TechAddress

AdWords Introduces Self-Service Feed Placements for RSS Advertising

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:34:38 +0000

Google has quietly rolled out feed placements in AdWords, allowing advertisers to purchase ads within specific RSS feeds. To purchase the ads, advertisers need to first choose to advertise on the Google Content Network (as opposed to within the Google search engine).

From there, utilizing Google’s tool for identifying placements, the advertiser can select the specific RSS feeds where they would like to place ads and proceed to place bids either on a cost per click or cost per thousand basis. Ads can be either text, graphical banners, or video.

The move follows the rollout of AdSense for RSS to publishers earlier this year, allowing blogs (including this one) to monetize their feeds. To-date, those ads have either been sold direct by Google’s salesforce or contextually based, meaning that if a story in the RSS feed is about the World Series, you might see ads for tickets. Well, in theory. Some of the ads showing up in RSS feeds were way off – some even to a point of being offensive. Additionally, some bloggers have reported sharp declines in earnings with AdSense for RSS, especially compared to the direct ad sales previously offered by Feedburner before the company was acquired by Google.

With feed placements, AdWords takes a step in addressing both of these concerns. By enabling all advertisers to select the sites on which they would like to place their ads, the matching is likely to be more accurate. Meanwhile, the more precise targeting should also drive up ad rates, since the ads should perform better since they are being targeted at the proper audience. AdWords also of course has the largest base of advertisers on the Web to which it can sell the inventory, and by making feed placements self-service, all of these advertisers can now buy inventory, regardless of budget.

Will all of these factors suddenly make RSS advertising extremely lucrative for publishers? That all depends on users actually clicking the ads. That hasn’t been an easy proposition in the brief history of RSS advertising, but at least Google now seems to offer all of the tools to give the medium its fair shot.

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Game Sales or Ads: Developers Need to Choose

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:30:51 +0000

Source:Mashable!

We live in a world where we are surrounded almost nonstop from the time we wake up until the time we go to sleep by advertising. From the magazines we read to the searches we do on the Web, advertising permeates it all.

With the software we use on a daily basis, it has been a common practice for some developers to offer up ad-supported versions of their software so users could use the programs without having to pay for them.

The idea being that if you wanted to get rid of the ads, you could buy a registered version that didn’t display any advertising. For the longest time web forums have carried advertising, but you could often buy a subscription that would serve you up an adless version. My own set of community forums over on my personal site operates this way.

Along with that, we have since the advent of AdSense become use to seeing text ads being displayed on our search result pages. The majority of Web 2.0 businesses are all based around an ad supported revenue model so we have gotten use to our web apps or services displaying ads of some sort. A great many of these web services also offer up what is commonly called the “freemium” option to their services, which means that the basic part of their service will display the ads, but you can buy a subscription that will remove the ads and some cases provide additional options.

In all this constant bombardment of advertising though, there has always been one place we could retreat to for a little while to escape this slicing and dicing of our activities used to serve up ads. Actually I should say that there use to be because even that last bastion of privacy is now opening its doors to advertising. The place I am talking about is of course our games. Whether it is online, console or computer we could immerse ourselves in those make believe worlds without the irritation of facing ads.

This changed in a very big way back in 2007 when Microsoft bought Massive and shortly after that inked a deal with Electronic Arts to supply ads within their games. Now today we have Google announcing the launch of their AdSense platform for game developers.

While some folks will probably see nothing wrong with this move to force even more ads in front of our eyeballs, I do have a problem with it. Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins makes a valid point about the idea’s possible success when he says in his post on Mashable

If you look at most online games, both casual and flash, most of the monetization is done through one the side bars, away from where most people are focusing their attention. Couple that with the fact that when you’re playing a game, the last thing you want to do is go check out that limited time offer blinking at you, and it’s no wonder that the low ad conversion rates on gaming sitesrival only those from social network.

However, I don’t care if the ads are successful or not. What is bothering me is that they are doing it in the first place. My objection isn’t so much that they are doing it but more of the fact that it all smacks more of greed and the fact, that in most cases the gamers are going to be paying twice for something. When it comes to Google’s entry into the marketplace they are primarily targeting online games and the problem here is that the vast majority of these game sites are already heavily monetized. Everywhere you look on these sites you will see ads. The sidebar, the header, the footer and now they will be within the game itself. When is enough really enough?

With Mircosoft’s play into in game advertising being centered around the Xbox platform and computer games this is even more irritating. After all haven’t we already paid for these games and now they want to force us to see advertising as well? When is enough really enough? In this case of the consoles and stand alone games the game developers are asking to be paid twice for the same game. First by ripping off your wallet and now by cramming ads down our throats.

At what point do we as consumers say enough is enough?

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One More Place You’ll Find Google: Games

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:30:26 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Throughout last year, Stan and Pete both reported the acquisition by Google of an in-game ad provider called AdScape. AdScape’s assimilation was described by Pete at the time as a sign of Google’s changing mission statement from “organizing the worlds information” to “cramming as many ads into the world as possible.”

