I guess there must be many people having discussed this issue. However, it is really important for Google and us publishers to think it over. PPC could be an effective business model for online advertisement. However, this can be true at the beginning when such a type of advertisement model appeared. When more and more advertisers are running this type of advertisement, some shortcomings come up as well. PPC would not be an efficient way for an advertiser to maintain a good ROI. For reasoning, I divide people who are online in three groups: (1) webmasters like us, (2) web surfers who do not know anything on AdSense, (3) people between the groups of (1) and (2). For group (1), as everyone know what AdSense means, they would intentionally seldom or almost not click any adsense ads (even though sometimes they are really interested in the ads); they prefer to using Google search toolbar. Obviously, this type of behavior contradicts the purpose and nature of an advertisement. For group (2), these people don't know much on AdSense. They only know that these are advertisements (not caring where ads are from and whether their clicks would help to make money for webmaster or not), so they probably intend to click those ads if they are interested. In fact, this is the most healthy and expected advertisement reaction. If every ads are being treated in this way, then I believe there can be a good ROI for each advertiser. However, one permission from Google essentially destroys such a kind of healthy operational model. That is, content blending, which make people from group (2) click ads blindly in a high chance (they thought those links belong to the site and they would be led to another useful page in the site, but that is not true as we all know). In my opinion, content blending is very harmful to the future of Google AdSense, especially when some people try to abuse this type of permission to create a lot of scamming sites for the purpose of clicks only (without any useful contents). Thus, I believe that clicks from this group are largely inflated with many of them not from surfers real intention. For group (3), they seems more acute to those ads than group (2). They can identify AdSense links from general site links, so they would not click ads blindly. But they are not as refusing as those webmasters who are running AdSense from clicking any AdSense ads. They would click those ads if they are really interested. Thus, I think clicks from this group of people are most qualitative. Sorry for my poor english
I honestly think over the next few years, you will see Adsense and other things like it go booming. When people realize you can create money online through a website, it will be happening. Computers and the internet are the future.
Yah, that is true, but I think something new that is more effective for advertisers would become popular. Of course, in the future PPC would still be there, but it could be like today's CPM with very low pay per click given blind click inflation and loss of interest of advertisers. As a webmaster, I wish adsense to stay for ever, but we have to think some negative issues that it faces.
I would have thought when people become more aware of adsense (the fact that publishers are paid their share) they end up clicking less on ads.
so my suggestion: take advantage of the current good time of adsense, try to earn as much as possible lol
Ad blending isn't that big a deal with most people. All Adsense ads still show "Ads by Google". The blending tips Google provides is just to make the ads integrate better into the site and be seen as a relevant alternative for navigation (away from the site). PPC is a much better option for most advertisers, since they only pay for an actual click. Google is constantly striving to provide the best ROI for advertisers (take Smart Pricing into account). CPM and CPA also have their uses. I don't think Adsense will go anywhere except grow in strength and increasing in the number of advertisers/publishers.
As long as there is ROI on invest advertisers will continue to use AdWords which means we as publishers will continue to earn. I personally think that earning will probably drop over the coming year or two across the majority of industries because I don't really think that the ROI on investment is there in AdWords and that in the coming months online advertisers will become more savvy as to what is value for money. I also feel that at some point along the link Google is going to have to integrate something somewhat similar to the coop in that advertisers having ads displayed on other sites will need to receive some form of inbound link value because otherwise advertisers will just move towards investing in better investments, and if I was going to be completely honest an advertiser is better off spending $300 on some good inbound links to increase their SERPs than $300 on AdWords. I just think that that is the biggest flaw in AdWords to date... That said I also think that there will be increasing stability in the program in the future as well as more businesses come online and more publishers begin to build sites. This just lends itself to a more stable online economy.
I hope its here to stay for a while yet but like everything in IT who knows whats 5 years down the track
Adsense or for that matter any online advertisement is a lot ore reliable than traditional ways of advertising. You got to pay only for people who actually see/visit your site, not based on any estimates. While its true that cost per action kind of ads will get more importance, adsense is not going to die that soon. Spammers will get smarter and ofcourse google is also going to get smarter. When it dies one day (if it ever does) there would be another better / smarter way of doing online ads. As long as people logs in to internet to get the info, online advertising is going to be alive.
I am assuming those negative issues you are referring to is clik fraud. Well, click fraud, according to Google themselves and independent research suggests it being kept reasonably low. with Google applying more strict anti-click fraud measures, this can only improve.