Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I think adsense is highly responsible for pollution of the internet
AdSense was late to the pollution game. Before AdSense, the Internet was polluted by e-mail spammers, affiliate marketers, cookie-cutter e-commerce sites, and bottom-feeding display-ad networks serving "Windows error message" banners and other dreck.
AdSense began with a noble concept: Let mom-and-pop Web publishers profit from their content. Google must have known that it was opening a Pandora's Box when it launched AdSense, and quality control obviously ranked lower on Google's list of priorities than acquiring market share did. But AdSense isn't responsible for "pollution of the Internet"--owners of Web sites are.
In other words, everyone was trying to survive with their own methods, some better than others. :)
I think adsense is highly responsible for massive growth of the internet
I definitely agree to this statement. True, there's lot of "pollution" on the Internet, but many webmasters would not be able to monetize their websites in the same way Adsense has allowed us to do.
Pre Adsense, we were doing
- banner ad networks (pitiful for us then, still pitiful today)
- content syndication with the likes of ScreamingMedia.com
- Amazon
- affiliate programs
In our case, we would never have gotten the kind of income we are getting right now if it is not through Adsense
these days there might be loads of different ways of making money, but getting the traffic and rankings to make it worthwhile is 100 times harder
The first month with Adsense we made close to $200. Now we make $XX,#*$!/month.
You will never hear me complain about Adsense. If the payouts drop to 5% tomorrow... I'll still be grateful all the help they provide to us financially over the years to grow to what we are today.
Frankly no one knew anything. People did not know about SEO, search engines, or monetising - but many were around who would throw management and finance jargon around. That has not changed even now.
We would get banner ads at flat rates, with little benefit to the advertiser. People almost never bought anything online, so the ads were good for brand-building and nothing more.
We were often shocked and distressed at the pathetic click thru rates on banner ads which kept dropping as time went by.
Sales guys were hired and fired - no one could get a grip on how to sell ads on a site direct to someone. We could get package deals - X amount for an ad in our newspaper, and now 1/10X for this web ad too.
I personally chucked it all and started my own site in 2003 - been doing okay since then. Sure, Google ranking tank sometimes, Adsense revenue is now pathetic as ad rates have gone down - but there are no real choices if you are in the end a content guy. If you have a good business brain, affiliate marketing I hear bring you good returns even now. Direct sales is beyond me either. Yahoo is not an option for Indian publishers, so we just plod along till the economy recovers, I guess.
I think adsense is highly responsible for massive growth of the internet. Just think of how many websites would disappear if adsense disappeared.
Sound so supernatural but it is. Since 1997, I was just an average surfer and sparked a fire inside me to have a business someday in the internet. Tried some ad network but those who really make the bucks are on p-o-r-n and g-a-m-b-l-i-n-g. My conscience cannot take it so I started to pursue selling indigenous products to the world but became unsuccessful. I also thought that maybe someday a great advertising company will come. So in 2003 did came Adsense. It was really an accident when I come to know about adsense in 2004. From a black and white picture of the internet, it transformed into full color. For me it was God sent not only for uplifting the grass roots of the internet but to revolutionize the internet.
Yes many people will say the internet are flooded with Google ads. But in the early days pop-up advertising was polluting the internet and p-o-r-n webmasters are gaming all the search engines. So I'll just take the lesser evil.
Looking back it was a good decision. Adsense has changed my family's life for the better.
Though its the advertisers who are getting more of the benefit from these millions of little adsense sites.
Thanks Google
-Gs
PS - I know this post has very little to do with the history of adsense - but now was as good a time as any to mention how grateful I am to Google and adsense :)
I can't say that AS has been all bad although I do resent some of Google's "rules" (read greed) that I think unfairly manipulated the money game into their management.
I'd have my web site regardless of whether there was an AS or even Google. So no special thanks from me anymore than their acknowledgement of my contribution in any form other than a check. It's just about money.
"Do no evil", that cracks me up. How can you recognize "evil" if you have no soul?
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I wouldn't be so quick to credit Google/AS with the growth of the internet. That's something that would have happened with or with out them.
Yes and no. AdSense has created vast numbers of individual opportunities for both publishers and advertisers. There were other CPC text-ad publisher networks before AdSense--anyone remember Sprinks?-- but it took a big international player with vision to make the concept work on a global scale. (Note the italicized phrase--Yahoo and MSN may be big, but they've lacked the vision or global mindset to make their own publisher networks anything but afterthoughts).
