The Amazon UK affiliate program now offers “Self-Optimising Links” – I’m not sure who comes up with these abuses of the English language, but the concept behind it is quite attractive:
With Self-Optimising Links, associates can now automatically display the products and content that best match their websites.
The links themselves come in a variety of sizes and offer a number of customisation options so that you can get them to fit into your site’s style.
The only thing that isn’t clear immediately is whether or not this form of contextual advertising would breach the Adsense terms of service. In some regards I could see it causing issues, whereas in others I don’t see as much of a conflict.
Certainly I’d be VERY cautious of using these without clarification from Google.
Rob – I’ve requested clarification from them. Hopefully they won’t take too long to let me know.
Ah well … Looks like I won’t be able to use them:
“Hello Michele,
Thank you for your email.
In general, AdSense programme policy does not permit Google ads to be published on the same page as other contextually targeted ads. We would therefore ask that you do not place these ads on pages that contain AdSense ads. You can review this and all Google AdSense programme policies, at https://www.google.com/adsense/policies .
For additional questions, we suggest you visit our AdSense Support site at
http://www.google.com/adsense_help . If you’re unable to find an answer to your question on our site, please feel free to reply to this email.
Sincerely,
Andrew
The Google AdSense Team
”