Google Adsense Rotating Ad – A Crazy Experiment!

Last month many top bloggers talked about Google Adsense’ new rotating ads. Like most fellow blogger we are strongly against this Adsense experiment and in this post I am presenting my argument which is divided into 2 parts – economics & aesthetics!

First Economics as $ matters…

Before directly pointing to reasons why do I think this new feature is crazy, its necessary to have a look at the whole adverting process. For that we need to go through few adsense terms first.

• Ad Unit – Every instance of adsense code count as one ad unit. Maximum 3 ad units are allowed on any webpage. Above image contains 1 ad unit.
• Ad Slot – A text ad unit contains max 4 slots. Number varies as per ad-unit dimension, content of page and many other factors. Above image contains 4 ad slots.
• Bidding – It is a process in which advertisers competes for available ad slots. Its a very complex process internally but you can think as advertisers paying more, more likely to get an ad slot.

Now also have a broader look at the process of displaying adsense ads. Note that following is just outline and may not be technically complete and accurate, but enough to highlight the part which matters to us…

• A page with adsense code on it is requested (from a browser which support javascript).
• As the browser executes adsense code, keywords from page is sent to adsense server.
• On server bidding takes place and winners’ ads are sent back to the browser.

Now coming back to the rotating ads, one thing if you have noticed it, is increase in number of ad slots, which can directly affect the bidding process. A simple demand-supply rule can easily highlight this. More the availability, less is the demand. Advertiser may try with lower bids as now max 8 or 12 can get an ad-slot, oppose to 4 in the past.

Well, the loss may not be significant, because if as a advertiser you loose some revenue then as your partner Google will also loose some bucks! Then why I am crying?

Now lets turn to Aesthetics…

Two arrow indicators will make ad stand-out differently. Our goal is to blend ads with overall site design as much as possible.

One open secret everybody knows but no one talk out is – Most people clicking on adsense ads dont know that they are clicking on ads! Thats where text-link unit works better than image ads and that may be a reason why Google uses text-ads everywhere.

Also Google expecting site visitor to interact with ads raises many questions…

• Does Google think ads should be prima-focus of a website?
• Won’t two arrows will increase clutter on a page, although by small amount?
• Who should be responsible for websites’ inter-activeness, ad agency or site designer?

Bloggers represent large chunk of adsense population and most blogging software are highyly interactive in erms of related posts, blogroll, link to previous posts, etc. So why the Google think ad needs to be rotating (interactive)? What do you think?