I am, or at least was a Google AdSense particpant. If you didn’t know, AdSense is a program wherein you place some code in your website that allows Google to serve up ads that relate to your content. You need a fair amount of traffic (much more than I get at this point) to make it worthwhile, but I still do it on some sites because it costs nothing to set up and ends up being a surprise $100 every three years or so.
I received this very cryptic email from them this morning:
Dear Publisher,
We understand that the recent economic turmoil has created a lot of uncertainty in the lives of AdSense publishers. During these difficult times, we’re continuing to invest in innovations that improve publisher monetization and advertiser value in the content network.
We’re focusing on further developing our product offerings and boosting ad performance for publishers. We recently announced advancements in AdSense for search and experiments to make ads more effective. We’re bringing DoubleClick technologies to AdSense publishers, and we’ll continue to launch new products and features. We’re also continuing to improve our offerings for AdWords advertisers, making it easier for them to target the Google content network. Features for advertisers, such as the new display ad builder, are designed to improve ad performance on AdSense publisher sites.
We’ll keep driving technological progress, but our best asset will always be our publisher partners. The strength of AdSense lies in the value of the content you bring to users and the quality of the sites you bring to advertisers. Our success is tied to yours. We look forward to partnering with you for the long term, and remain dedicated to helping you succeed.
Sincerely,
Kim Scott
Director AdSense Online Sales & Operations
I don’t know about you, but that didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Even the parts I understood left me wondering what on earth compelled them to tell me this. Contrary to popular belief, I’m no expert on the mind of Google. Fortunately, though, I know someone who is. My friend Tony is a grizzled veteran of the search industry. I sent him the above email and he provided the following translation:
Dear Sir:
Holy fuck, a lot of banks have gone out of business lately!
You’re probably wondering how the fuck we (or anyone you know) can help you make more money.
We might give you the ability to publish more ads… or to improve the targeting and tracking of the ads you already run.
We’re also helping other people spend what little money they have left.
So please, please let us keep making money off… er… FOR you. Yeah.
Sincerely,
Partition 48B-33849
Google Hive Mind
So…um…thanks?
On October 31st, 2008 at 10:51 pm mrjeffmccarthy said:
I don’t get why google is nervous…..don’t they have their own, seperate economy? Didn’t they just buy a fighter jet?