Why I took Down Adsense. End to Cannibalizing
Posted on January 30, 2008
Filed Under Pay Per Cluck
Up until a few days ago I had Google Adsense Ads up on this page. They were in prime real estate on the right sidebar right next to the post content. They were making me a fair amount of $$$ everyday so I could not complain, but I took them down. Why?
Well it started with a shock when I saw a Huge graphic ad for Microsoft adCenter Sign-up in the Adsense ad slot. Why was this a shock, because Microsoft was advertising on Google? Nah, that didn’t matter. Google don’t have to worry. I shocked because I currently have the exact same ad up in my banner section at the top of the page. So I was effectively showing 2 ads for the same thing. One that I would get paid a measly sum ($1-2 Max most likely less) for a clickthough via Adsense and the other my MS Ad center affiliate banner that I would get paid a Kings Ransom for every user that signs up. And since I am in the niche and sending targeted traffic, the conversion rate is pretty damn good.
This means that keeping up my AdSense I was effectively cannibalizing my own targeted affiliate traffic. So what did I do? I disabled graphic ads.
But this event caused me to pay a little more attention to the ads that were being displayed.
You know Adsense is Damn good. Maybe almost too good. After a few impressions, those Ads would generally get Spot on to the exact subject I was talking about on the page. Since on many of my posts I am promoting something or some sort of program, Adsense would pick up on the promotion and show Ads FOR THE SAME PROMOTION and encourage to the readers to drift away from my site, my affiliate links and my kings bounty for a measly 40 cents a click. Many times to a link that directs them to the exact same thing I was talking about but with somebodies else’s link.
Now I know that this is not good. Lets look at the numbers like this
XYZ company has a promotion that pays affiliates $10 per signup. On average %10 of targeted visitors convert. That effectively means you are getting about $1 per visitor that you send. John is an Adwords Guru with lots of calculators, spreadsheets and high credit card balance. He plays Adwords on only projects that can give him at least 1 1/2 times return.
So John knows that he can make $1 per visitor that he drives. so he places his Adwords bid at .70 cents. Lets be generous 
and say that Google only takes 20 cents of this and passes 50 cents along to the website owner. That means that I am getting 50 cents for that click, Google is getting 20 cents and then John Profits 30 cents after his conversion.
Well Damn. I have just lost 50 cents on that deal by having the user click out through Adsense rather than click through my ad directly. Furthermore, that visitor is lost from my site and I will not have the chance to engage them and promote other things in the future.
The moral of the story is that Adsense is great if you don’t have the time or knowledge to put up your own affiliate ads, but if you are in the business of promotion, and know your niche and what ads to push, then know that you are losing at least %50 of your potential profit to affiliate arbitrators who will use Adwords to drop in on your niche and steal the traffic away for a fraction of its worth.
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3 Responses to “Why I took Down Adsense. End to Cannibalizing”
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I never thought of that ! Thanks for the tip. AdSense, I find can work great on some websites, but on the more tech related ones it tends to have really low conversion.
paul
the tech visitors have been around too long and know not to click on the ads. I run a semiconductor site for professional engineers and its interesting to watch the stats, when we had adsense up, the overseas, particularly asian visitors would gooble up the adsense - but the US visitors would just ignore.
What the big G needs to do is offer a keyword exclusion/inclusion option for adsense users. When customizing your adsense code, you should be able to add words you don’t want them to ’sense’ for and words that you do. Then through some magic G-wisdom, they could potentially rank what they sense on your site against your exclusion/inclusion list. For example, if I had a site that promoted ebay listings for Porsche cars, I would very much like ads for car insurance or warranty or porsche accessories. I don’t want to see an ad for a Porsche car dealer’s ad. I wouldn’t want it and neither would the advertiser.
my 2 cents.