Your Earnings from Google AdSense Are About To Dip
What you see on the right is a 300×250 rectangular Google AdSense Ad unit. Ideally an ad unit this size should show 3-4 different ads but maybe there isn’t enough inventory and therefore, all you see is 1 ad somewhere near the middle of the rectangle.
When a website visitor hovers the mouse over this Google Ad block, the cursor changes from a pointer to an hand and he can click anywhere inside the rectangle to visit the advertiser’s website.
However, this will soon change as Google has redefined the definition of a click.
Now a visitor will have to click either the Title or the URL of the Google Ad for the publisher (you) to make money.
Going back to the screenshot, only clicks made in the Red Area will be treated as valid while the Yellow Areas will not be clickable. In the current AdSense Ad formats, the entire block (both red and yellow) is clickable.
A site visitor who is genuinely interested in the advertiser’s site will have to position his mouse cursor exactly over the red area in order to visit the external website. This could reduce the overall clickthrough rate and you may see less earnings but it’s definitely a good thing in the long run both for publishers and advertisers.
Google says that similar functionality exists for ads appearing on the Google.com main website but there’s a small difference - only the title is click on Google homepage but for AdSense ads on the publisher’s website, both title and advertiser’s website URL will be clickable.
From AdSenseAdvisor - “To clarify some questions that have come up, this means that only clicks on the title or URL of a text ad will take users away from your page, register as clicks in your account, and result in advertiser charges. Clicking an ad’s whitespace will no longer do anything. We’ll have more details about this change in an AdSense blog post coming soon.”
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That’s not an anti click fraud feature. It’s a rip off, plain and simple. If Google do this I’ll remove all of their ads from my sites.
This is Insane!
For a 468*60 Ad unit, it mostly shows only one link and this can reduce earnings significantly..
I totally agree with the point that Google should make the remaining yellow area unclickable.
Google is a monster.. :(
I understand this differently. The Adsense Rep states that ” users can click only on the title and URL of a text ad” which I think means that the description and background will no longer be clickable.
That’s really rude!!.
They keep on banning adsense alternatives like TLA and simulataneously reduce the earning oppurtunities on their own system!!!.
WAit and see how long publishers will take adsense as their first earning option…..
When I was reading the forum thread I could not understand it clearly. but your post explains very clearly what is going on with this.
Thanks for your post.
What are they exactly changing? Hope they don’t keep the entire rectangle as a clickable region and pay publishers only when visitors click on the title and URL. That will death for publishers
There is no screenshot in the post :(
Hi Amit,
As I read the email sent to you by Adsense team. I couldn’t find anywhere that whitespace(yellow space highlited above) will remain clickable. How did you infer that from mail? Also, dO you know the timeframe in which they are going to roll out this feature?
Those who are using unit 300×250 will be at loss.
Simply change the ad size. thats it.
huh … you deleted my comment ?!?!?!?!?
I was the first commenter … and I pointed out the mistake you made in your post!
yea right … now i know the real Amit!!!
Hi Amit,
I am sorry to say that I totally disagree.
I think bloggers are going to see a huge increase in their adsense payout. Not because they changed the clickable area in the ads, but because they changed the their whole approach to content advertising.
For a very long time content advertising was known among advertisers as a worthless advertising venue where scam artists conspired with google to steal your money. Because of that many advertisers (including myself) did not use content advertising.
With the introduction of CPC (cost per click) and CPA (cost per action) in content advertising, many advertisers will start using the content network again and the flow of money to bloggers will increase.
Another important thing is that bloggers actually produce valuable content, content that might lead a customer to click on an ad and perform a purchase and so most of the content network advertising dollars will go to bloggers and not to spammers.
Just my 2c
Won’t this hurt Google’s revenue as well? They charge on CPC.
Ankur, Martin - The post is now updated. Thanks for the feedback.
Yoav - Sorry but I am missing your point here. The approach remains the same AFAIK - only the percentage area that’s clickable inside an ad unit has been reduced.
Andri - I did not delete your comment but the problem could be Akismet.
Although, I do not agree with some of the Google moves - especially when they use their authority to put others out of business. This move makes sense from publisher point of view.
This is done to ensure that the visitor does not click the ad by mistake. This is ensure that advertisers will get genuine interested traffic and that means they will bid for higher rates…thereby incresing revenues for publishers too….
I think what google has gone is right.
Take a holistic view guys. Any simple hyperlink like my name here is the the only clickable part. The area around it is not clickable.
Why should the internet simpletons be fooled into clicking something so that publishers get more money ? Think ethically ! Any comments ?
Google has taken a step in the right direction. But this means, I will make even lesser than $1.56 in a week!
I clicked on the below this post. I twas showing Google Jobs and only one ad was appearing in the entire area. I clicked in every corner and it did take me to
…google.com/intl/en/jobs/engineering
So your explanation is wrong and Invalid.
my comment deleted too??
it was there yesterday when I commented? I guess akismet does not delete already published comments?
is it so??
So far this change has not effected publishers who use old adsense code.
I don’t think this will reduce CTR , but this will make perfect the CTR. This is a correction of adsense ad. and good news for Adwords advertisers.
i wish to remove adsense from my site
They’ve already made the certain areas of ads unclickable. As a web publisher, this is totally unacceptable for me. Some visitors might accidentally click on the white unclickable area, so I guess this was the right thing to do.
think it already happned..my revenues are on a landslide!!
Revenues from my ads have been up and down.. I think if you push the optimization envelope you can counteract the new ad format