WebProNews

Could competition be cutting into AdSense?

Google will shift the payment plan for referrals to AdSense back to its original pricing structure, while ending the program in some parts of the world.

Publishers who are not located in North America, Japan, or Latin America won't have the option of continuing with AdSense referrals. Google plans to end the program in regions outside of those areas.

"We've found that this referral product has not performed as well as we had hoped in these regions," Google's Talia Brodecki said in the Inside AdSense blog.

Publishers in North America, Japan, and Latin America lose what had been a potentially lucrative bonus feature appended to AdSense referrals. A referred publisher who earned $100 in 180 days would generate a $250 bonus for the referring site.

That drops back to a $100 bonus when the pricing plan changes in late January, Brodecki said.

Various industry bloggers opined on the news of the upcoming change. "Perhaps Adsense in itself is no longer generating new advertisers especially now that there are other viable online advertising programs options than the almighty Google Adsense," Arnold Zafra said at Search Engine Journal.

Darren Rowse at ProBlogger called the change "stupidity." Since he is in Australia, the retirement of the program affects him directly.

"As someone who had always just fallen short of the $2000 bonus I can tell you that for me it always acted as a huge incentive to promote AdSense," he said of the top bonus available under the ending payment structure.

"I’ve displayed AdSense referral ads close to 20 million times. I’ve sent them tens of thousands of visitors and have been responsible for thousands of sign ups. I cannot even begin to imagine how much money those signups have made AdSense," Rowse said.

The idea of a glut of AdSense publishers is intriguing. Google's Q4 2007 earnings announcement takes place on January 31st. Their partner network earnings and traffic acquisition costs may be telling in relation to this change to AdSense referrals.