How Google Took the Work Out of Selling Ads

[DudeAsInCool]

In Sunday's NYTimes, James Fallow's takes a look at Google's Adsense program and hot it works. Here's a short excerpt:

AdSense allows Google and the advertisers to avoid the waiting. Google's great technical strength - the "sun in its solar system," as Mr. Stein put it - is the way it automatically grasps the themes and emphases of each Web page. With AdSense, anyone who operates a Web site - a blogger, a community activist, a retailer - installs a bit of code that transfers control of part of each page to Google. Then users who visit the page will see a short list of ads that, according to Google's analysis, represent the most likely match between the subjects discussed there and the advertisers' products - ads for veterinary supplies on a cat fanciers' site, for example. Each time someone clicks on an advertiser's link, the advertiser pays a fee to Google, and Google passes some of that on to the Web site operator.

You can read the full article at the NY Times website:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/business...ney/13tech.html

[MoonMan]

Google's AdSense program is still off. It is a definite way for sites to make some money but sometimes the ads they show are just plain retarded.

Take, for example, how ZP used to show ads for KaZaA Gold on the front page. Anyone with the slightest bit of "sense" when it comes to p2p will realize that K Gold is a blatant scam.

Edited June 13, 2004 by MoonMan