I have read through all the features of the new "Google Ad Manager", which has been opened up to everybody, for free, and I am totally baffled. https://www.google.com/admanager/login/en_US/index.html#features My initial opinions: 1. AdSense ALREADY does most of the things listed (serve ads, choose best ads, optimize CTR, etc.) 2. It optimizes ads served by AdSense, and mixes in ads from other PPC programs (I don't want any other PPC programs. Tried 'em, don't like 'em.) And how can Ad Manager possibly know what the eCPM is for the other ad programs? 3. It adds another layer of complexity, HUGE complexity, which must be dealt with. I'd rather work on my content, than try and squeeze out a few more pennies from every ad slot, by attempting to "micromanage". Yep. Baffled. What am I missing? I am ready to be enlightened. I need help on this one. . .
Um, this allows you to serve ads that are not AdSense ads. It is an ad serving solution that also happens to work with AdSense, but also works with direct ads. You cannot do direct ads with AdSense.
This is for websites that have advertising agreements with specific parties. As a way to manage the ad rotations for those ads on the site. When my site gets big enough (in ten years ) I imagine I'll have dedicated advertisers too, I'd need some tool to rotate the ads to make sure that they all got a fair share of the impressions.
Thanks, rustybrick. You have been a familiar name to me for years. So, in a nutshell, if I only run AdSense, then I need not concern myself with Ad Manager? squat seems to confirm this. There are SO MANY ways for a webmaster to spend his/her time. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something I should be doing with this. I can always revisit it again in the future, as squat suggested.
I think this is a very good move from Google and probably will be the end of OpenX. Infact Openx is also an awesome service but when you think about the power of Google, it would be hard to be alive for Openx. But it's also a big chance for Openx. Why? Probably Microsoft, Yahoo or another giant will try to acquire Openx to compete with Google.