More Income Opportunity For AdSense Publishers

Google AdSense Affiliate Program?

Maybe this is what Google will call their affiliate network program in the future. Why? First, we have the recent move of Google’s Affiliate Program, whose payment will be integrated through AdSense effective September 21. Second, Google recently announced it’s plans to give AdSense publishers a new way to generate revenue by allowing multiple Google-certified ad networks to compete for displaying ad space on their sites.

Here is an excerpt of what they have to say:

You may remember that we began to accept display ads served from qualified third-party vendors over a year ago, which helped increase the number of display ads competing on AdSense publisher sites,” says Google Business Product Manager Sean Harvey. “With this new change, participating ad networks can also bid in our auction to appear on AdSense sites. This new capability will help you generate the most profit for every ad that appears on your site, whether the ads come from AdWords advertisers or Google-certified ad networks.

The networks themselves are ad agencies and companies that partner with advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ads on sites they don’t own. AdSense publishers will now be able to allow advertisers from these networks to compete directly with AdWords advertisers for their ad space. The ad networks:

• Connect advertisers with publishers
• Provide access to additional inventory not currently available with AdWords
• Adhere to Google’s standards for user privacy, ad quality and speed

Reporting and payments will still run through AdSense as always, and available ad formats will remain the same as they have been for AdWords. Publishers will still have control over which networks can show ads on their pages, and they can choose to opt out of receiving ads from specific networks, or all networks.

Think of this as an added bonus for AdSense publishers. Increasing competition normally is always better for the consumers (and in this case for the AdSense publishers too). Since there are more players now competing to display ads, it is likely that this will drive CPC (cost-per-click) higher and consequently, higher earnings for AdSense publishers. Please be advised that this is currently available for the US and European markets for the time being. As with everything Google, this should be rolled out to the rest of the world in a timely fashion. So stay tuned.

If you like this move, now is the best time to create custom channels to better take advantage of this, and improve your AdSense earnings, by giving your website or blog better visibility for advertisers. If you are an AdSense publisher, you will want to find out more about placement targeting and creating custom channels for AdSense.

If you do not like this move for any reason (e.g competition), you will have to opt out of receiving ads from third party networks. Note that you have to block this option or it will not work as the integration is automatic. For this purpose, here is a short video on how to block third party networks on AdSense.