Google plays musical chairs with affiliate ad networks
Double Clickization
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Google has bagged one affiliate network in favor of another.
At the end of August, the world's largest ad broker will discontinue its AdSense Referrals program, the affiliate network it launched back in March 2007. Now that Larry and Serg own ad behemoth DoubleClick, they'll do the affiliate thing through DoubleClick's Performics network. Except it's no longer called Performics. Yesterday, it was renamed the Google Affiliate Network.
Still with us?
Both networks work in much the same way. Third-party web sites (the affiliates) drive traffic to advertiser sites, and if this results in a sale - or some other action - the affiliate gets a cut. So Google has decided to eliminate a little redundancy.
The AdSense Referrals program dovetails with - you guessed it - Google's overarching AdSense advertiser network. But DoubleClick Performics - sorry, the Google Affiliate Network - will remain a completely separate operation.
Yesterday, members of the AdSense Referrals program received emails announcing the program's imminent death, and yes, they were urged to join the new Google Affiliate Network. But the messages also point out that AdSense users can replace their referral ads with standard cost-per-clicks ads.
"We're constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers," the emails say. "Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term."
In other words, the AdSense Referrals program never came close to matching with other big-name affiliate networks, including Performics.
Performics began life in 1998 as an independent operation, and in 2004, DoubleClick snapped it up for $58m. Then Google swallowed the swallower, forking over $3.1bn for DoubleClick while sidestepping regulators in both the US and the EU.
Google has posted the meat of its email to AdSense Referrals users here. AdSense Referrals code posted to affiliate sites will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August. ®
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COMMENTS
No Ads, Per Force!
I'm blind, and most ads don't include alts, hence get skipped with the touch of a key. And because I'm blind, I don't download images. And because I'm careful, I don't take no cookies from no-one unless approved first, do the same for javascript, and restrict ActiveX/Flash/etc to the trusted list. All of which means that the Internet stays mostly 1.0 for me. It's fast, too, and very peaceful, without popups I don't ask for, lots of noise from silly ads and terrible performance. I still allow bgsound and equivalent, because that's very occasionally cute. Meta refresh still accepted, too, because that's often used for more good than evil. The funny thing is that CSS is getting used more now that it's pretty much usable and the web is becoming more standards-focussed, so this setup even works in elinks! It's so nice to see new functionality actually *restore* interoperability, rather than take it away.
And The Register? Yeah, I've bought my merchandise already ...
Cheers,
Sabahattin
Who actually sees adverts anyway?
Once upon a time, there were static adverts. Just like the ones in newspapers. Nobody objected to them, because it was understandable that sites with no other form of income had to be paid for. Which meant there was a reasonable chance somebody might actually SEE the adverts, and thereby benefit the person that paid to show the advert.
These days, adverts are more likely to be annoyances rather than static ads, which means that most people block them. Daft move that -- now, people are LESS likely to see your ads.
Adsense, Google Informatics, Whatever
See adnim and John. Who gives a monkeys what they call the purveyors of crap, it wont darken my doors.
When you have discreet advertising, maybe I'll consider removing you from the List. Until then, ha!
Freetard? Not if my DVD collection says otherwise. And my subs to BBC and Sky. And my collection of videogames on various media (some of which I can't actually read any more - anyone got a spare floppy drive?) going back to the 80s. Oh, and to various sites that offer an ad-free version. Apart from that though, freetard, yes.
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