I wrote about a post of mine that was receiving quite a bit more traffic than I normally receive because it got popular on Reddit and StumbleUpon for a couple days. It looked like Google might have been ignoring the AdSense clicks from that post and counting them for any other posts during that hot period.
A couple people commented complaining about similar incidents and how this affecting their income. It is a point that I can’t disagree with as a blogger who uses AdSense on my blogs. If Google is applying any kind of filtering to abnormally hot posts, that is money that I will never see.
The question is whether Google should be filtering clicks from the hot posts.
I’m not sure I whole heartedly agree with the points I’m about to make, but let’s call them the Devil’s Advocate arguments.
What advertisers want
Orders and branding. When people click on an AdSense link it can do two positive things for the company. People can place an order. People can become aware of a company and/or product line that they might someday order or mention to a friend.
What contextual advertising provides
On a normal post on a normal day, the people visiting my blog are interested in the niche of the blog and are either regular readers in that niche or visitors that found an individual post through a search about that niche. These are people advertisers want to reach. If I am blogging about all weather tires, and car fanatics and people searching for “Best all weather tires in Missouri” are the ones clicking on the ads those are pretty legitimate potential customers.
The magic black box at Google will do what it does best and provide ads that are going to be as marketable to these visitors as possible which should lead to the highest click through rates and the highest conversion rates.
What happens when you get Dugg
So a post finally made the front page of Digg, Reddit or blew up on StumbleUpon. Thousands of new visitors land on your post. Who are these people? We all know that the percentage of people that are even going to bother clicking an ad from any of these sources is all but nonexistent. These are casual surfers. They are not looking to delve into the depths of your blog or niche while reading the post. Most of these visitors are one page and done. The best case scenario is that you will get another vote at whatever source is providing the traffic.
Sometimes there are clicks. With a thousand people that stop by, you figure somebody is going to click the ads every once in a while. I have no stats to back this up, but I would imagine that a fair portion of the AdSense clicks from Digg/Reddit/StumbleUpon traffic are either accidental or “tips” that the reader is giving the writer in appreciation for a good story.
Why these clicks are bad for everyone
Let’s assume Google isn’t filtering clicks from hot posts. That means people with virtually no interest in considering the product/company are clicking the ad and probably hitting the back button as quickly as possible. No sale. No real branding opportunity. Advertisers would end up spending money for very poor leads. These advertisers might get frustrated with the lack of return on their investment and abandon the online advertising scene for a while.
That would be bad for everyone.
The best scenario for everyone involved would be a post that has relevant content with ads that are properly targeted leading to landing pages for items/services that match the interests of the readers.
While there is a side of me that might believe most of that, there is a wallet that would be pretty angry. My wallet believes that if I write something that sends readers to companies, that I should get paid for that service.
At some point, the companies looking for the sales need to make sure their landing pages are set up for the best conversion rates and their ad campaigns are set up to get the most appropriate customers from my site. I send them. They sell to them.
If they are worried about getting the most qualified leads, then a magic black box that reads my words to determine which ads to display probably isn’t the best advertising vehicle for that company.
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