Now that mobile technology is progressing well, and more an more websites are producing mobile versions, and that Google offer mobile targeted Adsense / Adwords advertising, now is the time to start thinking about the best way to win the Adsense in Your Pocket market, and get advertising on your sites showing up on mobile browsers all over the world.

So, how? What is the secret? How is it done? It is straightforward now to set up a website with a mobile version. And Google kindly provide the adverts for your mobile site though their Adsense program. But how to make it work?

Studies have suggested that Adsense for mobile pays badly and that click through rates are low, and cost per click also low. Currently the average Adwords customer is not targeting mobiles, and until this picks up, mobile content will continue to perform badly.

Is Adsense the best option for mobile websites? Or should content sites look for alternative methods of generating revenue?

Have you had success with Adsense for mobile? If so, what worked?

Some exciting news for web publishers that use the Google Adsense advertising network on their sites, as Google have announced some changes that are coming along soon. Currently Adsense publishers can only display the adverts that Adwords customers set up. With the new system, Adsense will start displaying adverts from other Networks that run in partnership with Google.

The external networks that will display on Adsense units are all Google-certified networks, meaning that they all met both the quality and privacy standards of Google. This extra advertising networks will compete directly with Adwords customers, which should mean rising revenues for publishers. Google will ensure that the advert that generates the highest income for the web publishers will be displayed. This could result in bidding wars for space on the most popular websites, leading to a substantial increase in revenues.

Publishers will have complete control over which Advertising Networks are shown on their websites, choosing to opt out of specific networks, or all networks, although why anyone would do this is not clear.

The new system will be rolled out in the next few months, and automatically enabled in current Adsense accounts. Exciting times for web publishers in these hard economic times. Google do point out that publishers are unlikely to see any immediate increase in earning due to the slow roll out.

Google has decided to cancel its plans to enter an advertising partnership with Yahoo. Google stated the reason being to avoid having a “protracted legal battle” with regulators. The partnership was going to see Google providing some of the advertising around Yahoo’s search results. This would have been an interesting area for both Google and Yahoo to enter, as they are essentially competitors. Google is way ahead in the contextual adversing game though.

It is a major setback for Yahoo, which is trying and failing to please shareholders after it rejected a takeover offer from Microsoft which valued Yahoo at $33 a share, or $47.5bn (£29.4bn) in total. Yahoo shares were
trading at $14 each on Wednesday, and shareholders are less than happy.

Google said it would not allow the prospect of a legal battle to distract it from its core mission. “That would be like trying to drive down the road of innovation with the parking brake on,” Google said in a blog.

“After four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement,” Drummond wrote. “Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn’t have been in the long term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement.” Associated Press

The concept didn’t pan out because Google and Yahoo combined control more than 80 percent of the U.S. search advertising market. Microsoft and the Association of National Advertisers, among others, argued the arrangement would enable Google to gradually increase advertising prices and exert more control over the flow of e-commerce.

Google is planning to make less acquisitions and reduce hiring, to help to withstand the global economic downturn. Yesterday Google’s Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt announced that the recession means more advertising budgets are being reviewed and often pulled, and Google is having to be sensible with its expansion plans.

Google’s profit growth has slowed as some advertisers, including home and auto lenders, have reduced advertising budgets. However, shrinking ad budgets have damaged newspapers the most, Schmidt said.

“All of us are vulnerable, – tt’s a race between a contraction in advertising, which would affect everybody, and a very positive shift from offline to online.” This would be good news for both Google and all of its Adsense publishers – key word bidding will increase, Adsense income will increase, and Google profits wil increase. However, established eCommerce sites that strongly rely on Adwords may find that they become priced out of some of the more popular keywords in their niche as more larger players start to bid for the number one spot.

Google is used for approximately 66% of all U.S. Internet searches, and up to 80% of UK searches, has spent more than $3.38 billion in the last year on new projects such as the purchase of DoubleClick Inc. which has helped to increase its lead over Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Google’s growing dominance lead to Microsoft making an unsolicited offer for Yahoo in January, a bid that fell though in May. Yahoo may be reconsidering this deal now. Overall the global credit crunch may cost the online-ad business $6.7 billion in lost sales through to 2010, according to Collins Stewart Plc.

Bloomberg has reported that while advertisers are cutting back on TV and print media spending, they are actually moving to adverts that run alongside search listings and on affiliate websites, namely Google’s Adwords program. The Internet will account for 8.7% of the $284 billion in U.S. ad spending this year, up from 7.2 percent in 2007, according to Barclays Capital.

Excluding revenue passed on to partner sites, Google’s sales expanded to $4.04 billion last quarter. Total revenue climbed 31 percent to $5.54 billion.

At least eight analysts had reduced their estimates for Google’s third quarter this month after the global credit crisis erupted. That made it easier for the company to beat the average profit estimates yesterday.

