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Google Web Fundamentals: Monetization

developers.google.com

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Re: Google Web Fundamentals: Monetization

#31

Post by tn13 »

JeremyMorgan wrote: post #27
conradfr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the part where Adsense suddenly bans your account, refunds your money to advertisers and gives you no real appeal possible.

Someone had to say it. Though I've never been banned, I know quite a few friends who have over the years. A couple of them deserved it (asking for clicks to support etc) but some of them not so much. Like one guy getting banned because there was a thread talking about guns in his forum. His forum was definitely G-Rated, which is a requirement for adsense, but this one thread got him booted, and all his earnings yanke…

They dont care about the publishers who make $500 a month or even a day. There are dozen a dime such publishers.

Re: Google Web Fundamentals: Monetization

#32

Post by chvid »

tn13 wrote: post #31
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone had to say it. Though I've never been banned, I know quite a few friends who have over the years. A couple of them deserved it (asking for clicks to support etc) but some of them not so much. Like one guy getting banned because there was a thread talking about guns in his forum. His forum was definitely G-Rated, which is a requirement for adsense, but this one thread got him booted, and all his earnings yanke…

They dont care about the publishers who make $500 a month or even a day. There are dozen a dime such publishers.

It scares me that Google does not have the common sense to treat small(?) publishers decently.

Given how I was treated over petty amounts on a website sideproject. Why would I use you guys as a payment processor or to sell software I had invested years in?

Todays amateurs are tomorrows professionals.

Re: Google Web Fundamentals: Monetization

#33

Post by nakovet »

fleitz wrote: post #20
dannyr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this improve the conversation?

It points out the vast discrepancy between what Google recommends people do and what they actually do, suggesting that they are either ignorant of best practices, or are lying about best practices.

The short comment was indeed lacking of usefulness but this one makes sense, talking about discrepancy between what they recommend and what they do for example: "Let Users Explore Before They Commit", I never asked for a Google Plus account, I opened my Gmail and "free gift for you" a G+ account and we will set many actions, shares and notifications ON by default so we can improve our network metrics. This definitely goes against letting me explore before committing.

Re: Google Web Fundamentals: Monetization

#34

Post by stevenh »

JeremyMorgan wrote: post #27
conradfr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the part where Adsense suddenly bans your account, refunds your money to advertisers and gives you no real appeal possible.

Someone had to say it. Though I've never been banned, I know quite a few friends who have over the years. A couple of them deserved it (asking for clicks to support etc) but some of them not so much. Like one guy getting banned because there was a thread talking about guns in his forum. His forum was definitely G-Rated, which is a requirement for adsense, but this one thread got him booted, and all his earnings yanke…

Google does not provide a list of words, phrases, or topics to check for and filter out if you want to stay with AdSense. You just have to guess.

It's not fair for Google to keep the specifics surrounding their content enforcement rules on AdSense secret. The only time a publisher catches a glimpse of what those rules might actually be is when they are already on the verge of being banned for violating them.

This is Google we're talking about. Why can't Google have AdSense analyze the scraped data they already extract from your site on a daily basis, or inject a text content analyzer into the AdSense javascript payload 0.5% of the time to make those browsers report back with a locally-calculated percentage estimation as to whether that page should really be displaying ads at that particular moment, or anything else to programmatically detect that a given page is violating their secret rules, and then automatically disable ads on that page?

Does Google really expect every single one of their human publishers using AdSense on a site with user-generated content (such as articles with comment sections, link aggregator sites with submission queues, forums, interactive drawing boards, chat rooms, etc.) to hire extra hands to monitor all of that user-generated content 24/7, and to only manually whitelist ads on a per-page basis, and to stay forever vigilant and rush to disable the ads as soon as another comment has been posted which might now render the entire page inappropriate?

