One More Reason To Dump Google AdSense
written by John Chow
Problogger.net broke a NDA to bring you news that Google is going to bitch slap your AdSense earnings by making it harder to click the ads. In the old AdSense setup, a reader just has to click anywhere inside the ad block to register a click and be sent to the advertiser. The new setup will require the readers to click on the actual ad title or the ad URL. The above click zone map shows what parts of the new ads are now clickable. As you can see, the click zone has been drastically reduced. The main reason for doing this according to Google:
We’re rolling out a change to our text ad formats to help reduce accidental clicks and increase value for advertisers…..This new format will match the changes we’ve implemented on Google.com to help decrease the number of accidental clicks and increase the number of ad conversions. A reduction in accidental clicks will keep users on your pages, interacting with your content until they choose to click on an ad. This change will enhance the user’s overall experience with your websites and improve advertiser campaign value, but it’s likely that your click-through rate will decrease.
It’ll be very interesting to see how the new setup will affect publishers’ AdSense earning. I don’t run Google AdSense on this blog but I have it on other sites. What do you think of Google’s new click zone? A good thing or one more reason to dump AdSense?
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ooh . . what happens to ProBlogger . . . can he get dinged too???? . . . Google gonna be Mad! . . . but damn them for controlling the net like they do! . . drop them to hell i say!
most likely they will ban him…
I have banned adsense. I refuse to do business with them
I think that I will be dumping two things myself one is BlogRush and second is google
I’m dumping Alexander Batista
ProBlogger being banned…umm i doubt, he could get sued for breaking a NDA but banned from Google’s index i doubt as it is no way related to Google search engine but it is related to Google AdSense (if he ever gets banned would be from AdSense).
Anyway back to John’s question how would we feel with the new ads, if those ads have that background behind the title which will most probably make it look really..and I mean really UGLY the ads I will end up most probably removing it if I won’t have the possibility to use the old ads.
Another thing what I wonder is, what will happen with Google AdSense team’s advice to “blend the ads” will that phrase be valid?
Actually it wasn’t an NDA. I was sent an email as a publisher by my AdSense rep. When I asked her if I could publish it she said that they’d prefer I didn’t until they published about it on their blog. I reluctantly said OK.
However when it was broken by others who got the email from their AdSense reps I figured the cat was out of the bag - emailed my rep - waited for a reply - didn’t get one within an hour - so made the call to post.
I’ve explained it to my AdSense contact and they seem ok with it.
I am new to your strategy for blogging, but I was curiuos as to why you didn’t post a link to other blogs where it was posted to keep yourself extremely clear from NDA backlash? Only because you are a “big” figure in the eye of google and others.
As I said above - there was no NDA.
I did email my AdSense rep links to the story that was already broken though to cover my butt
Just because others broke the news doesn’t mean that it was alright for you to break your agreement with Google. I would expect you to remain professional and keep your word.
Yup hell to Google, maybe they are going over their heads now…
I still think is the best move they could do and bring quality to the whole system !!! No more crapy cheap advertiser in the long run.. and now only the rich media ads will perfectly work because of this new clickable ads zone..
So in a longterm , publisher and advertiser can be the real winner .. I don’t see why you should dumb a source of revenue….. however some programs works better with different type of website .. for example adsense is not good for a making money blog
but better on other type of blog we have to see the whole picture before yelling that loud 
That’s kind of lame.
It hurts making money online, but it’s good for all the “regular” businesses that advertise.
Yes, I think this is a good progress. why we think from the publishers side only? what about you John? as we all know that we can see ads saying “You blog’s money maker, I’ll show you…. johnchow.com” anywhere on every blog
What do you think as an adwords advertiser. doesn’t this a good thing for you?
DUMP IT!
Enough with bringing down PR of JohnChow dot com, that’s an insult enough…
Surly if advertisers are getting a better conversion rate from the traffic that does click on the ads, the bids on buying clicks will increase, so we all earn more.
Just a theory… for now.
I’m inclined to agree, or that it will just be static.
How many people accidentally click on them anyway? I don’t think I ever have…
I would say that its a reason to dump adsense, but I think I’m going to try it and see what happens. It says that we should be getting more relevant clicks, so that might make it more worthwhile to the bloggers in the long run. I would say while they haven’t made me huge amounts of money, it is pretty consistent.
John, I know you don’t run it here, but have you found it being consistent on your other sites?
Yahoo’s Publisher Network is treating me surprisingly well, with many clicks over $2
I wish it could be used by non-US residents.
Sometimes in the blog world I have a different perspective, because I don’t plan on selling ads, I plan on buying them. Sometimes things that Google does bothers bloggers, but seems great to me.
Not this time. If I go to the trouble of placing an ad somewhere, I don’t want people to have to play a game of shoot the monkey to hit it. If they want to hit my ad, let them.
Oh well, there are in fact more and more alternatives.
Precisely. This is poppycock. Accidental clicking? How many bloggers accidentally click? What are they talking about?
Whoops, replied to the wrong comment.
As an advertiser that spends a considerable amount on Adwords, all I can say is, “It’s about damn time.” Good news for advertisers.
Seconded!