Latest news from Bloomberg – Google’s stock price jumped as much as 10% in German trading after reporting profit that topped analysts’ estimates, saying customers are still buying Web ads even as the economy slows.

While advertisers of home and auto loans cut back, makers of apparel and appliances kept spending, Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette said. Consumers continue to shop online, he said, with clicks on ads climbing 18 percent, near the previous quarter’s 19 percent growth.

The results, combined with better than anticipated reports from International Business Machines Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., cheered investors after a decline in technology shares this month. Google showed resilience in a weakening economy, said Mark May, an analyst at Needham & Co. in New York.

Bookmakers and online casinos can now advertise on Google, in the UK.

Yesterday Google received royal approval when the Queen, but was condemned as “irresponsible” by MPs and church leaders for lifting its four-year ban and allowing gambling companies to buy “sponsored links” on its site in Britain.

Google introduced a global ban on gambling adverts on its site in 2004, but decided to end it for British customers after rules on television advertising for bookmakers, casinos and gambling websites were relaxed.

Google insisted that all advertisers using the service would have to be regulated in Britain or Europe and would have to have internet links to organisations helping problem gamblers. But critics condemned the move, saying the adverts could attract people hit by the global economic downturn.

Google insisted that its UK-based advertisers would have to be registered with the British Gambling Commission before advertising, while European operators would also have to be licensed in their home country. All would have to have links to the GamCare website. This news has given rise to some new Casino portals / directories in the UK, such as Casino Marker – UK’s Street Casino Directory.

James Cashmore of Google said: “We’ve decided to amend our policy to allow text ads to appear against search queries related to gambling in Great Britain. We hope this will enhance the search experience for users and help advertisers connect with interested consumers. Gambling ads will automatically be classified as Non-Family Safe which means they will not show on any search where the user has applied the Safe Search filter.”

Full story on The Independent

The credit crunch is finally affecting Google and Yahoo. Companies are starting to cut back on advertising, and this is causing a worrying reduction in revenue for both Google and Yahoo, but Google especially. Almost all of Google’s profits are generated through advertising placed on search results and also on publisher websites. As companies cut back on advertising budgets, the bid price of key words reduces, which quickly reduces revenues from advertising.

Google’s advertising mechanism is different to other traditional forms of advertising, in the sellers bid on the “keywords” that they wish to associate their adverts with. Therefore, in very competitive areas, people are will to place high bids on keywords, to ensure that their advert is shown at the top of the search results, and also more prominently on other website that generate their revenue using Google’s Adsense program. With the global economic downturn, sellers are cutting back on spending, resulting in publishers and Google alike seeing falling profits.

It is estimated that the credit crisis will cost the online-advertising industry $6.7 billion in lost sale over the next 2 years (Collins Stewart Plc). Customers of all sizes are scaling back ad spending, while some financial companies that have used Google and Yahoo advertising, such as Wachovia Corp. are no longer market players. These reductions will reduce growth in U.S. Internet advertising to less than 20% next year, the lowest growth since 2002. This is going to hit revenues hard at Google and also throw a spanner in the works of Yahoo’s attempts to regain some of the market share. Google and Yahoo! stocks have already lost about 50% their value this year.

Advertisers will spend $43.6 billion this year worldwide on online spots – the text links that run next to search results and the display banner and video promotions on Web pages – down from a previous estimate of $44.4 billion, he said. The credit crunch and falling consumer confidence would convince advertisers to hold back.

Some analysts are still relatively optimistic. Geoff Ramsey, chief executive officer for research
firm EMarketer Inc. in New York thinks that online advertising will remain a growth industry, especially for search-linked ads. Customers find they can measure the effectiveness of such ads more precisely than with television or newspapers. For example, sales teams that use Adwords can analyse performance every day, and adjust advertising spending and key word bidding depending on current market conditions. Television and newspaper adverts are already facing declines, according to Barclays Capital. The firm lowered its forecast for broadcast TV networks to a 2.5% decrease in sales this year and dropped its outlook for newspapers to a 16.5% decline in 2008.

“There is not one category that I can think of that won’t be in some way impacted by this, and that’s just the pain we’re going to have to go through” Geoff Ramsey, EMarketer Inc.

Google, which is the most popular Internet search engine by far, may say today that third-quarter net income climbed 23 percent to $1.32 billion, or $4.12 a share, according to a Bloomberg survey of 24 analysts. That’s down from 35 percent growth in the previous quarter.

Google’s share price is down 51% in 2008, falling from $23.54 to $339.17 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. Yahoo, which rejected an acquisition offer from Microsoft Corp. this year for as much as $33 a share, dropped 90 cents to just $11.75 and is down 49% overall.

