The Four-eyed Journal » Google-AdSense

The end for Google AdSense Referrals

jhay — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:10:24 +0000

Just received an email from the Google AdSense team announcing that they’re “retiring the Google AdSense Referrals program” by the end of August 2008.

We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August.

They’ve also advised users to switch to either the Google Affiliate Network (part of DoubleClick which they acquired in April 2007) or the regular AdSense for content ads. They’ve also recommended to remove the referral codes and start saving referral reports for future references.

Perhaps this is a ‘natural death’ since it’s so easy to sign-up for Google AdWords and AdSense for years now. Or it’s part of Google’s grand plan to roll out its new services based off on DoubleClick’s own, which they acquired last year.

I’ve never had much success with AdSense referrals because I never really fancied using the service plus the design of their referral ads are not that much appealing or easy to integrate into the WP themes I’ve used over the years. Oh well, I know the services has done good to other bloggers.

Read the full announcement over at the Google AdSense blog.

Google Apps Referrals – Another prank?

jhay — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 23:20:48 +0000

Last night I saw something a bit exciting in my inbox. It was an update from the Google AdSense Team announcing that AdSense publishers can now earn more by referring users to sign-up for Google Apps, those nifty free web services like Gmail for your own domain, Docs and Spreadsheet, Calendar etc. via the Google Apps Referrals:

Following our recent series of referrals announcements, we’re happy to announce that you can now earn $5 per referral for Google Apps.

With Google Apps, we’ve taken Google’s most powerful communication and collaboration tools, and packaged them together so businesses, schools and other organizations can work more effectively while spending less time and money on IT systems. Google Apps provides customized email addresses (powered by Gmail), Google Calendar, Google Talk, Docs & Spreadsheets and Page Creator, all for free. Best of all, everything is hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software to download, install or maintain.

So how do these referrals work? Just visit the AdSense Setup tab in your AdSense account and click the link for Referrals. Select the Google Apps option and then choose how you want the referral ad to look on your site. (The Google Apps referral ads are available in English right now, but we’ll be adding more languages soon.) Copy the code provided into the design of your web pages, and voila!

You will be credited $5 when someone clicks the referral ad from your site and signs up for Google Apps with a domain that has not already been signed up for the service. That person’s domain must then have one or more Google Apps email accounts in use for four consecutive weeks. It’s that simple.

I’ve come to love Google Apps and have used it quite extensively over the past year so spreading its joy and benefits while earning a few bucks here and there would be great. So I signed-in to my AdSense account and prepared to set-up those Google Apps referral links.

To my surprise the link or option for the Google Apps referrals is nowhere to be found. I tinkered around my AdSense account thinking that I might have clicked on the wrong link but it was all in vain. The link for those referrals simply weren’t there.

Is it just my account or is this another prank by Google? Anyone else who has tried these new referrals? April Fool’s day is over but I guess Google has had another one up their sleeve.

Kontera In-text Ads can’t be run with AdSense (Updated)

jhay — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:50:50 +0000

I’ve been running the fancy In-text ads by Kontera since last month and I must say that the ads can be quite effective since they are right inside the content/posts on my blog, the prime hot spot for ads. The ads that pop-out like clouds from the double-underlined words bring in really relevant and targeted ads to the readers.

Right now I’m quite pleased with the results I’m getting with In-text Ads despite the low (as of the moment) traffics on this site, however, in the back of my mind I was quite concerned whether it was completely okay to run the In-text Ads by Kontera along side with Google’s AdSense. The facts that Pinoy problogger Abe Olandres of Yugatech.com has just recently implemented In-text ads in his blog and his comment that it’s okay to run it alongside AdSense gave me some assurance.

But just to make sure of things, I decided to e-mail the AdSense team two days ago and asked if I could run Kontera’s In-text Ads alongside with Google AdSense. I recieved their response last night and it has confirmed the worst. The answer of the AdSense team to my concern was crystal clear:

According to our program policies, Kontera ads may not be displayed on the same page as Google ads on your site. However, you are welcome to display those ads on pages of your site that do not include Google ads.

So there you have it folks. Contrary to what I and Sir Abe believed, Kontera’s In-text ads cannot be run on the same page as Google’s AdSense. So now I have a little dilemma. I want to keep both AdSense and In-text ads running on my blog because I do earn something from both of them, but now I have to make a decision that I find a little difficult: ‘Which ad system to dump or relocate to other parts of my blog?’

In my mind played the following thoughts and scenarios that helped me arrive at a decision.

2.) Remove the In-text Ads, cancel my account with Kontera and stick to the AdSense + AdBrite combo, and the Linkshare affliates of course, to monetize this site and help along with my online expenses (such as paying for my lsjp.org site). It means that I have to keep on learning about ads and seo optimization to increase my earnings and this blog’s ratings.

3.) Relocate the In-text ads to the index page and remove the single link ad unit by AdSense located there. With this, I get to keep both ad systems but again, I’m having second thoughts that the pop-up nature of In-text ads may annoy visitors and readers away from my index page. Then again this concern is somehow overshadowed by the fact that most of my current traffic comes in via RSS and organic search results which by-passes the index page as they are taken directly to the individual posts in this blog. In this context, the potential of earning more from In-text ads would decrese because of the abovementioned phenomenon.

Like I often say, ‘decisions…decisions…decisions.’ Alas, I did arrived at a decision and I chose to go for the third option of relocating the In-text ads to the index page, I just have to take the risks and bear with the percieved consequences. Or, I’m thinking positive now, since the In-text ads are quite effective, they may even prove even more effective and efficient because it has the index page all to its self. On this note, I leave things as they are now; AdSense inside the blog posts while In-text out on the index page, cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Update

I recieved the Google AdSense Team’s reply to my second inquiry which contained the additional information given by Sir Abe (Yuga) regarding the sites that run Kontera In-text Ads and Google Ads on the same page and the supposed assurance from the Kontera Representatives that the two ads system could be run on the same page. Again, the message from the AdSense team is as clear as a bell. Here’s the portion of their e-mail that says it all:

Regardless of what representatives at
Kontera may tell publishers, AdSense program policies do not currently
permit publishers to display both AdSense ads and Kontera ads on the same
pages.

There you have it, no In-text Ads and Google Ads on the same page people. So clean up before you get banned from AdSense but you’re willing to take it and switch to Kontera for your monetization needs. Tough competition isn’t it?

Lastly, I recommend everyone who reads this article to also read Dave Starr’s comment below, it brilliantly summarises what needs to be said and done regarding this issue.