adsense "versus" Infolinks

LizK · #1 (**permalink**) 11-02-2008, 02:50 PM

there has been quite a discussion going on in the sbi forums about infolinks on our sites (33 pages worth of discussion) and i am still not convinced, one way or the other, about the future of infolinks on my site. (whether i will keep or ditch.) some people have reported infolinks surpassing their adsense income, and will keep infolinks on their site - despite technical problems and glitches including off topic ads, as well as the occasional porn ad on their sites. some people are quite upset with the off topic ads and even more upset with the occasional porn ad, and took infolinks off their site despite the extra income. ($500 a month already reported by one person).

i am torn about the future of infolinks on my site.
infolinks is quickly catching up with my adsense earnings, and i implemented it a few weeks after i implemented adsense.
i have not encountered any porn ads yet (that i know of), but have quite a few off topic ads on lots of pages. (ads for "cell phones" and weird phrases like "bang for your buck", etc.) additionally, it looks kind of junky and i don't want to offend/turn off any visitors with all the ads all over my pages.

Here are my adsense and infolinks stats...

i put adsense on a few of my pages for the first time on sept 4.
i put adsense on the rest of my pages, about a week later. (I have around 35 content pages).
i've made $102.13 thru today from 688 clicks.

i put infolinks on maybe 4 of my pages on sept 25th. i added infolinks to the rest of my pages no less than 2 weeks later. i have made $85.39 to date from 583 clicks.

the extra income is certainly nice, but bottom line, i'm not sure if it's worth losing credibility over having ads such as "bank loan" and possibly some porn that i am not aware of....

perhaps someone can give me their 2 cents on my dilemma??

thanks y'all!!

lisa · #2 (**permalink**) 11-02-2008, 08:26 PM

I think the last few sentences of your post say a lot. Sometimes your credibility is worth more. Is there a way you can apply some kind of filter to the infolink ads like you can with adsense?

LizK · #3 (**permalink**) 11-02-2008, 08:56 PM

hi lisa-
supposedly there is, and supposedly my filter is already "applied."
i had heard about some sbi folks emailing them directly asking them to assist with targeting so i did that as well, and i was told they were working on "adding more relevant ads" and that i should see a difference in a couple of weeks.
well this was 3 or so weeks ago, so i guess it's time for one more email asking for assistance before i make my final decision.
the "almost equal to" adsense money is quite nice, but certainly not at the cost of losing even one iota of my site's credibility.
thanks for chiming in

James · #4 (**permalink**) 11-03-2008, 08:13 AM

There are several things to consider. Of course, your credibility and reputation do come first. You have to think about how you may be affected by anything you do on your site.

First, I would say that somethings are just unacceptable. Porn ads would certainly be one and I wouldn't even consider allowing them to stay if they do not filter out such as that.

I do not think ads such as those for bank loans would hurt, even if your content suggests that taking out loans for your wedding is not a good idea. I am working on a financial site and I am sure I will be looking at that issue myself. I have no problem allowing bank ads even though I recommend against most of their services.

However, I would be a little cautious about placement. People know that google ads are not chosen by the site itself and will assume the same for other ads that are grouped as ads for example. But if you openly solicit ads and have larger, more prominent ads that look more like affiliates I think people would assume your approval to some degree.

The conclusion is that you have to use good judgment. Don't "cut off your nose to spite your face" as the old saying goes, but use your "informed intelligence" to make good choices. You have proved to have good skills in that area.

LizK · #5 (**permalink**) 11-03-2008, 11:13 AM

great food for thought james! regardless of how much money i would make, it's not worth losing visitors and credibility in the long run.
i'm still waiting to hear back from my customer service rep on additional filtering, but i have a feeling i will end up taking infolinks off regardless of what his reponse for a solution may be. it's just not worth the risk.

thanks!

LizK · #6 (**permalink**) 11-06-2008, 11:46 AM

here is the response back from infolinks support, finally:

Hi Elizabeth ,

The only changes that can be made in terms of ads are:
1) To define a list of keywords from your site that will be given priority. If
there are valuable ads available for these words, they will be given priority
to be turned into Infolinks.
2) You can send me a list of blacklist words, which means any ads containing
these words will not
appear on your site.

Before taking any of these measures, please be aware that left on its own, our
algorithm selects the most valuable ads available, which is why Infolinks is
the highest paying in-text service. Placing restrictions on the algorithm can
reduce your revenues drastically, which is why in cases like yours I generally
advise against it.
We are in the process of expanding our advertisement inventory; Once we do so,
the algorithm will naturally select more relevant ads without having to tamper
with it.

If you would still like to go ahead and use one of the methods I mentioned,
please send me the list(s) of words and I will enter them into your account.

Let me know if I can help you with anything else, I will be happy to assist
you,

So it seems they are still "working on" making the ads more relevant.
I think my best course of action is to send them specific keywords for my site instead of the ads having carte blanche. Will take me awhile to compose that keyword list, but very much worth it since it will prevent cell phone, car loan, and other such random ads from appearing on my site.

...wait now that i'm re-reading that email, it only says the keywords would be given PRIORITY, it didn't say that ONLY ads for those keywords would be on my site. guess i will have to do some more inquiring!

mirage2009 · #7 (**permalink**) 11-06-2008, 01:37 PM

well I would go with the blacklist
and send them a list of words that I don't want on my site, that would keep the valuable adds while excluding words that you choose such as mobile, loan, insurance, porn and stuff like that

LizK · #8 (**permalink**) 11-06-2008, 01:43 PM

hey mirage-
you would think that would be the easiest route, but there are some really strange and random words that they choose to use as ads.
for example:

"believe it or not"
"cart before the horse"
"bunch of money"
"stock"
"important component"
"a holiday"
"online resource"
"printer"

the list goes on! how on earth would i know what words to blacklist, since they pick such odd words and phrases to make into ads! that is more frustrating than anything!

honestly i'm shocked that my infolinks income is surpassing my adsense, because the ads are totally ridiculous.

mirage2009 · #9 (**permalink**) 11-06-2008, 01:46 PM

you really got me laughing with those adds of theirs, and I guess you are right

James · #10 (**permalink**) 11-06-2008, 05:37 PM

Frankly, your first instinct was to drop these ads. I have resisted that thinking it was not necessary as long as you weren't getting porn or something. But I think I have changed my mind.

You have links in your text that point to other pages of information and it works really well for your site. It adds a lot to the navigation from point to point.

You do get things I would not like. For example, you mentioned credit cards at one point and you are getting a debt elimination ad. These are horrible companies for the most part and do not represent a good solution for most of their victims. I would be disturbed by that, personally.

But just as important, in my estimation, I think having the ads in your text is a negative overall. I admit a prejudice here, but I personally avoid most sites that use them at all because I find them so distractive. If the ads were to the side, like google, they would not be so bad, but especially in the text, I just wouldn't use them.

I realize some of this is personal taste and opinion so take it for what it is worth.

LizK · #11 (**permalink**) 11-10-2008, 09:55 AM

james i agree and i also get annoyed with sites that have ads all over the content itself. i heard back from noa again, and seems i can send her a list of keywords in order to totally eliminate the non-targeted ads. since each page on my site has less than a handful of relelvant keywords (for that page), i think implementing this method should eliminate the possible "annoyance" factor for my reader. at most there would be 3-5 infolinks ads on any given page, and that's only if there are ads available for each of those keywords.
i think this will be a good solution to my issues with infolinks, and will test it out and see how i like it before i decide to remove it altogether.

thank you!

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