Google: Fewer Ads, More Money

python_kiss · on March 23, 2007

When I write articles, I try to minimize the number of ads in them in order to have better control over where the user clicks. If, for instance, a user clicks on an ad selling "knifes", he or she is unlikely to revisit the website and click on another ad or link on the website. With each successive ad, the control over where the user clicks becomes more chaotic.

The basic premise is the same as the one mentioned in Biz 2.0 magazine: If there are no ads on your site, you will not make money off of it. If there are too many ads on your site, nobody is going to click on them.

Daniel, thank you for posting this since before reading it, I did not have any factual data to back my claim :)

bootload · on March 23, 2007

'... if there are no ads on your site, you will not make money off of it ...'

Where is the investment opportunity with ads? Is it the Aggregation of attention?, eyeballs? It's not about the advertising. The real value in the intelligence of users, not eyeballs? ... that's where the money is. [0]

The way I look at it, UGC (user generated content) really just another form of advertising? [1] So when you write content (commercial info about a product made for profit) I'm really writing an ad, my ad. I value readers & their ideas and as such don't want to distract them with freeloader advertisers.

Reference

[0] Dave Winer, 'How to Make Money on the Internet v2.0'

http://davenet.smallpicture.com/2001/02/13/howToMakeMoneyOnTheInterne.html#4

[1] Dave Winer, 'How to make money on the Internet, 26 November 2006, MP3, 10.6 Mb, 10 min.'

http://static2.podcatch.com/blogs/gems/snedit/cn26Nov06.mp3

danielha · on March 23, 2007

If this were to be charted, I'd bet that it'd look something like the Laffer curve

danielha · on March 23, 2007

Similar to how in, say, supermarkets where the number of brands of a product on the shelves may show a negative relationship with the number of sales.

Offer customers too many choices and they will become overwhelmed and not choose anything.

teki321 · on March 23, 2007

And the sad thing is that there are really big stores with a lots of stuff but you have to visit at least two of them to get whatever you want :(.

Another really bad supermarket practice is when a product have got 3 different flavoring and one of them is going well, but nobody buy the other 2. The result is that they will abandon the product totally, it doesn't matter that one of the flavors went really well.

paahijen · on March 23, 2007

This is a bit smart, 'cos the clients fearing that fewer ads will be shown, will actually be willing to pay more $$s and thus the PPC rates will go up! Not sure about the long term impact though.. (eg. a frustrated client, inspite of bidding extremely high for a few keywords might not see his ad appearing at all, may switch to other system.)