Contextual text link advertising

From: Kevin Plunkett <kevinplunkett_at_salary.com>
Date: Fri 05 Dec 2003 09:15:18 -0600

I am sure this subject has been brought up before with this list, so my
apologies for bringing it up again. A number of you have mentioned that you
use Google Adsense on your site. I find the whole concept intriguing, but
had some reservation about it. Apparently there are two programs available.
The self-service program and the premium program. The Premium program
requires a guarantee of a certain amount of page views, 5,000,000 per a
month I believe. With that commitment you get a customer service rep that
you can work with to optimize your site, plus you will get paid a guaranteed
CPM. Adsense, the self-service version, has no traffic guarantee from the
publisher, but you have no idea what your revenue share will be for the ads
you run on your site. Another problem I had was that you could not control
content that gets served, other than blocking a few of your competitors
URL's.

I have a Compensation site. The Adsense tool is most likely to
show mostly compensation related information on all pages. Another issue
with Adsense is that you don't know what your revenue share will be until
you run it on your site. They don't disclose the revenue share that you
would be getting for running the ads. My problem is this. The audience
that comes to my site segments themselves by industry and geography that
they work in. I would like to serve relevant text links to that
information. But with no control over what shows up and no idea of what the
revenue potential might be, I have a hard time committing to the idea. Can
anyone give me some color on their experience with Adsense as far as revenue
and or, content issues? Also are their other service out there that might
allow me more control over the ads and a better idea of the revenue
potential?

Kevin K. Plunkett
Salary.com
Phone: 781-726-7600 ext. 7845
Fax: 781-726-7880
kevinplunkett_at_salary.com
15 Crawford St, 2nd Floor
Needham, MA 02494-2618

Salary.com is the world's technology leader in compensation management.





Received on Fri Dec 05 2003 - 09:15:18 CST