What is Adsense Advertising?

Google's Adsense program is a revenue-sharing opportunity for web publishers with their own web sites.

If you are familiar with the concept of PPC, it will be easy to understand Adsense advertising. With PPC you pay for clicks based on the keywords you choose. With Adsense you share in the PPC revenue.

With Adsense you serve text or image based Google AdWords ads on your web site. If visitors click these ads, you share the pay-per-click revenues.

Adsense will help you monetize your traffic

Is Adsense advertising a good idea or just a poorly compensated traffic leak? Most people I have talked to are very pleased with the Adsense program. That is they like the program. But as it is against the Adsense terms to share specifics about earnings and CTR I cannot offer more detailled information. All I can say is that I will continue using Adsense. It is simple to join. You only have to join once for all your sites. Setting up Adsense ads on your websites is a simple cut-and paste operation. It does not cost you anything to join. And there is no longer a need to chase advertisers for your websites.

I have found Adsense to be a very good alternative to only promoting affiliate programs. It is not allowed to build websites for Adsense advertising only. What this really means only Google knows. If you are in doubt, contact the Adsense support. They are very helpful. Personally, I use Adsense in addition to affiliate links. This approach has worked well for me.

Are there no disadvantages to Adsense?

I have not found any real disadvantages to publishing Adsense ads on my websites. But I do have a couple of wishes for improvements:

The reporting is easy to understand but offers no "in depth" reporting
I can understand that Google does not want to give out too much information in fear of click-fraud. Click-fraud occurs when webmasters click their own ads. Clicking your own ads is a big no-no and they will find out. Don't do it. But nevertheless the reporting suffers.

No disclosure of earnings
Only Google knows the numbers before the fact. You only find out after an Adsense ad has been clicked. And then you still do not know the percentage you were paid or which ad that was clicked.

But it is almost all good.....

I am a strong advocate of Adsense even though the "disadvantages" I list are real wishes for improvements. But the advantages of Adsense are almost too numerous to list. A big advantage I would like to stress is Adsense's broad appeal.

Adsense does not only work for monster-sites but is ideally suited for specialty niche websites with narrow audiences. If you are a web publisher Adsense advertising will allow you to focus on providing good content. Google will supply you with relevant advertisers.

For more information visit Google Adsense FAQ.