Rumors have been floating ever since that the company would be put into action any minute now. Word filters down to us today that the time is now. Google says that AdSense for Games is now available, and web-based games are now invited to integrate text, image and video advertisements in “new ways” (more on that in a second)

They’ve been working, apparently, with some select game developers and publishers including Konami, Playfish, Zynga, Demand Media and Mochi Media so far, hitting many the recognizable social and casual game networks we cover fairly regularly here at Mashable.

The real question is, though, what does this do that plain old vanilla AdSense won’t do already?

If you look at most online games, both casual and flash, most of the monetization is done through on the side bars, away from where most people are focusing their attention. Couple that with the fact that when you’re playing a game, the last thing you want to do is go check out that limited time offer blinking at you, and it’s no wonder that the low ad conversion rates on gaming sites rival only those from social network.

As you can see from the video above (be patient, the money shot is towards the end), with the new AdSense units, they look more or less the same, but they show up in game instead of off to the side. Because the user is already acclimated to bells, whistles, lasers and other noisy what-not, the video ads are allowed to auto play.

This turns the gaming experience into something a little closer to television viewing. The ads are likely going to have lower conversion rates than standard AdSense units on a content site because of folks not wanting to leave the experience, but will probably function quite effectively as a sort of brand impression unit, similar to how standard TV works (of course with the added benefit of being clickable).

All in all, not a total bust, and given the scope of the beta partners and the reach of Google, this could very quickly become a major profit center for Google, and a game changer for monetizing online games.

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8 Google AdSense Plugins for WordPress 2.5 and Above

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:30:46 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Company Name

UberSpat

20-Word Description

UberSpat is a new online debate community where evidence presented and rated by users allows the best debates to float to the top.

CEO’s Pitch

UberSpat is an online debating site that allows users to input a debate of their choosing. What separates UberSpat from its competitors is that users can add evidence to support or oppose a debate. The evidence can then be rated by other users. All of this information then becomes extremely beneficial to people who want to know more about both sides of the debate. They simply read all of the best articles from either side. This focus on evidence makes UberSpat a research tool as well as a debating site. That’s what makes this an amazing site. It is something of a cross between Digg, Wiki, and Google.

Mashable’s Take

Nearly two months young and launched out of Richardson, Texas, near the cities of Dallas-Fort Worth, UberSpat is a startup intended to provide a forum for debaters of all stripes to challenge one another on a myriad of issues, from politics to science to sex to sports to comedy to conspiracies.

We recently offered up a group of several online debate services and resources, all of which prove valuable in their own way. There is also the name-brand Debate.com domain, whose owners too promise to deliver a platform on which users may spar against one another. It is somewhat incomplete in its design, but it’s there all the same. What UberSpat manages to offer to its users, however, is both an efficient and well-detailed design. This means that while it presents a Digg-like ease of use and an intuitive framework, as its creators suggest above, it is very accommodating of discussion - and lots of it.

Granted, at the moment, submissions for topics listed aren’t flowing in fast. Given the site’s age, the place is moving at a decent clip, but still has long to go before it really hits its stride. Yet it still makes for an interesting visit. Some of the traffic it receives is banal and does little but flatline. Other items catch the eye. And those which do manage to grab a good bit of attention are enhanced by UberSpat’s hybridization of commentary so-called supporting evidence. The user’s ability to attribute articles to a discussion on one side or the other exceeds the usual he-says-she-says structure common in online debate.

Furthermore, the ability for users to not only comment and vote on subjects posited by members, but also to rate comments as well allows the community the option to act as a collective moderator to the space. This gives UberSpat the ability to maintain a sort of civility. As much as such a service with user management features can allow, anyway. (Naturally, the political stage is home to the most vehement chatter at present.)

Of course its name, admittedly, isn’t the choicest one to emerge from the niche it inhabits. UberSpat. It might suit you, it might not. And there are a few strange quirks in the sign-up process that will puzzle some registrants. It is required that you submit a birthday and marital status, for example. But my sense is that these points aren’t particularly important. Deal breakers they are not. The substantive impression the site itself can make on the visitor is key, and the way in which UberSpat operates is engaging and provoking, and ensures that the service stands among the top of its class.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

The Future of Online Video: Fabulouuuss!

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:30:05 +0000

Source:Mashable!

A recurring theme in the blogosphere the last few days has been the death of the Feedburner Ad Network (FAN) and it’s replacement with Google’s AdSense for Feeds. Adam noticed over the weekend that one of our articles on the Olympics spawned an advertisement for a “Fitness for Gay Men” advertisement. The advertisement was poorly targeted, definitely, a little risque, possibly. But if you scan the article intently, you can probably get that there were some crossover in the keywords (olympics, sports, jocks).

But today Pete spotted a particularly curious pairing of content and advertisement from our AdSense for FeedBurner. He sent me the following screenshot from Ben Parr’s liveblog at the New Media Expo entitled “What’s the Future of Online Video?“:

So apparently, the future of online video (according to Google) is still porn. I can’t say I’m surprised, but it’s a bit more than annoying given the fact that AdSense functions on a system that doesn’t pay out to us unless folks click on the banners, and given that we don’t create content targeted towards the homosexual porn-surfing community, I don’t imagine this ad is making us any money.

