We talked about the launch of a new Google AdSense format, AdSense Ad Links, earlier in the week. In case you haven’t caught all the press, this snippet from MediaPost is a good quick summary: The major upgrade, called “Ad Link,” involves first serving visitors links to product and services categories in a box titled [...]
We talked about the launch of a new Google AdSense format, AdSense Ad Links, earlier in the week.
In case you haven’t caught all the press, this snippet from MediaPost is a good quick summary:
The major upgrade, called “Ad Link,” involves first serving visitors links to product and services categories in a box titled “Ad Links by Google,” rather than actual ads. If visitors click on one of the links within the box, they are directed to a new page containing a longer list of links with extensive blurbs, based on the category the user clicked.
Read the full story by Shankar Gupta here.
This “upgrade” doesn’t make a lick of sense to us. Seems like Google’s looking at serving AdSense advertisements of their own that feel out a surfer’s interests, and based on their selected category click-through, lead them to a greater assortment of advertisements.
While it increases the chance of ads catering to a consumer’s interests, it also creates more clutter in the ad-product and appears to undermine the inherent trust in AdSense’s ability to index contents and match appropriate ads.
More importantly, Google’s always maintained a policy of unobtrusive advertising across their various products. Advertising was supposed to come second-hand to the product functionality, and that’s what’s made the company credible in light of absurd newfound wealth and extremely aggressive expansion. This new move seems geared to increase ad inventory without creating any value whatsoever for the consumer other than pushing a more diversified base of advertisements.
Clearly there’s some angle to this story that we’re missing? Maybe this is only for the network inventory that otherwise doesn’t match up to any ads?
Randy Schwartz is Director of Strategic Development at Reprise Media.
Based on my early experience (although admittedly I haven’t actually looked at the results of the Adlinks format with tracking software), I’d have to disagree. First of all, a 120×90 Adlinks block with 4-5 links is the smallest amount of physical ad space Google has ever offered…so I don’t see that as squaring with the accusation that it "creates more clutter". >> appears to undermine the inherent trust >> in AdSense’s ability to index contents >> and match appropriate ads.Do the ads always match well? No. But it’s certainly true that there are WAY more relevant ads on many topics than could be displayed even utilizing the absolute max of 15 ad spaces allowed on a page. If someone is interested in a topic and wants to see a page of ads spelled out on a topic, that seems to me like a service to them, not a bad thing.Also, presenting more ads on any given topic doesn’t happen if the link isn’t clicked. Clicking indicates interest in the topic. Seems likely that they would someone want to know more. And I have to believe that being presented with a page full of ads (and nothing else) significantly increases the likelihood of having one of them clicked on.This is all very new and no one knows how it will all shake out…but I personally don’t see a downside to the new format so far.c-
Tell me first.What is the meaning of adlinks?How we need to implement that .
Thanks