Finally i might get some decent clicks rather than accidential ones.
Props to Google for being brave enough to make a big change like this. Maybe they’re finnally taking accountability for all the adsense only sites out there that spam the internet.
I had stopped advertising on Adwords because I wasn’t getting good value for money, i might just go back once they introduce this though.
You never know John, you may get less clicks, but each click will be worth more as advertisers will be bidding more due to increased value of the clicks. Could work both ways.
Totally agree. I advertise with AdWords and this would really improve my latest experiment with affiliate marketing. Good move on Google’s part, they should have done it earlier.
“I just use AdWords for Affiliate Marketing?”
Thats interessting news. The funny Thing is that it seems to be true only for the format “medium rectangle” yet.
check it out here: AdFlora.com
I will check it out
Hello John,
First of all, thanks for all the information that you have made available about making money online. I recently downloaded and read from start to finish your free ebook “Making Money Online With John Chow Dot Com”…facinating…a wealth of information that will take me a while to absorb and put into action. Meanwhile I’m just trying to learn how to use WordPress. Anyway, what do you think is the real reasoning behind this latest “evil” plot by the “Powers that Be” at Google. I mean, sure I’ve accidently click on the wrong link before…I think. But there has to be another reason.
Thanks again.
Barry
I am not sure how many people actually click on google adsense anymore. At first when it initially started, it was something of a pioneer in this field but now everybody knows about google and google adsense.
I can visit any site and no matter nhow relevant ad the adsense is showing, still refrain from clicking on it. I think adsense is old news now. Most of the people have realized that adsense isn’t the way to go anymore. My personal opinion. Once you know what it is there for and you know what you get out of it and you ahve pretty much maximized the use of it, you kinda get out of it and that’s the story of adsense. DUMP IT!!!
But then you are a savvy internet user. A lot of people may not be so blind to the adds. Certainly I seem to get a decent click thru rate - even though I tend not to click onon ad sense ads…
It’s a good thing and a bad thing. Cheaters can’t just click anything now and earn some $$$
-Mike
In a way, I do like the new Adsense idea. It gives a better user experience. Sometimes, a reader may click on the ad area by mistake and get directed to another page and this can be very annoying.
But in a money making perspective, John is right.
It’s not that bad. I mean c’mon… seriously… if someone wanted to click on an ad, they’d click on the link part cause that’s where people normally click.
Adsense just wants to make sure there’s no accidental clicking… and this should fix that. It may have the reverse effect of what is highlighted in this post and in the original post… advertisers get more value for their money… may encourage them to spend more. Everyone wins.
I think they should at least increase the CPC atleast if they move to this change.. If they keep cutting our ways of making decent income then what makes them think publishers would stay with em? When is this in affect?
They’re not entirely interested in keeping publishers rich. You might see a slight increase in CPC, but I have a feeling there aren’t that many unintentional adsense clicks anymore.
this is pretty bad…is this effective already?
I’m still a newbie, I wish I could really state an opinion out of experience and have numbers to contrast and compare. Currently I am not making any money on Adsense though it’s probably because I have it halfway down my blog and to the right. I also ignore adsense on other sites so I really am not sure if anyone is paying attention to them anymore.
This will more then likely effect the amount of money that publishers will get, but I would guess that once advertisers realize that they are getting less and less clicks, they will increase the value of each click.
In the end publishers will get the same amount and advertisers will pay the same amount, even if it takes a while for this to level out.
Doesn’t really matter - I’m not getting many clicks anyways. Status quo.
Good for Google Advertisers.
Bad for Google Publishers.
That’s all there is to it.
“Good for Google” period.
that’s just sort of their mantra all around
Now that makes eleven reasons not to use Adsense or dump it if you already do.
I never made more than a couple bucks from Google AdSense on my blogs Pentimento and iPentimento, so I dumped the ads. Now I am just affiliated with TTZ Media (not sucking up, but I think the TTZ Media ads are much better looking than others
) and still doing ads for PayPerPost too. Google cares for nothing but the bottom line, as the recent PR debacle demonstrated. Google are weasels. 
Hey, thanks for the alternatives! Never thought about signing up with TTZ Media Ads before though I see them on John’s posts all the time… Will give PayPerPost a check out too.
True its bad for google publishers but it does seem fair and equitable on the whole. It will prevent lower the incidence of accidental clicks so i suppose it does make more sense
I’ll break the news a little further since it’s already on some sites Google is likely going to roll out some newly tested ad formats too that let you blend better. CSS enabled including choice of logo, it’s in beta accounts now. Heres one example (top right side) http://www.patrickokeefe.com/
Hello,
Thanks for the mention.
I just wanted to let you know that that is actually very old. It’s an invite only testing program that gives invited publishers access to code that allows you to further customize the appearance of the ads with the approval of a Google representative. No worries.
Thanks,
Patrick
I have already dumped them from most of my sites… they are only a last resort.
I am delighted to see google moving on and i really hope this move will have more advertisers throwing in more cash so that we will earn more over the time. I just hope so.
I dont think much different than before.. Only it will go to advertiser area if you click in the area…
I don’t think it will affect more to publisher..