Over the last few weeks Google Adsense has added a number of new features for publishers. Some are probably better than others.
The “advertise on this site” feature is being pushed by Google as a way of increasing your revenue, however it does not link into the referral program. I would have thought that a fairly high proportion of publishers would be using the referral program in the hope of earning extra cash, but the lack of any incentive on the “advertise on this site” feature is making me stongly consider opting out.
On a positive note they have expanded the Firefox referral program to include international publishers. For some odd reason, though, it only works for windows users.. Maybe they think that Linux and Mac users already use Firefox.. Who knows?
The ads for both programs are not unattractive, though the lack of variety will surely lead to “banner blindness” quite quickly:
Urgh – I hate the “monetised” one. I wonder did they localise it – I’m sure it should be spelled “monetize”. It is an over-the-pond-ism after all.
Since every blogger and his dog has google ads, I wonder how much revenue the referrals will actually generate.
Google does indeed localise to English English for the UK and Ireland. This is nice of them – very few multinationals bother.
And someone actually clicked on one of my Firefox ads, surprisingly – just the one, though…
Rob – localisation == more money
Rob – I was referring to localisation in general.
I would have thought that the set of people who are likely to be irritated by Americanisms and the set of people who are likely to click on ads have little or no crossover…