After Pete sent me the screenshot, I did some research on the ad targetting foibles of AdSense, and decided to check out some our other posts in Google Reader to see what other stuff came up. Most of the ads that surfaced were all along the same lines, and moderately on topic in their targeting (whitelabel social networks and online Olympics coverage seemed pretty common), but a recurring ad that popped up was an advertisement for a ponzi-scheme called CrewBux:

If you need a refresher on Ponzi schemes, we talked about them a few weeks ago when the Department of Justice took down AdSurfDaily in connection with the actions pending against eGold:

In the case of AdSurfDaily, it operated under the thinly-guised motif of a “paid auto-surf program,’ a common term for modern Ponzi schemes. ‘Advertisers’ were enticed into the program by promises of a return on advertising dollars spent of 125% - 150%. To recieve the benefit of the full return on investment, advertisers also had to agree to view a few websites that would rotate every day.

These are the sorts of advertisements we’d never sell on our own - we’ve spoken pretty clearly on Ponzi schemes, and I don’t think you could possibly construe any sort of affinity for multi-level marketing or Ponzi schemes in our body of editorial. I can’t say I’m thrilled with the fact that illegal scams that are typically a vehicle for bilking innocent and naiive folks out of their money is associated with my writing, either.

The problem is obviously in the technology, and is something that never really seemed to come up under the FeedBurner Ad Network because there was a great deal of human selection and approval embedded in the process there (even their checks were handwritten).

It isn’t as if this new replacement system has opened up RSS monetization for every user of FeedBurner in a way that FAN never could. You still must have a feed with a sufficient subscribercount for a certain period of time to qualify for AdSense for RSS feeds, so automation isn’t really benefiting most publishers using the system.

Dick Costolo from dick costolo on Vimeo.

Sort of makes you wonder exactly what sorts of important new things they have former FeedBurner CEO Dick Costolo working on these days (but explains the sad clown routine).

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If this is AdSense for RSS, Color Me Skeptical

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:31:07 +0000

Source:Mashable!

If you’re a blogger, you’re probably aware that FeedBurner recently began migrating customers to Google’s infrastructure, and in turn rolling out AdSense for RSS to certain publishers (Allen Stern had a good summary of the changes earlier this week). While initially I was optimistic when I heard Google’s plan back in May, calling it “huge news for content publishers,” today brings an alarming sign of the current state of the contextual advertising product.

In the post we published earlier today, “18 Smaller Olympic Countries to Root For,” the ad accompanying the story in Google Reader was the following:

What we have here is another example of a contextual advertising misfire – Google sees a lot of words about sports and automatically determines that an ad about fitness might be a good fit. But rather than fire up a PG ad for GNC or Gold’s Gym, we get the very PG-13 ad for a gay fitness site that has absolutely no place in the feed of any professional news organization.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’d have the same reaction if the ad was of a scantly clad female as well. It’s simply inappropriate given the nature of our business, and while I realize we can have this ad removed from our rotation (we can use AdSense’s site filtering features), the policy of shoot first and fix later doesn’t do much for readers that have already formed a negative brand perception based on this type of advertising showing up with our feed.

To its credit, AdSense does offer a new “Ad Review Center” that can give the publisher full control over reviewing all ads before they show up – but again, the default is “Run ads immediately,” meaning unless you disable the setting right away, you’re leaving yourself open to inappropriate ads. There has to be a better in between – manual review by us of every ad is infeasible and will hurt our earnings, but at the same time, “run ads immediately” creates situations like the one above when there is no flag for this type of content.

Meanwhile, Yahoo and Google are taking a similar approach directly with consumers in separate announcements issued this week concerning targeted advertising - you can now opt-out of it on both company’s websites, but you’re opted-in by default. This is more understandable – asking each Internet user to opt-in to advertising before showing ads is unrealistic. Similarly, when Facebook serves those obnoxious “26 and Still Single?” ads, they have every right to do so, because if I hate them that much, I can just stop using the service.

While in those cases, it might be infeasible to have Yahoo, Google, Facebook ask permission before serving targeted ads on their own respective websites and third-party ad networks, when you are dealing with publishers, their brand, and ultimately their business, a bit more discretion should be shown in determining what type of ads are displayed. Believe it or not, we actually care.

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Sponsorship: Monetization’s Dark Horse

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:31:57 +0000

Source:Mashable!
Steven Hodson is the cranky old fart as well as respected Web 2.0 and social media pundit behind WinExtra.com. His guest post today is a continuation of a short series of articles that examine alternatives for the very advertising-dependent world of Web 2.0 and social networks. The series began with Steven’s opinions on the donation […]

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AdSense for RSS Feeds Set to Launch Next Week

Fri, 30 May 2008 21:37:43 +0000

Source:Mashable!
Google-owned FeedBurner is set to launch AdSense for RSS next week according to a post on the company’s blog. Much like the AdSense for Web sites, AdSense for RSS will show contextual text advertising in publisher’s RSS feeds. In other words, if you’re reading a blog post about mobile phones in Google […]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “AdSense for RSS Feeds Set to Launch Next Week”, url: “http://mashable.com/2008/05/30/adsense-for-rss/” });

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