[Paul_KY]

Temi,

As advertisers TURN OFF their, "Content Match" feature through Google Adwords, webmasters will be delivering more and more, "Free" ads. The reason advertisers are turning the feature OFF is due to the ROI.

Remember back in the day, when banners/buttons/blinking stuff was new? Surfers were intrigued, so they clicked clicked clicked away, but never bought lol. Webmasters were making a killing back then ($50-$100 CPM). Now they're lucky to get $1 CPM. We have now come to call that the, ‘Dot.com Bubble Bursting”.

Last year, Google rolled out their new, "Adsense" program. Content type webmasters jumped all over it, and I don't blame them a bit. At first, they were making a bundle, because advertisers bought the BS sales pitch from Google. And visitors were so intrigued by the new, "Ads by Google". They were clicking, but the ROI was hardly there for most Advertisers, as they were receiving, "Curiosity Clicks" from, "Looky Lou's". This isn't to say some clicks didn't convert, but most who uses adsense as a means of income, will tell you their income has dropped. Why? Because the advertisers dropped and Google also DROPPED SOME OF THEIR MINIMUM BIDS.

I see the same cycle with Adsense as I saw with banners, just at a much quicker pace. The only reason I advertise via Google Adwords is to be on AOL & Earthlink. I wish I could turn off the, “Be On Google” feature lol. I don’t want info seekers (Majority of Google Audience). I want buyers/leads.

Oh, and I love the terms Google has for the Adsense webmasters, like, "You can't tell others about your clicks/conversions/money made, etc.". That would have to raise A HUGE RED FLAG in my mind. What are they hiding?

Are some webmasters making serious money with Adsense? Sure, I bet there's more than a handful. My advice, enjoy it while it lasts...

Large ISP’s/Portals see the HUGE profit potential in pay per click search listings. Don’t think for a minute that the likes of AOL, Earthlink and other search partners of Google, will be sharing those large profits for long. MSN will be developing their own search soon, and IMHO they’ll do their own, in house PPC (Bye Bye Overture) or they’ll buy Findwhat.com or one of the other 2nd tier PPC search engines. AOL, IMHO, will do the same thing. As will Netscape, Earthlink, etc. MAMMA.com already did it, as did Lycos. Yahoo had the money to BUY lol Overture, so they scooped em up so they didn’t have to fiddle with their own PPC technology. Then they dumped Google like a dirty diaper.

Google makes 98% of its revenue on advertising. What happens to Google when the advertisers leave, and go, “In House” with the likes of AOL/Earthlink/Ask Jeeves, etc?
Well, they’ll be left with their own traffic and with the quality of a Google search today, as apposed to one 2 years ago, I see their traffic dwindling.

This is all, of course, just my opinion.

My 2 Cents

Paul