25 September 2009

In Text Advertising and Google AdSense: Is that a good match for your site monetization?

AdSense is not enough?
It's no secret that AdSense represents an evolution from the distracting and non-targeted web ads of the past. Using the power of Google, AdSense ensures your site's ad content "jives" with your site's overall theme and visitor demographics.

Still, what if you could take things a step further by transforming your site's content into its own ad platform? That's exactly what Infolinks has done. The perfect complement to AdSense, Infolinks uses In Text Ads - and transforms your site's copy into ad copy in a matter of seconds. Better yet, there is no risk, it takes no space of your site, no commitment, you don't have to alter your site's content and your site will become profitable right away.

According to Infolinks Vice President Tomer Treves, "Infolinks In-Text ads complete the contextual web ad experience initiated by AdSense. Plus, it only takes a minute to get going and we don't hold you to any long-term commitments - it couldn't be simpler."

What is InfoLinks?
InfoLinks is an in-text advertising service that allows you to quickly and easily make money off your website’s content.  In-text advertising is when certain keywords on your website are used as a means of advertising. The advertisements appear in a link form which when clicked will bring you to the advertisers website or product page. These types of advertisements can be very useful and can also generate revenue for the publisher with very limited work. InfoLinks acts as a middle-man that makes the arrangements with all of the advertisers so you don’t have to, letting you, just focus on earning money.

Infolinks, Inc. is a leading provider of In Text Advertising services, working with online content publishers worldwide. Infolinks enables website owners and publishers to benefit from premium highly relevant In Text ads. Established in 2007 and backed by Primera Capital, Infolinks leads the industry with the most attractive business model and guarantees the highest revenue sharing basis to all partners. Since the incorporation of Infolinks, thousands of websites have been integrating their In-Text ads and the Infolinks team takes pride in making the process effortless, easy and immediately profitable.

In Text Advertising Appearance
Perfected by online advertising powerhouse Infolinks, this cutting-edge contextual ad service is the next step in complete website monetization. In Text ads look almost identical to embedded hyperlinks - only there's one key difference. When you look at an in-text ad, you'll notice a double line under a keyword within your site's overall copy. When users hover their pointer over the word, an ad bubble that relates to the keyword appears. If the users are interested, they click on the ad to go to the advertiser's site. It couldn't be simpler!

AdSense and InfoLinks: Does it work for the same page?
Yes, you can monetize your website with in text ads together with Google AdSense ads. AdSense has become such a standard monetization tool that you can see it alongside any other method of online advertising. With a trusted in text ads provider you can be sure that there will be no technical clashes with AdSense ads, and also, Google does not have anything against in-text ads.

Will In Text Ads affect AdSense Revenues?
No, in text ads do not affect AdSense revenues. The possible reasons are probably based on the nature of the click through rate (CTR). It seems that the type of visitor that clicks on a banner-like ad from AdSense (these ads surround the text) is different than the type of visitor that clicks on the in text ads within the content. They don’t replace one click by the other and therefore there is no influence on the earnings. One exception to this general statement is that when in text ads are just added to an existing website, they sometime get more attention than usual for a short while, but as the double underline links become more familiar, it all goes back to normal.

How much Revenue can In Text Ads add on top of AdSense?
This is a tricky question since earnings from online ads differ widely depending on many different factors. Based on the feedback of the users, who already implemented both advertising types on their pages, in most cases, with a good in text ads provider, your website revenues should not be less than half of the AdSense revenues (on top of the AdSense earnings). If you get less than that, you should look closely in the in text ads optimization approaches for the better site monetization.

More reasons to add In Text Ads to your Google AdSense equipped page
As we mentioned earlier, in text ads are not an AdSense alternative, but an AdSense supplement.
If you are already using AdSense ads on your website, it means that you’ve acknowledged the fact that ads are going to interrupt your visitors’ attention while they browse through your content. In fact, with the growing portion of flash banners within AdSense ads, they become more and more intrusive, grabbing your visitors’ attention away from the original content. If so then adding in text ads on top of AdSense is both logical and beneficial. In text ads are not as jumpy as flash banners, they are opened only upon your visitors’ active choice (when they hover over with the mouse), and they add substantially to your revenues. In text ads make sense together with Google AdSense.

Warning over In Text Ads use!
While most of the internet observers are giving positive feedback on the In Text Ads usefulness and future potentials, I want to present an opposite point of view to make the topic evaluation more leveraged.

At a first sight this advertising method represents a good way for online publishers to generate some money from their websites. But some experts think that you should stay away from it because it might be considered as quite an intrusive form of advertising, going against the main principles of web usability.

The hyperlink navigation structure is one of the most basic and most important features of the Internet. You should think twice before messing up with it. Check out the words of Jacob Nielsen, a web usability guru:
One of misery design’s most insidious recent examples is the idea of embedding links to advertising on the actual words of an article using a service like IntelliTxt. By sullying the very concept of navigation, such ads not only damage the user experience on the host site, they poison the well for all websites. Such links make users even less likely to navigate sites, and more likely to turn to trusted search engines to guide them to the next page.

Summary
Probably, the best way to test the concept is to run it. At least, I am going to try it first just on one of my sites to see, what is the income level, how can that affect to the general traffic, repetitive visits, bouncing rates, etc. Based on the evaluation results, I am going to make the final decision, is that good or bad for my blogs.




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