Just a quick "drop in" to give you a few things to mull
over.
First of all, we tend to lump contextual advertising in
with search marketing and that's really not the case.
Yes, the contextual ads are served up by a search
engine, but they appear on pages which are being
"browsed".
So the casual surfer who comes across a contextual ad
may not have the same intent as that of someone using a
search engine for a purchasing mission.
This means the return on investment is likely to be
marginally lower than that which would conceivably be
returned from an AdWords campaign, for instance.
In order to be able to write about AdSense myself, I
felt compelled to set up an account and test it on one
of my own sites. And just as you mentioned, after
pasting in the code and uploading the page, sure enough
a list of my competitors turned up at the top of the
page.
Another interesting thing occurred too. I tested each of
the links to make sure they were working, as I'm
presuming all publishers would do. Then, following my
little experiment, I downloaded the page and replaced it
with the original (without my competitors ads). Here
comes the interesting bit: Four weeks later I received a
cheque from Google in New York, for $1.94 !!
Now I'm sure it cost more to mail the cheque to me than
the value of the cheque itself. And some poor competitor
of mine was party to that little waste. After all, I was
simply experimenting, testing and then deleting. But it
made me wonder just how many thousands of cheques there
are floating around for a buck and half, most of which
(certainly in the UK) can't be cashed/deposited without
a fee greater than the amount of the cheque itself.
So, that's purely an observational thing with a little
ironic humour attached to it.
On a more serious level, and strictly from a marketing
point of view, AdSense and other contextual
programmes(although potentially very exciting) are still
technically challenged and slightly flawed as a
promotional tool.
In classical marketing, a persuasion matrix is created
to define source, message and channel factors. And also
to provide some control over variables such as message
presentation, attention, comprehension as well as having
an understanding about behaviour. Almost all of these
factors and variables become victim to external forces
over which the marketer has little or no control.
Apart from the initial problem of conflicting objectives
between the advertiser and the publisher, even the basic
presentation of where your ad will appear on a page is
out of your control. And even though your ad may be in
context with the subject matter of the page, if your
creative execution is out of context i.e. a humorous
appeal Vs page body copy of a very serious or emotional
nature, then once again you have conflicting approaches
And in just the same way as certain exclusive items are
selectively promoted and distributed in conventional
marketing, the contextual advertiser has little or no
control over where his ad is appearing. In short: You
may not want your exclusive products promoted on
somebody's home made and very crappy web pages.
These are just a few observations and hopefully some
food for thought when you have your Google meeting. But
please don't think for one second that I'm writing off
contextual advertising. It most certainly has it's place
in the new promotional mix. It just needs to mature a
little for the marketers mind - before it truly is in
marketing context ;)
Google Adsense - how well does it work?, Ashley , 17 Mar 12:04 Next week I'm chairing a press briefing for Google which is about their contextual advertising solution - AdSense. Details on this are at https://www.google.co.uk/adsense/faq - ess ...
Google Adsense - how well does it work?, Mike Grehan , 17 Mar 13:26 Ashley,
Just a quick "drop in" to give you a few things to mull
over.
First of all, we tend to lump contextual advertising in
with search marketing and that's really not th ...
Google Adsense - how well does it work?, trohan, 18 Mar 09:45 Great article on marketing relevancy. Quick question, what do you mean by "Then, following my
little experiment, I downloaded the page and replaced it
with the original (witho ...
Google Adsense - how well does it work?, Mike Grehan , 18 Mar 11:27 On 09:45:10 18 March 2004 trohan wrote:
>Great article on marketing relevancy. Quick question,
>what do you mean by "Then, following my
>little experiment, I downloaded the p ...
Google Adsense - how well does it work?, TallTroll, 18 Mar 12:20 Ashley,
I'll have a pop at some of these.
># What are the brand considerations in taking these Google
>text ads onto your site?
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the impac ...
Google Adsense - how well does it work?, Dave Chaffey, 20 Mar 05:09 Ashley - I recall this great test of AdSense relative to Adwords -
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum89/1125.htm
It shows that it can work well - AdSense gave greatly incre ...
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Google Adsense - how well does it work?, Ashley 
