Is Adsense Going To Turn Associate Programs Obsolete

By Rich Hamilton, Jr
Posted Friday, July 23, 2004

When Google introduced their new Adsense revenue sharing program, people began to wonder if things would change. Certain questions have been burning in people's mind like: what's going to happen to Associate Programs, how do they compare against Google's Adsense and will Adsense cause Associate Programs to be obsolete?

Well, that really depends on a number of things, which I will go over. In this article I am only going to cover a few advantages and disadvantages of using Google's Adsense vs Associate Programs and which Associate Programs will prevail.

In case you are not familiar with Google's Adsense, Adsense is a new service provided by Google. This service allows you to have text based advertisements on your web site, known as Google Adwords. In return, you will receive a share of revenue based on a pay per click arrangement.

How Does Adsense's Advantages Compare To Associate Programs

Adsense and Associate Programs share some of the same advantages such as, Adsense is free to join and so are most other Associate Programs. Making them both easy to start and suitable for you whether you are a beginner or an experienced marketer.

Another advantage with Adsense, is that you never have to search for advertisers. Google supplies you with the advertisements by using highly relevant content targeted ads. This will insure that only precisely relevant advertisements are displayed on your web site. As for Associate Programs, you will have to search for quality programs and the relevancy of the program will depend on the one you select.

Adsense enables you to filter out up to 200 urls, so you don't have inappropriate ads or display advertisements of your competition. The last thing you want is to send traffic to your indirect competition. No one in their right mind would do that, right! Moreover, with Associate Programs you can select which ones you want to promote, instead of worrying about advertising your indirect competition.

How Does Adsense's Disadvantages Compare To Associate Programs

One of the biggest disadvantages of Adsense, is that they never really tell you what percentage you will receive. I don't know about you, but wouldn't it be nice to know what percentage of revenue you will receive. If an Associate Program was to do that, they would have absolutely no one participating in their program, but somehow Google can manage to get away with that. With associate programs, you immediately know what your commission percentage is going to be before you sign up.

Even though you can filter certian urls, you will still receive inappropriate advertisements. The advertisements are only as good as the person who wrote them and if they select keywords or phrases that are too general, this will result in inappropriate advertisements appearring on your web site. Most Associate Programs enable you to write your own promotional advertisements, giving you a little more freedom.

Adsense does not rotate their advertisements, so eventually your click through ratio will decrease, as repeat visitors are less likely to click through them. Eventually, I'm sure Google will improve the way it does it's content targeting and start rotating their advertisements. By promoting an Associate Program you can simply change the wording of the advertisement, but with Adsense you can't do that, you have your hands tied behind your back.

Adsense's stats are terrible, they don't tell you which advertisements your visitors are clicking through or which keywords are involved. Google supplies Adwords users with the adequate stats, you would think that they would do the same for their Adsense partners.

You should keep in mind that any advertisement that is on your web site, is portrayed to be your recommendation. If you are advertising a poor product or service on your web site, it will reflect on your credibility. Any product or service that you promote, should be a reliable one. Otherwise people will assume that you have poor judgement and it will hurt your credibility. By promoting Associate Programs, you can pick and choose quality products or services to promote, giving you full control, without damaging your credibility.

Which Associate Programs Will Prevail

Even though Adsense has a substantial amount of disadvantages, it will still have a major affect on a lot of Associate Programs that are currently operating today. In fact, you could say it's a wake up call for many merchants, especially for the ones who operate a poor Associate Program. So if you operate your own Associate Program, that has a low commission percentage and/or has a poor conservation rate, now might be a good time to start thinking seriously about improving your Associate Program.

As to which Associate Programs will survive and prevail over Google's Adsense, it will be determined by a number of things. In order for Associate Programs to prevail, they will need to offer a high commission percentage of 40% or higher, have a high conservation rate of 1% or higher, and be a breeze to promote.

In the end, Google's Adsense is merely just another avenue of generating profits on your web site. Associate Programs will not become obsolete. Moreover, they will filter out the good Associate Programs from those that are bad, and only the quality ones will prevail.

Moreover, you can expect that Google will improve their Adsense campaign overtime, proving that they are a worthy adversary to the Associate Program industry. You must be able to adapt and improve as changes occur.

About The Author
Rich Hamilton, Jr is the CEO/President of (http://www.ElitesMarketing.com). You can start earning cash today by joining our FREE Two Tier Associate Program and make $45 - $270 per sale (http://www.ElitesMarketing.com/assoc/).