What’s The Future of Adsense?
In the past month, I’ve noticed retargeting campaigns on a few quite random websites. Retargeting means targeting ads to people who already visited your site.
The remarkable implications for AdSense may forever change the AdSense publishing industry!
PPC company Webrageous has been following me all around the web because I read something they wrote about the content network.
A/B split testing company Unbounce has similarly shown me their ads as I watched streaming illegal video, err, porn, I mean, How I Met Your Mother.
What really made me notice how significant this could be was IfByPhone’s retargeting while I was on a camera review site.
If you’re in the digital camera adsense biz, or read about Darren’s Digital Photography School, you know that AdSense can be a good earner in that niche.
Speaking of which, I just saw this…
Digital Photography School with a retargeting campaign
When I was getting into internet marketing, I recall that people used to publish lists of AdSense niches with high CPCs.
(Ex.: “Mesothelioma,” a form of cancer that features tort lawyers advertising for class-action lawsuits.)
Now suppose retargeting via the Google content network (now renamed Google Display Network) becomes mainstream, or even default.
The results are wide-ranging.
For AdSense publishers, niche selection becomes virtually pointless.
If call-tracking ads show up when I’m looking for camcorders, and PPC management / split-testing when I watch How I Met Your Mother (instead of the more logical DVD sales/rental option) – what use is it to publish about camcorders?
Why not publish about something that requires less expertise and capital?
Political blogging may become profitable.
For AdSense advertisers, optimizing becomes more difficult.
- For ordinary content network campaigns, you can just look at an AdSense block and see who else shows up.
With retargeting, you can’t see who else is bidding for that ad space unless you happened to have visited their site before.
- Site exclusion tools may be less effective, because you’re targeting users and not sites/contexts.
- Category exclusion tools may be less effective for the same reason.
What results do you guys anticipate from this change? Will it last long term? Or will this be a temporary trend whose ROI won’t be shown to warrant wide adoption? Perhaps it will be adapted with impression caps?
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