Inline Ad Alternatives


I thought I'd tell you about a couple of advertising services that are complimentary to Google AdSense and the other contextual advertising services. Since the relaxation of AdSense's exclusivity requirements back in January it's now quite safe to try and boost your earnings by displaying in line ads alongside AdSense. Two inline ad services you might want to have a look at are Kontera and AdBrite. I shan't dwell too much on Kontera because they have high traffic requirements just to qualify for their program. Reading around it appears you can use Kontera to make about half of what you make on AdSense each month.

The real focus of this post is to tell you about AdBrite's new inline ad service which started back in February. An example from my YouTube Karaoke site (a very good site - if you haven't been visit it at once!) is shown in the image above. The ads are still very new and so far few advertisers are using them, so you only get maybe one in line ad per page. It should be a shrewd investment for the future - especially if you haven't got enough traffic to qualify for Kontera. My preliminary investigations reveal that AdBrite inline ads pay about the same as their conventional ad unit counterparts - usually in the range 5 - 20 cents per click. If you use AdBrite I recommend you head over there, adjust your account settings and give the new inlines a try. You'll certainly be no worse off than you are now - in fact, you'll probably increase your earnings. No adjustment to the ad code is necessary - just change the settings in your AdBrite account. If you aren't using AdBrite and think you could benefit from inline ads, then please sign up and tell them we sent you by using our link below.



The CelebrityContest.net Entertainment Directory

Pretty much all webmasters know how hard it is to find good niche directories, especially in the entertainment and celebrities area, that are really helpful for your site and that don't cost too much: so it's very good news to know that the CelebrityContest.net Entertainment Directory finally got into the play - as this PR4 clean, uncluttered and SEO friendly directory is one of the most useful and powerful resources for every celebs/entertainment webmaster.

As a gift to all users, also, the directory owners just released a free and accurate link price calculator - an essential tool for all webmasters and SEO experts out there.

AdSense Shopping Carts


Check out the new ads making appearance on a web page near you - AdSense for content with shopping carts. The new ads indicate which sites accept Google Checkout as payment. If you don't know what Google Checkout is don't be too upset, because not many other people do either! It's kind of a poor man's alternative to PayPal - same functionality, but flagging brand awareness. You'll also notice Google Checkout buttons springing up on your Google search results in future - seems like they're really trying to push this brand (because it's the poor man's alternative to PayPal, like I said).

Get the full story at Inside AdSense.

Referral Endorsement

An important clarification regarding referrals has just been issued by the AdSense Team in the program's official blog, Inside AdSense. The clarification confirms that AdSense publishers are allowed to give "explicit endorsement" of the referral products. An explicit endorsement, although falling short of saying "click my referral buttons", does allow the publisher to imply that the visitor should download the referral product and experience the benefits of it. Statements like "this page is best viewed with Firefox and Google Toolbar" and "get Google Pack on this page" are permitted. Any endorsement must be in a way which supports the intended use of the product or service associated with the referral.

The logic behind this is that referrals are a "Cost Per Action" (CPA) product - the visitor has to complete at least 2 actions (click and download) before the publisher receives any sort of payment, which reduces the likelihood of click fraud via these ad formats. Furthermore there are some built-in constraints that prevent the same visitor from downloading a referral product, thus earning payment for the publisher, on more than one occasion.

AdSense for content ad units (the standard ads) remain an endorsement free zone - you must not draw any unnatural attention to these units on your page. It is not possible for a publisher to give an endorsement of these units because the content delivered by them is unpredictable, rendering any previous endorsement false and misleading. Encouraging clicks on these ads not only drives lower quality traffic to an advertiser’s site but provides poor data for an advertiser to make an appropriate bid on the click. This results in a poor experience for visitors and advertisers, which isn’t good for you as a publisher.

Check out the full statement at the Inside AdSense blog.