April 2, 2004
jarvis fisks google adsense
Good article by Jeff Jarvis on how bad Google’s Adsense is and how good Blogads is.
AdSense is not a path to success for online publishers — whether big guys or bloggers — because the program isn’t terribly effective and because they are hostage to Google, as this move proves.
But I do believe that contexual ads are quite effective. The problem with AdSense is that the ad placement is barely contextual; it’s coincidental: If a word like “host” happens to appear on a page, then Google plops a web hosting ad there. That’s about as low on the ad value chain as you can get.
Look at Fred Wilson’s blog. Fred is an influential venture capitalist who sometimes mentions RSS so AdSense slaps RSS ads on his page and he gets a few, very few bucks (which, by the way, he donates to charity). What a waste. If Fred used Henry Copeland’s BlogAds, people could use his site to reach an amazing audience of VCs, entrepreneurs, and corporate executives. If I were, say, a venture lawyer, I’d pay big bucks through BlogAds to reach that audience.
Google’s drawbacks are many. They have a virtual monopoly on blogvertising, even though they don’t tell the bloggers what percentage of the money generated they get. Their method of placing ads based on context and content is crude and ineffective. Their ad designs are ugly and inhuman. I could go on.
The good news for Blogads is, once more people find out exactly how limited Google is, they’ll rush over to Blogads in droves.
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