What is Google AdSense?

So I've been inspired by Darren Rowse to make a “back to basics” post. The rest of you can just wait for my next post!

AdSense in a Nutshell

Simply put, AdSense is a program that allows website and blog owners to rent ad space on their pages to Google, much the same way companies pay farmers to place billboards in their fields. The advertisements are drawn from Google's AdWords program, which is Google's self-service program for placing advertisements on its search result pages and an extensive network of partner and third-party sites. AdSense publishers (members of the AdSense program) receive an undisclosed portion of the revenue that Google receives from the advertisements displayed on their sites. Most advertisers pay for their ads using a pay-per-click model, although pay-per-impression is also possible.

What sets AdSense apart from many other advertising programs is that the advertisements are directly related to the content of the page on which they're displayed. This is done using a complicated but automated system that scans a page's content and uses a number of metrics to determine the page's primary topic. Advertisements that match the topic are then selected from the pool of AdWords advertisers that have agreed to have their ads displayed on third-party sites. Google has applied for a patent on the AdSense ad selection algorithms.

The automated ad selection process is perhaps Google's greatest accomplishment with AdSense, for it allowed them to scale the system to support almost an unlimited number of third-party sites, no matter what their size. This has allowed Google's to reach hundreds of thousands of web pages that other advertising services have been unable to reach because they too small to interest the services. This feat that has allowed Google's revenues from advertising to grow almost exponentially over the past few years as more and more sites are brought into Google's content network.

Google has been criticized for allowing low-quality “made for AdSense” (MFA) sites to flourish, but it can be argued that the economic model they have promulgated via AdSense has to some degree led to the current renaissance of the Web by providing a way for sites to make money by offering free services.

While AdSense certainly isn't for every site, it's something that every content-based site owner should consider if they're looking for ways to monetize their web properties.

Sponsored Link: Learn more about the ins and outs of
AdSense by reading Uncommon AdSense, my latest book about AdSense.

Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.

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