Some thoughts about the new Google Adsense Ads

The new Adsense ads that saw a reduction in the area that can be clicked are live on most websites by now and first reports come in confirming that webmasters are seeing an decrease in click through rate, eCPM and revenue. Figures range from 5% to 40% so far and it is a bit early to judge if those decreases will remain like they are now. CPC seems to drop between 0-2% for most websites which is a huge decrease reflected in the income level.

Google is hoping that this move will show advertisers that they are indeed fighting for them battling invalid clicks that most likely will not lead to a sale. Their reasoning that advertisers might spend more money for advertisement if they see an increase in ROI could become true but publishers will most likely see a decrease even if advertisers add more to their spending budget.

The reason why publishers will not see an increase is simple. Why should advertisers raise the bid price for a keyword if those keywords start bringing in great revenue right now. The only thing that is most likely going to happen is that they add more budget to get more clicks in for their products that sell better than before.

Publishers on the other hand can not provide more ad space which means that they will not profit from it at all. That is at least my theory and it would be nice if I would be wrong here.

What’s really bugging me is that many publishers do not have an alternative to Adsense. Sure, US publishers might go with Yahoo but what if you have a general, not product related blog ? Affiliate systems do not work well on those blogs and advertising systems like Chitika also perform miserably.

Where is a real alternative that everyone could live with ?