In fairness to Google Advertisers...

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

Most of you probably know that every time you click on one of those ads, an angel gets it's wings.

No.

Not really. A dollar or so probably drops from the advertiser's pocket into Googles and DU gets a few cents.

However, here's a rub as I see it. A lot of these advertisers would shit bricks if they knew they were spending money advertising here. I have a site that uses PPC (pay per click). It's an industrial site and quite often I get clicks from sites that have absolutely NOTHING to do with the products I sell and is just so much wasted money. I have to put up with it because our "organic placement" on Google is not what I would like. Google is already involved in one class action lawsuit with their "adwords" and I fully expect they will see others.

A lot of the advertisers we see here will likely be by small startups that don't know what they are doing yet (while many will not) and wanton clicks on these ads might not be a good thing for them.

Just some thoughts on the new ads.

[Hissyspit]

1. I think I would rather have the fundraisers, but I guess we should

see how it goes.

[parasim]

2. so...

You'll have to pardon my ignorance on how web advertising works, but are you saying that when someone clicks an ad here, DU gets paid a couple of pennies yet the advertiser pays Google a buck?

If that's what you are saying, then that would mean, if a right-leaning advertiser's ad somehow ends up on this site, we should click on it, thus contributing to DU as well as forcing the advertiser to spend money on someone who has no intention of buying anything from them. Right?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

3. In a nutshell... It may be a buck, sixty seven cents, or another

amount. People "bid" on certain words in which their ad will appear on the top or sidebar of the Google search engine.

Sites that carry these ads do so to get a certain percentage of the money from each click.

[Connie_Corleone]

6. Yeah. But you don't want to click on ads just to make right-wingers pay.

If Google finds out that there are fraudulent click thrus coming from here, DU gets banned out of the program.

And they will find out. Many websites have been banned from participating in Google ads because of fraudulent click thrus.

[parasim]

11. Ooooh. Can't upset the advertising gods...

...now can we?

Fraudulent click thrus... what a crock o' shit... Hey, they set up their little scheme expecting people to play by their rules... but that's just the thing... there are no rules on the internet.

[sandnsea]

4. It's brand advertising

Most people who use Google for real traffic are going to be sadly disappointed. Most people will find out how little people actually use search engines to find anything. The best use is to get a url like moviefone.com in front of a bunch of people so that they will remember it and either put it in the address bar or search. Yes, people really do put stuff like 'movie fone' in search engines. Check Dailykos numbers some time and see that most of his search engine traffic comes when people put in "dailykos". The number of clicks for Google adwords is really small unless you pay several dollars per click to come up in the top ten for something like Disneyland. But again, the companies that do that are really only paying to keep smaller companies from gaining internet notoriety.

I frankly think Google sucks, for a lot of reasons. But I don't blame people for trying to make it work for them.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

5. I disagree. In an area of industrial or non-mainstream products

it can and is very effective. I have the data on my work computer, but you would be surprised at how many would say type in "thermocouple" rather than a brand name. I've been doing it for quite some time now and the trend has changed.

[sandnsea]

7. And click the organic links

Whatever company is key for thermocouples is actually going to be searched on significantly more than the generic 'thermocouple'. There will always be some traffic generated through key phrase searches, but there's much better ways to generate traffic than adwords. Their best use is branding so that when people in the industry need a thermocouple, they'll remember the sites they've seen and go searching for them. Do you honestly believe Expedia and Travelocity became the top travel sites through key phrase searches??? Not hardly.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

8. Expedia is an entirely different animal...

try it. Google "thermocouple" and there are 4,300,000 results and the top three don't sell thermocouples. Anyone who already knows the company name will type the company name. The person I'm after is the one who does not know the name and will type in something generic.

That is where my PPC campaigns have brought in customers who often return by just typing my website's name.

[sandnsea]

9. It wasn't always

I remember when Expedia was first launched, actually before it was even Expedia and was more a travel search engine for MSN. They didn't get to be where they are through search engines.

I understand what you're after with search and ads, I'm saying it's not an issue for people clicking on links at DU because if it were people wouldn't use Adwords at all. It would be too expensive. It's not because it isn't a primary source of traffic and isn't meant to be. Knock yourself out with your internet strategy, but depending on PPC is almost always a lousy one.

[CatholicEdHead]

10. With AdBlock and Firefox I do not see what the fuss is all about