Wow:

“Larry [Page] often says we would be better off if we showed one ad — the perfect ad,” said Mr. Rosenberg. Mr. Page was not on the conference call to speak for himself.

Well... at least we could get rid of the stupid arrows...

This turns the question "How many ad units should I use?" into "How many PSA's do I want visitors to see?"

Taking all but one ad unit off every page has brought me great results the last few weeks. I was down to two, but the lower unit was showing placement targeted ads in almost every instance. Removing it has boosted earnings AND made me feel even better about my sites.

All that's left to try is Mr. Pages ideal of no ad units at all.

I'm not clear on what they are doing. Are they limiting the number of ads or actually getting rid of the poor quality ads like those that send you to a MFA page?

I think both, but my impression was that they were talking about search, not content. I dunno why I have that impressions, except that it seemed a little too presumptuous for Larry Page to say he only wanted to see one (or no) ads on someone else's site. On Google search properties, yes. On my site, for example - that doesn't sound right.

I think this part sums it up:

“Clearly that is not the ideal strategy, because we don’t want to end up with no ads,” Mr. Brin said

I interpret that as meaning that there is not and will not be any shift in policy.

Forget better ad quality. In times to come, there will prpbably a wave of 'recession proofing your investment' or how 'to beat the recession' type of scams - all coming out to seek a new market.

IF they want us to show just one ad, "the perfect ad", it's easy to do:

- Set filter size to unlimited
- Allow publishers to see ALL ads that actually do show up
- Allow publishers to set number of ads in an ad block

Ah, I understand... that's something for the Adsense feature request thread. Ah, soo long until August 1st. Hardly can wait for it. ;-)

LOL

I just read the comments below the article and it seems some small businesses are having problems getting their ads shown or even being able to afford the ads.

Interesting as my AdSense earnings are down a bit. I have fewer ads from online businesses and those were the ads that were the most relevant for my readers.

Maybe I've misinterpreted the article, but it seems to me that they're referring to cutting back the number of publishers, not the number of ads.

Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s senior vice president for product management, said that Google had chosen to reduce its advertising coverage — the percentage of Web pages on which it displays advertising — to an all-time low.

That offers some explanation for the publishers who have been terminated for seemingly no reason. But nowhere in this article can I find anything which indicates that Google is turning away advertisers. They're simply displaying their ads on fewer websites.

tim222 - I don't think your interpretation is the most intuitive one. It seems to me that they were simply talking about % of their search result pages (i.e. Google.com pages) showing ads.

the percentage of Web pages on which it displays advertising

It would be very weird if they tried to calculate a % of AdSense publishers. There's no simple definition of what that would mean. However, a % of search result pages is a logical and well-defined measure.

but it seems to me that they're referring to cutting back the number of publishers, not the number of ads.

That's how I read it too...possibly cuting back on blogs or deciding that sites not reaching the minimum $100 within 3 months be terminated also possibly setting minimum-level CPC bids for advertisers at higher levels.

After all, at the present time they have no real challenger in the search market and AdWords is extremely well-established in many countries, therefore if they wanted to they could probably pretty much force increases through.

Your thoughts may vary!