Step I

Step II:  They continue to pony for top spot and allow publisher after publisher to join their network, with very little emphasis on quality.

Step III: Too many publishers competing for selling their ad space dilutes the market within that ad network.

Step IV:  Advertisers have so many options to choose from they end up basing a lot of their decisions based on price and buy the lowest CPM’s.

Step V: Therefore… YOUR CPM’s totally SUCK!

• my free advice to ad networks:

A) Limit the publishers and choose based on quality instead of just traffic.

B)  Sell out your existing inventory 100%

~Chad

- Does my blog have a niche focus? A focus is very important. Take a look at your current blog and the tags or categories you are blogging about. If you are all over the map, you don’t have a clear enough focus.

- What type of companies would want to advertise in this space? This is a question that you need to be really honest with yourself and think, why would any company want to advertise on this blog? If you are blogging about ‘making money in your spare time as a prostitute’ or ‘Angry work commute’ you need to think, “Who would really want to advertise there?”

Are there other blogs in this space with current paid advertisers? Check out your competitors? Do they have paid placements? If so, then you too can get them to advertise on your site.

- Do I blog about any products or services? If your blog focuses on products and services, then your readers are more likely to make purchase decisions than reading news stories which is much more attractive for potential advertisers.

- Do I have any real traffic? If you want to start selling ads on your site you should have around 250,000 page views a month. Minimum range would be about 100,000 page views a month, anything less than that it will be pretty hard to deliver results to an advertiser.

- Do I have an audience? Personally I think should have about 5000 feed readers before you really consider that you have an audience worth someone paying to get in front of. 1000 with a super niche might be possible, but still a stretch.

~Chad

My favourites include:

- A Crime blog with a keyword targeted ad on “how to be a true GUN Pro”

- Philippine travel blog with ads for landing Filipino wives

- A blog about the perils of having cancer with a Bikini girl screen saver ad

The truly most tasteless targeted ad I’ve seen:

- Macro Cats site, with a targeted Google ad for a ‘Dying cat’ ring tone.

What about you, have you seen any poorly placed advertisements?

Chad

Well, super savvy early adopters don’t use search engines to find great sites and products.   When was the last time that you went to a search engine and looked for a great site or a specific product?  If you answer is, “all the time”, then you don’t fall into the super early adopters category.  

These elites are using their power circles as reference tools, asking friends and their ‘online semi-acquaintances’ for suggestions and referrals and also giving out unsolicited advice in a constant never ending stream.   Just like the best jobs are not listed on job boards or super exclusive restaurants and nightclubs don’t need to advertise or sometimes even have a external facing street sign, power marketing won’t include a search engine component.   The best blogs are not found Googling, they are usually found from referral links or other blogs talking about a great post, and sometimes you just stumble upon them, literally.   Social circles are becoming the new holy grail for advertisers to get in front of.   Personal recommendations from friends and colleagues.   

Gone will be the days of going to Google or Yahoo and typing in ‘graphic designer’, ‘plumber’, ‘compact digital camera’, or Hawaii vacation’.   The savvy are already twittering, twirling, and plurking these questions from their power circle.   And so will you…if you have any friends.

So, anyone who has read my previous rants on why I hate Google AdSense part I, and part II might be more than a little surprised that I’m writing this post.

Is there anything really to Love about AdSense? Sure…

1. Anybody is welcome. Yes, if you are super small have almost no traffic you can still get in. It’s like a nightclub that has no bouncers, no age restriction and no dress code. Anyone can get in.
2. No discrimination. All international traffic is A-OK. A lot of advertisers and ad networks are not interested in certain countries, especially 3rd world countries where the value of a visitor or click is sometimes virtually useless. Google wants it and can monetize it.
3. Set it and forget it. Probably one of the lowest maintenance things you’ll ever have to do to make at least some money off any blog. Even if you only do a few blog posts, and give up blogging completely for the rest of your life and never go back to you own site, it still might generate some traffic and money for you.
4. They Pay on time. If you ever have enough traffic on your site to reach that $50 minimum you will get paid, and it will show up each month like clockwork. (Which makes me also ponder…How many millions or 10 of millions of super small publishers never hit that min payout? Where does all that money go…Google Vault?)
5. It gives you a benchmark. I use AdSense as a floor benchmark, I kind of always see it as one of worse case scenario if you can’t monitize your banners any other way. Pubmatic also now has an AdPrice index that gives you guidelines of what you should be earning, and it breaks it out depending on your blog size.

So I know there are tonnes of raving fans…What do you love about AdSense?

1. Don’t hijack the page.

2. Don’t use sound. Banners should for the most part not make noise of any kind. Unless perhaps it is a movie trailer ‘AND’ the user has initiated the action. This means that they have either rolled over it and/or clicked on it. If not, don’t play sound. EVER. If you site using flash embedded with sound, remove it. Nothing makes a user close a site faster than music blaring. (Except maybe un-intentionally opened porn at the office)

3. Don’t go NASCAR. Pick a set number of banners and stick with it. Don’t just keep adding banners because you can sell them. 6-8 should be max. If you have to make more money, up the price instead of adding more.

4. Don’t sell pop-ups! These should have been wiped from the web years ago. They fucking piss everyone off. They are visual spam. They suck, bottom line. Don’t use them. Period.

5. Don’t pretend they’re not ads. Doing a paid review on your site is an advertisement. If you were paid, it is an ad. Disclose it.

More reading:

Top 5 most annoying Internet ads of all time

The world of annoying ads

Before you start: Make sure the URL you choose contains keywords relevant to the topic of your blog.

My favourite SEO blogs:

Search Engine Land I’ve been reading this for year. Danny Sullivan is one of the best in the business and I’ve seen him speak a few times.

Marketing Pilgrim Andy Beal another veteran of the industry along with a few other bloggers including Janet Meiners.

SEO tradeshows you may wish to attend:

http://searchmarketingexpo.com/advanced/

http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/