Every time you turn around there’s another article about how poor a revenue source Google AdSense is for most blogs and websites.
The truth is, it’s great for very large and well known sites that get a lot of competitive bidding on site targeted ads. And if you get bigger than big, you can negotiate a bigger piece of the pie the way YouTube did before Google purchased them.
Add to this the fact that there are many other very innovative advertising options emerging on the internet every day and you can see how the need to progress and innovate has to be a priority for a company like Google.
So that’s what they’ve done.
Referral Ads 2.0
They’ve expanded their referral program in AdSense to offer a whole host of different pay-per-action ads in different categories. When you sign in to your AdSense account and click on AdSense Setup > Referrals, there’s a whole list of new products and services available.
They’re all rated by performance with 5 stars being the highest. The payouts range anywhere from $0.02 to well north of $40. Pay-per-action requires a newsletter or service signup or a product purchase. Which is a bigger commitment than just a click, and it’s why the payouts are significantly higher than you’ll find with regular AdSense advertising.
At the same time, these higher paying programs often offer a lot more value than you’ll find in regular advertisements. They’re successful, which is why they can afford much larger payouts.
Check Out the Categories
You can choose the referrals you show in a specific referral unit in 3 different ways:
- By individual ads (choose up to 15 different referral ads from multiple categories)
- By keywords (choose up to 10 keywords)
- By category (choose up to 10 categories)
They’ve put together a pretty good selection of categories to match a broad range of niches:
- Google Products
- Automotive
- Business
- Computers & Electronics
- Entertainment
- Finance & Insurance
- Food & Drink
- Games
- Health
- Industries
- Photo & Video
- Recreation
- Shopping
- Telecommunications
- Travel
Google Continues to Make it Easy
Choose all the referral products you want to show, choose an ad format, track their performance by assigning them to a channel, copy the code and paste it into your site.
All the ads you’ve chosen will rotate in the referral unit. If you check Pick best performing ads then the best performing ads in the program will show, if you uncheck this option, then only the specfic ads you’ve chosen will show.
Making it easy for people to search, and to signup for their programs has always been the secret of their success.
And as long as they continue to innovate and expand the options and offerings for advertisers and publishers the way they have with Referrals 2.0, they’ll stay ahead of the curve and a step ahead of the competition.
Thanks for sharing Shane. I’ll have to check out the products a little later. I logged into my Adsense account and checked some of it, it looks like a great opportunity.
-Gregg
Gregg,
There are some very interesting referral products that Google have brought on board. They probably convert better as posts or landing pages, but I’m going to try them as ad placements in a couple different formats and see how they do as-is.
Hey Shane, that’s cool! I didn’t even know about this, will definitely check it out, seems interesting. I wouldn’t mind a $40 click 🙂
Jon,
They have some great potential. And I’m sure it won’t be too long before Google develops some innovative monetization options for feedburner as well
I really need to take the time to check this out and see if there is anything relevant for my sites. The curse of procrastination – if anyone knows a good cure, let me know!
– Martin Reed
Martin,
There’s a good selection of categories. I’m sure you’ll find something.
Procrastination, hmm? I think we all have a little bit of that at times.