Domain Authority, AdWords Quality Scores, & Parasitic Business Models
As more large trusted publishers launch ad networks will this force Google to rethink their authority heavy algorithms and ad quality scores that benefit these growing arbitrage plays? Or is Google promoting many small ad networks to spread the portion of the pie that they don't control really thin?
Shopping sites like Shopping.com, Yahoo! Shopping, BizRate, and NextTag already dominate Google's organic search results and paid listings.
Ask.com just announced their contextual ad network.
Amazon.com just had a solid quarter, and is selling ads directly via ClickRiver.
Why are ads on Wikipedia unthinkable? Because Jimmy Wales is gathering authority and content, waiting for his search project to launch. Don't be surprised if the Wikipedia contains ads soon after Wikisaria's ad program launches.
How many ad networks will online marketers be willing to sign up for?
If you think the web is full of spam now, wait until you see what it looks like when all the large brands put ads in the content, and when shady publishers have a dozen different distributed ad networks to chose from.
How many ad networks will AVERAGE online marketers
How many ad networks will AVERAGE online marketers be willing to sign up for?
A couple
How many ad networks will above average online marketers be willing to sign up for?
As many as they can find
Aside from testing, some networks blend rather well with each other. Being able to read a TOS and dance around affiliate managers is getting to be a useful skill in and of itself.
Aaron this is already the
Aaron this is already the case. Every good media product on the web gets plastered with ads until it is unreadable, even if only subconsciously unreadable. Look at ivillage.... I honestly find the pages so off-putting I avoid reading them. Since when did that become the model for success? Inline text ads, sidebar flash banners, static banners top and bottom, sliding promotions. The literate Internet adopters that adopted iVillage are mostly gone. I like to think they were replaced with ads. Several different ad networks.
The Forbes on-line experience is nothing like the Forbes print experience, and I think they know it. The writing is getting worse... indicating a lower quality standard within Forbes for the online edition. Online has become the the supermarket tabloid market for media.
A few (the New York Times) are taking a stab at making an online edition, but who else has such leverage? I think we'll see a separaton of tabloid-like ad-plastered online media from "other" before we see the others adopt all the ads.