"AdSense launches new channel targeting feature for advertisers" is the headline today at http://www.jensense.com/ As always, Jen does a great job of describing this new change. https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=47413 What are your thoughts regarding this new feature? Will more advertisers now opt-in to the content network, due to the ease of specifying the exact pages their ads will appear on? Should we all immediately click the "targetting box", to increase the number of ads shown on our pages? Will it result in higher earnings for Adsense users? The first step would be to "update" all your Adsense codes, so that the new additional information of "channel name" will be displayed, as it is now on all new Adsense code provided (along with the date the code was changed- Adsense has been doing this for a couple of weeks now).
Actually, according to Jen at Jensense, Adsense has been adding the channel name and the date, to the Adsense code, since September 24th. http://www.jensense.com/archives/2006/09/new_line_of_cod.html Another forum confirmed this (I'm a little slow on this one - I noticed it last month, but didn't mention it). Apparently, they did this to prepare for the new advertiser "page targetting" that was introduced yesterday. Now an Adwords advertiser can easily see your channel name, by simply looking at your source code, making it easier for them to "page target" a particular page (or channel of pages) on your site. Some webmasters may want to change some of their channel names for 2 reasons - 1. Make the name more "understandable" to the visiting potential advertiser, for targetting purposes, and 2. Remove any words which would indicate your competitive intent, if they happen to be present. Any comment from anyone else?
That's what I was concerned about. Doesn't "site targeting" mean CPM ads? As in, 25 cents per 1000 impressions? With the normal CPC ads, if you are getting a 20 cents EPC, and a 5% CTR, that would be $10 per 1000 impressions, or 40 times the 25 cent eCPM of CPM ads. And what about the posts about having to contact Adsense to "opt out" of "site targeting", because of the poor payouts? From what I have read, site targeting is a negative for small publishers. I'm trying to find the "upside" to this, for publishers. What am I missing here?