Breaking up with AdSense
AdSense has been my big money maker the past couple of months, but for no reason other than it was what I had on the site that got Dugg. Granted, if I’d had AdBrite instead of AdSense on it, I’d have earned less. AdSense is not a bad earner.
But after a couple of days, suddenly all I was getting was three ad units full of that flat stomach ad, or the get rid of wrinkles ad. If you’ve been anywhere on line in the last month, you’ve seen these ads. You probably have developed the ability not to see them, in self-defense against the assault of seeing them every damn where you go. The ads sure weren’t relevant to my site, nor were they appropriate for that site’s audience. Here I was, already frustrated, when I got an email from Google informing me they’re not going to do relevant keyword ads anymore, like I hadn’t noticed they’d already stopped some time ago.
In a nutshell, the email says I need to update my privacy statement to let my visitors know that from now on, they’ll get a little present when they come to my site: a cookie from Google, delivered via my AdSense ads, which will follow them everywhere they go within the happy AdSense publisher family of website, determine their “interests” and then serve them ads based on those interests.
I started trying to compose the new language in my privacy statement, then realized there was just no way I could participate in this. Not only is it my final straw in putting up with Google’s snoopiness, but it just makes no sense practically. I mean, imagine how well this is going to work on shared computers in homes or internet cafes. “Hmm, I’m searching for sexy lingerie, but keep getting ads for golf clubs.”
The point of this change is probably to kill business for those webmasters who have cornered the market on building sites that bring up certain expensive AdSense keywords. Most of Google’s business decisions seem to revolve not around making more money – they’re richer than God already – but around crushing people they’ve decided need crushing. A couple of years ago, it was Text Link Ads, and now it’s successful MFA webmasters.
I got off the AdSense ride yesterday. I think it’s still running on a couple of sites I don’t visit very often, but I’ll have it replaced everywhere within a week.
Oh, Google. You’ve become the J. Edgar Hoover of the internet – deeply paranoid, way too powerful, and obsessed with getting the dirt on everyone.
Related posts:- AdSense changes look… very slightly
- JenSense on Google’s AdSense Tax Withholding
- Optimize your Adsense Ads
- Google Hijack – just a big loophole
- Google AdSense withholding taxes
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3 Comments »
March 26th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
I have read this from another blog, but still not very sure. Is it google used our cookies information or our visitor cookies to determine ads for display on our website?
Some of my website still displaying ads according to my website keywords and contents.
Sure if this stuff working perfectly, MFA website will need to search other alternatives.
March 26th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Honestly, I’m not sure. But they say they’re going to track these visitors as they visit different sites that use AdSense, to find out what they like. The only way I can figure they could do that is to put a cookie on our visitors’ computers, coming through our AdSense ads. It’s like they’re using us to deliver this cookie that visitors won’t know about unless they read our privacy policies.
It reminds me of those old paid to surf programs, where you let a marketing company install something in your browser so they could track where you went and how long you visited. Only you got paid (sometimes, and not much) for those, and you knew it was happening. This is like that, only much sneakier.
August 14th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
[...] had been monetizing it with AdSense, but midway through the month I switched to ValueClick. I earned about $150 on the site altogether. [...]