I often hear people complain about advertising on a particular website. Most of the time it is in reference to a website such as Weather.com which has floating javascript ads, pop-unders, and other highly-intrusive ads that actually interfere with your ability to browse the website. But there are also plenty of people who complain about contextual ads such as Google or Yahoo being too 'invasive'. The mantra of many people seems to be “you can have ads, but put them in a place where I won't see them”.

Obviously if you have advertising on your website, your goal is to make money from that ad, and putting an ad on a website in a place where it will not be seen is the same thing as not putting an ad on the website at all. If you want to make money from advertising, you must give the advertiser an opportunity to have their ad clicked on, which means putting the ad in front of users.

So where is the balance in publishing ads on your website? At what point does publishing ads detract from the purpose of your website, and is it possible to publish ads 'tastefully'?

A Responsibility to Your Users

The reason there is a debate over the suitability of ads on a website is because of the many examples of website owners failing to responsibly use ads on their website. Chris Garrett over at Performancing.com posted on his personal experience of trying to maximize Adsense revenue.

“My whole goal changed to getting traffic in to the site and out through my adsense ads. I quickly learned that I was most successful when people saw my snippet in Google and thought my content would provide what they were looking for but really didn't. Visitors arriving at the sites would make me most money if they quickly left. My efforts switched from good content to good advertising placement. From quality traffic to maximum traffic. At the point where I peaked in earnings was when I felt the worst about what I was doing. ”

I can relate with Chris on this very point. When I first discovered Adsense and the ability to make a significant passive income with it I came to the exact same conclusion. A website with Adsense performs best when the people visiting the site realize that the information they thought they were going to see is not there. However, an advertisement that promises that information is present, and the user thus clicks on the ad. So, if you want to maximize your contextual ad revenue, bring in visitors with the hope of them leaving immediately through one of your ads.

How effective is this in converting visitors to clicks? The network of websites that I was working with at the time saw clickthrough rates of approximately 15% - on a consistent basis. There was certainly money in turning traffic in this manner, but was it ethical? Like Chris, the point where I peaked in my Adsense earnings is the point where I felt worst about what I was doing.

The fact was, my intention changed from actually creating something useful for visitors to bringing users into a page that had only one intention: force them out through an ad. Doing this required that I no longer provide quality content, and essentially was a form of lying to the visitor, regardless of how impersonal it was.

A Responsibility to the Advertiser

One of the problems with using an advertising network such as Google (or even a banner network such as Fastclick) is that there is no relationship between yourself and the advertiser. Your website becomes a money making tool through the ads, and your goals can quickly be aligned with whatever will generate money from those ads rather than providing the advertiser with a real opportunity to tell the world about their product or service.

In the most extreme cases this manifests itself in the form of click fraud. Now I'm not going to go into the gory details of what click fraud is, how horrible it is, the number of times that it rears its ugly head in PPC programs. There are plenty of articles on that topic. But I will say this: click fraud is stealing. If you click on an ad on your website without any genuine interest of what that ad is selling, then you are, in effect, stealing from that advertiser.

But behind every ad on a website is an advertiser. And behind every advertiser is a person who is responsible for the success of that ad. Whether the person behind the ad is a struggling new business with practically no advertising budget or an employee at a Fortune 500 company who is looking to perform their job duties well, behind every advertisement is a person who is trusting web publishers to display their ad in a manner that will bring in quality traffic.

The Need to Monetize Your Website

The Internet, whether you like it or not, is driven by money. Of the most visited websites, the vast majority of them exist to make money. The most basic formula for success on the Internet is to offer quality content and offer your users the ability to make a profitable action, whether that is clicking on an ad or purchasing a particular product or service. This is how Google and Yahoo are so successful and it is how the vast majority of the most visited websites make money.

This formula should be no different from your website. I am assuming your website exists with the intention of making some extra income. If this is not the case and it exists just for the purpose of having a website, then this article probably does not apply to you. But most who are reading this are trying, in some way, to monetize their websites. From online stores to content based sites such as Site Reference, we are all trying to make a little money.

If we look back at the basic formula for success, however, the beginning of success on the Internet is to offer quality content. You have undoubtedly had it driven into your brain that content is king in SEO – the same holds true for making any money on the Internet. Quality content is ultimately your secret for success.

This does not mean that you must now go out and create hundreds of pages of content. If you own an online store, all this means is that you must offer quality products. If you are selling a service, then that service must have some substance to it. The secret of success on the Internet is actually the same as the secret to success in the offline world – it all starts with having something to sell.

Be Proud to Display Your Ads

Advertising is not evil. What is wrong, however, is when a website owner places a higher priority on driving traffic to their ads than they do on providing real content for those who have taken the time to visit your website. Like most things that are evil in life, it is not the advertising itself that is evil, but the way in which we implement it.

As a website owner you have a responsibility to your visitors to offer them the content that you promised. If you choose to monetize your website with ads, you also have a responsibility to your advertisers, regardless of how impersonal the relationship is with them, to display their ads in a fair manner.

This does not mean that you have to tuck their ad away in some hidden corner of your website (in fact, this can be a disservice, especially if they are paying on a CPM basis). You should display your ads proudly on your website in places that your visitors will see them. Just be sure to keep in mind that your content, and your users, come first.

About this author

Mark Daoust is the owner of Site Reference.

Check out the new Top 10 Analysis service by Site Reference!

 

Related articles

I Was An Adsense Dummy. Are You?
It seemed like an easy way to make money when it first came out and, let\'s face it, Adsense was miles ahead of everything else. But, you need to move with the times. Sitting still is good but it gets you run over.

The Trouble With Click Fraud?
Click fraud involves the process of intentionally clicking ads listed on your website for the purpose of earning money rather than intending to view the products of the advertiser. It is a huge issue that plagues the success of Adsense. If you participate in Adsense then be warned on both sides of the field.

ARTICLES: General Internet Marketing Website Development Search Engines Archives Submit an Article
WEBMASTER TOOLS: RSS Parser Keyword Density Checker Verify Your Site Links Backlink Checker Check Indexed Pages What's Your Website Worth