Slashdot and many other places).

Update 2: I’ve posted another update in the discussion.

Update 3: Google reacts with a new reply.

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Public Launch of Google AdSense Referrals

Google has started to roll out their AdSense referral program (the one with non-Google products) to even more publishers, Search Engine Land reports. To see this, check your AdSense Setup -> Referrals page, set your market and language (like “Germany, English”), and pick some product categories (like “Entertainment” and “Telecommunications”) or specific products. You’ll end up with a code snippet for your website as usual. (Note that you’re only supposed to add three AdSense referral ads to your pages, additional to three pay-per-click AdSense ads.)

The crucial difference between referral ads and “normal” AdSense is that you won’t get paid per click, but only if the visitor who clicked the ad buys something from that site, too (or performs another action, like a newsletter subscription). For every ad, you can check the detail view to see what action needs to be performed and what revenue it will bring to you. Referral ads mostly look like normal ads, but they read “Referral Ads by Google.” And there’s one other layout option which normal AdSense don’t have: the link-only ad type, because this link will automatically adjust to your page’s font settings, and not break the text flow (and it will also not carry any Google-branding, or disclosure).

I’ve included a referral AdSense on one of my other sites. Note that the part reading “Ad:” is my own HTML, and only the “Comics T-shirts” part is served by Google (I surrounded it with a “strong” tag to display bold). Because I added only this single referral ad to my AdSense cart to generate the JavaScript snippet, there’s no rotation of any kind – this link will always display the same. As these JS-served links don’t pass on Google-juice, they’re (obviously) also not against the Google webmaster guidelines.

Now I’m not quite sure how you are allowed to promote referral AdSense. As you may know, the AdSense terms don’t allow you to tell people to click on pay-per-click ads. For referral ads, Google says you can endorse them (like “I use this product and suggest it to you too”), though you’re still not supposed to use language like “visit these links to support our site.” I wonder where they draw the line between the two. (I’m also not quite sure if you’re now allowed to click on your own referral ads – after all, the advertiser wouldn’t get billed for that anyway.)

With Google’s new selection interface, it’s weird that you have to pick a specific market; the help file says you need to “choose the combination that best reflects the profile of your users,” but what if my visitors come from all over the world instead of mainly from one country? Why can’t I select no market, as an option, and rely on Google handling the geolocation aspect (as they can check the user IP for every request)?

Other problems I currently encountered with the service is that navigating categories feels sluggish, and products don’t always seem to fit the category they’re placed in (“diet pill” in “telecommunications"?). Also, there just aren’t too many advertisers to choose from at this moment (and some advertisers which were displayed resulted in the message “The product you have chosen is no longer available”), though this is probably to be expected as the service is still young.

All in all however the new service has potential to be a neat new way for webmasters to make money from their sites. (I find it much easier to use then some of the competing affiliate systems, too, especially Commission Junction.) I’d say manually picking referrals could work particularly well for those sites of yours which cover a specific restricted topic, and where you believe you know the type of audience well. The text link type is also a good alternative to the usual AdSense ad boxes, and may lend itself especially well to fine-tuning of the ad placement. Now time will tell if these ads pay well, too... I’ve replaced normal AdSense with referral AdSense on some of my sites and can now start to track the difference it makes.

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

OMG an iPhone!

You might have seen this older video of a kid freaking out over his new Nintendo 64... now check out the iPhone parody!
[Via Boing Boing.]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

The Push vs Pull Gradient

Some notes on that picture:

You can place many more items on this gradient. Like a web portal to the left/ middle, and a search engine to the right. Some items change depending on the context (e.g. there are pushy people who will move the face-to-face conversation toward the left side of the gradient; think of the salesman guy in Groundhog Day).

Several factors influence your input’s location on the push/ pull gradient: does the channel deliver information to you by surprise (or did you decide to consume it beforehand)? Does the channel demand that you handle with it at this moment (or does it allow you to save it for later)? Is the channel flexible to interrupts? What priority does the channel have in relation to other channels? Does the channel react or merely act?

In our lives, we all make different decisions regarding which channels to open up, and how to prioritize them. For instance, it’s unlikely that someone replies to your email by saying, “Hang on for a minute, there’s a phone call coming in.” Because almost instinctively, many of us will give a phone call higher priority, and as opposed to an email, the call – if we decide to answer it – also demands our real-time attention. In other contexts the prioritization is less clear; some people will not interrupt a face-to-face conversation for a cell phone call, while others might (do you turn off your phone in a restaurant? Do you turn off your door-bell when you’re eating at home? Do you ignore someone in your room who approaches you from the side, to talk to you, when you’re chatting on instant messenger that second?).

Often technology helps us to organize the priorization, or to move a medium along the push/ pull axis... for instance, a tape recorder pushed the radio from push towards pull some decades ago (e.g. a tape you’re playing can handle interrupts – unlike radio, you can pause the tape during an incoming phone call). In the other direction, a website can turn into a blog to move a bit more towards push, and it can move further towards push when people use a feed reader to digest it.

And perhaps a future tool (aiding our brains) presents us with a meta input channel, turning all sub-channels into a single new channel, allowing us to better prioritize the input. The interface could consist of a default meta tab as well as optional channel specific sub-tabs (color-coded, e.g. “cyan = email”), and we can assign a prioritization factor to every contact + channel (say, people you never talked to will have a higher prioritization factor; also, an incoming telephone call will be prioritized higher than an incoming IM chat request). A tool like this would decrease “accidental channel hopping” (“excuse me, there’s a phone call coming in”... or, “I opened my email to do X, but ended up doing Y because I saw a surprising email that triggered another task”). In this meta channel, which summarizes our numerous calls, radio shows we want to listen to, podcasts, blog posts, phone calls, to-do items, door bells ringing, TV shows we want to see, movies we want to see, events we want to attend, job tasks, emails, chat requests, social network friend approval requests etc., all input could be ordered into a giant single list (with the color-assigned items, e.g. cyan) you can then work through from top-to-bottom.

(It wouldn’t be a tool for everyone. Input channels which deliver surprises can be addicting. Some of us open their email inbox every few minutes, and are happy for every new SMS; it tickles the brain, and can aid to structure our day through small breaks from our main tasks, just like a cigarette break can. We can also hop the channels whenever we’re temporarily stuck on one channel. And some people get all their work done in seemingly chaotic, merely associative fashion, but with the same end result: after a time, the work has been done, and all input channels have been taken care of.)

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]