In July, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said sales growth had “held up well despite uncertain economic conditions”, and Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen also predicted that there would be no significant change in growth. But since then, Wachovia and Washington Mutual Inc., two large online-ad buyers, have both dissolved, leaving a gaping hole in advertising revenues for Google and Yahoo.

In additional to loss of revenie from the banking sector, General Motors is reviewing its ad spending as car buyers are struggling to get loans.

“I don’t think that we’ll see another category that’s going to increase enough over the year to replace those budget cuts from the automotive and financial sectors,” said Jeff Lanctot, strategy chief at Seattle ad firm Avenue A/Razorfish, owned by Microsoft. “You have whole companies taken out of the mix and everyone’s cutting.”

At Reston, Virginia-based Simplexity, which handles online mobile-phone sales for companies such as RadioShack Corp., CEO Andy Zeinfeld cut ad spending more than 10 percent in recent months. He is now focusing on Web-search ads for specific deals, such as a new phone, instead of ads simply promoting the Web site. The ads he is buying are often cheaper, he said.

“This isn’t the time to be out bragging; this isn’t the time to be out building new brands,” Zeinfeld said. “This is a time to be hunkered down and making sure every decision you’re making is both with the customer in mind and with profitability in mind.”

Source: Bloomberg

Adwords is a great way to help drive traffic to a new website before your pagerank within the search engines improves enough to increase organic search referrals. AdWords is Google’s flagship advertising product, and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google’s text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.

Pay-Per-Click advertisements (PPC)

Advertisers specify the words that should trigger their ads and the maximum amount they are willing to pay per click. When a user searches Google’s search engine on www.google.com, ads for relevant words are shown as “sponsored link” on the right side of the screen, and sometimes above the main search results. The ordering of the paid listings depends on other advertisers’ bids (thus the system is classified as P4P) and the historical click-through rates of all ads shown for a given search. The auction mechanism that determines the order of the ads has been called a “generalized second price” auction. It is a variation of the Vickrey auction.

Site targeted advertisements

In 2005 Google introduced site-targeted advertising. Using the AdWords control panel, advertisers can enter keywords of interest, and Google will recommend relevant sites within their content network. Advertisers then bid on a cost per mille (CPM) basis for placement.

AdWords distribution

All AdWords ads are eligible to be shown on www.google.com. Advertisers also have the option of enabling their ads to show on Google’s partner networks. The “search network” includes AOL search, Ask.com, and Netscape. Like www.google.com, these search engines show AdWords ads in response to user searches.

The “content network” shows AdWords ads on sites that are not search engines. Google automatically determines the subject of the pages and displays ads for which the advertiser has specified an interest in that subject. The ads show in boxes resembling banner ads, with the designation “Ads By Gooooooooooogle.” These content network sites are those that use AdSense, the other side of the Google advertising model.

AdWords is used by publishers who wish to bring traffic to their websites. The biggest competitors are Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) and Microsoft adCenter.

Click-to-Call

Google Click-to-Call[1] is a service provided by Google which allows users to call advertising from Google search results pages.

All calls are free at Google’s expense. However, if the call is made to a mobile phone, the caller may incur airtime fees depending on the mobile phone plan and the location of the caller and the advertiser (if they are in different countries at the time of the call, the call will probably cost more).

History

The AdWords product was launched in 2000.[1] At first advertisers would pay a monthly amount, and Google would set up and manage their campaign. To accommodate small businesses and those who wanted to manage their own campaigns, Google soon introduced the AdWords self-service portal. As of 2005, Google provides a campaign management service called Jumpstart [2] to assist advertisers in setting up their campaigns.

In 2005, Google launched a program to certify individuals and companies who have completed AdWords training and passed an exam. Due to the complexity of AdWords and the amount of money at stake, many advertisers choose to hire a consultant to manage their campaigns.

Legal context

AdWords has generated lawsuits in the area of trademark law and click fraud. Google recently settled a click fraud lawsuit for US$90 million. [3]

Ad blocking and Adwords
Search

The ads are displayed on the top or right hand side of the natural search results. The ads are pure text, and thus difficult to block for normal ad-blocking software. However, the Mozilla Firefox extension CustomizeGoogle can remove them.
Content network

Advertisements on content websites are displayed via javascript-generated iframes and can be easily blocked, either by turning off javascript or using ad-blocking software such as adblock.
Proxies

The search proxy Scroogle allows users to perform Google searches without receiving Google advertisements.

Technology

The AdWords system was initially implemented on top of the MySQL database engine. After the system had been launched, management decided to use a commercial database (Oracle) instead. As is typical of applications simultaneously written and tuned for one database, and ported to another, the system became much slower, so eventually it was returned to MySQL ([2])

Competitors
Yahoo! Search Marketing
Microsoft Adcenter

References
^ Google Milestones
^ What is Jumpstart?
^ Associated Press. “Google settles advertising suit for $90 million”, MSNBC, 2006-03-08.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Adwords“.