Monday, July 30, 2018

Adsense Blogging and Banner Ad Monetization Basics 101

Why Adsense? Adsense is the Google banner ad  and revenue sharing product many websites and bloggers use including Zillow. Only one Adsense account allowed per entity. Did you know that you can embed Adsense ads on Blogger by Google and also Shopify? However, Tumblr no longer allows Adsense scripts. One Shopify forum discussion claims that a potential downside of displaying ads on your online retail site - you lose traffic and sales to competitors.

Unfortunately, most users who are annoyed with ads can easily block Adsense Ads with Ad Block, a free Chrome Extension. Native Ads (ads that look like the native content, a natural synergetic placement of ads), Ads on mobile (there's an ad blocker mobile equivalent), and in general ads that are less invasive have a better chance of reaching viewers.

Not adhering to Google Adsense community guidelines will result in a lifetime ban. Giving how extensive Google's coverage is, that's a serious punishment. Seriously! They will ban you. Community guidelines are important. For example, don't click on your own ads.

There are two main sources of revenue: pay per click and per 1000 impressions also known as CPM. As your blog is starting and small, the CPM can be quite small, even just cents per 1000 impressions. CPC or PPC pay per click is not so limiting. A valid technology website or product signup conversion can easily be $1.5-$6 dollars and game ads are super lucrative. Anecdotally, I heard $6 per acquisition.

For Shopify embedding, you can include external scripts, including Adsense scripts, in a snippet such as single-product.liquid so that the ad will display on your product page. I also tried it on my blog page. It doesn't work as smoothly but the ads do show up.

Adsense is easy to use, implement and very standard. Compared to getting a sponsored post or sponsored ad, copy and pasting script codes is quite easy.  Those are all pluses. The downside is that Ad Blockers can easily block it. The already small dollar amount of CPM may be cut to zero because your ads are simply not showing. If Google shuts down your account, you are screwed.

I plan to write the next post on Youtube Monetization. If that's something you'd like to see please comment below! Every vote helps!

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