Adverts
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Adverts

To try and contribute to the costs of running a site, you may want to add advertising to your site.

I currently have two forms of advertising on this site:

• I have text links (with a green background) for individual merchants through TradeDoubler.com (European site),  Affiliate Window, Affiliate Future and Deal Group Media (which are based in the UK) and Commission Junction, which is based in the US, but offers payments in sterling.

• Google's AdSense - based in the US, the payments are now in sterling. There is a Google AdSense forum on WebmasterWorld.

My Experience of Adding Advertising to this Site

On the 7th August 2003, most existing adverts were replaced with Google AdSense Skyscrapers.

• Benefits:

  • I no longer have to worry about adding fiddly individual links to all pages, it is done automatically. Hopefully I can just worry about adding content, not whether there is an appropriate paid link that matches up with what I have just added. There'll be no links to remove when a merchant stops advertising.
  • All content will be free of adverts - I can just write content and not worry about being greedy - see the section on the Retailers page, below.
  • Income may increase - the Adsense technology is hyped as producing more appropriate adverts. They do have a wider advertiser base than say tradedoubler or any other affiliate network, so the ads should be more varied and more specific, that is if the topic of the page is clear to Google's technology.
  • The adverts look cleaner than the old-style links, which I think looked slightly messy.

     

• Downsides:

  • More of the screen is being taken up with the adverts which means less space for content. Are the ads more objectionable than the old links?

   

• On the 6 March 2002, prior to adding Google's AdSense links (and removing most custom links), I added advertising links (green links) to the site - here are some details of what I had up:

  • What do the Advertising Links Look Like?

    The adverts will be on less than half the site, mainly those that are about commercial products. I have tried to make them unobtrusive, in a text style, away from the content of the site. For more on justifications of downbeat advertising, see this Techdirt article, this BBC article on User reaction to pop-ups, the Register's article on Netscape creating a popup free browser (possibly the start of a trend?) and Google on pop-up ads (I would never use pop-ups). With regard to layout on the page, ideally they would be in line with the text discussing the site, but due to the limitations of HTML, they look destined to appear on the line below.

     

  • Will you Change it Back?

    I may change the site back if I receive enough negative feedback. You may want to comment in the forums on the addition of advertising to the site.

    • Do you think it is too intrusive?

    • Should adverts be highlighted/formatted differently?

    • Does it destroy the ethos of the site for you?

   

You may appreciate the page on promoting your website, which has information on how to make your site more appealing to search engines and visitors.