What I find most ridiculous of all and completely fail to understand is how Google will exert such strong pressure on publishers to censor user-generated content on websites utilizing AdSense, while simultaneously being perfectly happy with placing unskippable 15-second ads on nearly any given YouTube video, ranging from webcam rants containing no less than 20 F-bombs to things so disgusting that I'm concerned articulating them here even euphemistically will result in me being automatically banned from HN. Even if a video contains nothing foul, the comments underneath certainly will most of the time. If anyone tried that with AdSense, they'd be banned within days. How are AdSense publishers supposed to rely on their intuition regarding what they think Google will find acceptable, when the current state of YouTube clearly demonstrates that Google considers almost anything to be acceptable?

Re: Google Web Fundamentals: Monetization

#35

Post by ceoj »

smaddock wrote: post #25

I have a landing page for an application I've made which users then click through to navigate to other websites. This single page gets around 1-2 million views a month and I'd like to place an ad on the page if possible. However, Google AdSense denied me being that the page doesn't actually have enough content for them to automatically determine relevant ads. What other options do I have to get an ad placed onto the…

May I know what this application is, and it's url?

Re: Google Web Fundamentals: Monetization

#36

Post by smaddock »

ceoj wrote: post #35
smaddock wrote: post #25

I have a landing page for an application I've made which users then click through to navigate to other websites. This single page gets around 1-2 million views a month and I'd like to place an ad on the page if possible. However, Google AdSense denied me being that the page doesn't actually have enough content for them to automatically determine relevant ads. What other options do I have to get an ad placed onto the…

May I know what this application is, and it's url?

Sure, it's for a game mod I created called Cinema [1]. Here's the actual page which I display to the player when they're going to request a video to be played in-game: http://cinema.pixeltailgames.com/search.html

[1] http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=118824...

Re: Google Web Fundamentals: Monetization

#37

Post by kinlan »

smaddock wrote: post #25

I have a landing page for an application I've made which users then click through to navigate to other websites. This single page gets around 1-2 million views a month and I'd like to place an ad on the page if possible. However, Google AdSense denied me being that the page doesn't actually have enough content for them to automatically determine relevant ads. What other options do I have to get an ad placed onto the…

AdSense isn't always the right solution for monetization. I was about to suggest AdMob as they had a mobile web component, but looking at it now, it is all native.

There are other ads providers out there that have very good fill rates, I would look at them.

I am still trying to balance how much we talk about other providers on our site vs general themes which are common for all platforms.

Re: Google Web Fundamentals: Monetization

#38

Post by sehr »

jfoster wrote: post #26
dozy wrote: post #12

Regarding the article 'Let Users Explore Before They Commit' - This is much easier said than done, and the effort and complexity will vary greatly depending on your site/app. The example used (nondescript clothing app) is one of the simpler cases, whereby the cross-session and device user-state need not be maintained, or is at least pretty minimal. For many app developers, though, the richness of their feature-set do…

Google may also not be the best party to listen to for some of this advice. Google has an interest in ensuring they can index as much as possible. If they can't, it's their product that is less valuable. There are enough prominent sites not doing this (facebook, quora, etc.) that it seems Google may be mixing up what's good for you with what's good for them.

I don't think this document was created by a faceless organization.

Re: Google Web Fundamentals: Monetization

#39

Post by bagels »

smaddock wrote: post #25

I have a landing page for an application I've made which users then click through to navigate to other websites. This single page gets around 1-2 million views a month and I'd like to place an ad on the page if possible. However, Google AdSense denied me being that the page doesn't actually have enough content for them to automatically determine relevant ads. What other options do I have to get an ad placed onto the…

You can also use amazon affiliate links to related games.

Re: Google Web Fundamentals: Monetization

#40

Post by putlake »

One way to optimize Adsense earnings is to look at Google Analytics data (you have to link the two but that is trivial to do). For example, look at eCPM by screen resolution to see if your ad placements are working correctly on all screen sizes. Or look at eCPM by Content Group, which will help you figure out how lucrative certain sectors are. I also keep an eye on eCPM by browser. Used to be that Internet Explorer had the highest eCPMs. Now it's Chrome.
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