Google has been the dominant player in search advertising for a long time, but is Yahoo and Microsoft about to shake things up with their joint effort? Only time will tell, but one thing that is certain is that the online marketplace will definitely see many changes in the coming months as Yahoo and Microsoft implement their search agreement.

The advertisers that use Yahoo’s ad platform will soon be migrating to Microsoft’s adCenter. The full transfer is anticipated to take place over the next 24 months and will begin in the U.S.

According to David Pann, Yahoo’s Vice President of Search Advertising, the company hopes to have the U.S. migration completed in time for the holiday season this year. However, if meeting that timeline means sacrificing quality, Pann told WebProNews that Yahoo would simply move the timeline to ensure the highest quality transition.

After the deal is implemented, Microsoft will be in charge of the core advertising platform for both companies, which specifically includes matching, ranking, pricing algorithms, and more. Yahoo, on the other hand, will maintain its responsibility for the consumer experience.

Speaking about the benefits of the deal, Pann said it was a “win” for advertisers, consumers, and publishers.

“It’s really a win for advertisers with a single buy getting access to more inventory, it’s a win for consumers for a greater relevance, and it’s a win for consumers and publishers since they have greater access to a new set of participation and inventory.”

In spite of all the changes the deal will bring for advertising, Pann was quick to say that Yahoo is still innovating and would continue to do so.

Keep watching WebProNews for more on Yahoo’s current innovations as well as information on company’s mobile and real-time efforts.

Posted by randfish

Earlier this month, Google launched personalized results by default for all users. SEOs should have already read Danny Sullivan’s analysis of the shift (which is quite excellent) and I also suggest checking out David Harry’s Guide on the topic. Sadly, despite some good advice, it appears that a lot of folks are still worried that this is somehow the "end of SEO" or demands a "completely new look at SEO practices." Let’s do a brief analysis:

What’s the Impact for SEOs?

• Rank Checking is Less Universally Accurate
  While not the biggest tragedy, it’s certainly a bit frustrating to know that rank tracking (manually or with tools) may provide somewhat less authoritative data than before. Though, to be honest, rank tracking has always been about establishing a baseline, not about exact results (see previous posts on this). Still, if you’ve been using this data to see how you fluctuate in the "normal" (non-personalized or geo-targeted) results, it’s still solid for that purpose and may actually help you determine if you’re gaining or losing in the new, personalized world (if you get more traffic but rankings stay the same, personalized might be helping; if you gain rankings but don’t proportionally benefit in search traffic, it may be hurting).
  _
• The Rich Get (Even) Richer
  Those at the top of the results, who "own" the queries around their niches are likely to benefit disproportionately as mid and long tail queries that would once have shown more alternative sources will now bring up those "previously visited" sites even if their traditional relevance and popularity scores wouldn’t have earned them a top position. This will likely contribute to some lowered diversity in the results, but may help fight against low quality re-publishers and content aggregators in favor of trusted brands.
  _
• User Experience & Branding Boost SEO (Even More)
  It’s always been critical to make users love your site, but now the direct SEO impact can be felt even more strongly. Sites and brands that "suck at SEO" may even find themselves performing better if their users love them and the pages are, at least, accessible to engines. I’m buying Steve Krug’s new book – Rocket Surgery Made Easy - ASAP either way
  _
• Buying Traffic May Now Help Organic Results
  If Google really is using signals from all sources of data, the paid results and their impact on search and visit history might now give a boost (indirectly) to positioning in the organic results. In fact, it could be that even services like Google AdSense or other paid advertising that leads a visitor who’s logged in to their Google account and using the toolbar (or other detectable methods of tracking) will "count" towards the personalization metrics. I expect lots of SEOs to start testing and reporting on this soon.
  _

What Should We Do Differently in our Campaigns?

• Get More Visitors (Any Way We Can)
  Depending on how Google is counting visits and traffic (which they haven’t and probably won’t ever fully disclose), any way you can drag a visitor to your site and give them a good experience is likely to positively contribute to your chances of ranking better in personalized results.
  _
• Improve Brand Loyalty
  SEOs haven’t classically focused on brand metrics and branding as a marketing practice, but it’s long past due. The benefits of building a strong brand are evident everywhere in the consumer (and B2B) marketplace. Now Google’s giving us one more reason (and a more direct one at that) to start earning visitors’ love and, in turn, be rewarded by higher rankings. 
  _
• More Tightly Integrate Metrics w/ Rank Tracking
  Again, this has been a wise move long before personalization, but with the expansion comes renewed need for weaving together the 3rd-party tracking of rankings with the traffic metrics from your analytics to provide a full picture of how your site is performing in the search engines.
  _

The big takeaway here is that these action items aren’t particularly groundbreaking. We should have been doing all of these as responsible, effective Internet marketers anyway.

Is this a Major, Tectonic Shift in SEO?

No. I’m maintaining my previous stance that unless a shift from Google fundamentally changes the classic SEO process:

1. Make pages accessible
2. Target with keywords that searchers employ
3. Build content that users will find useful and valuable
4. Earn editorial links from good sources

It doesn’t qualify as a "tectonic" or "massive" or "fundamental" change in SEO. The best practices we’ve been recommending to clients, developers and content creators for the last half-decade are actually less impacted by this change than by some of the other items we’ve encountered recently (Bing + Yahoo! combining, real-time results at the top of query results, more vertical results in the SERPs, etc.). These latter examples call for much more active changes, learnings and direct action on the part of SEOs vs. personalization, which by-and-large just strengthens the reasons for best practices we’ve long known to exist.

p.s. Tomorrow evening at 6pm (Tuesday Dec. 22nd), I’ll be attending an informal SEO meetup in San Diego, CA at the Gordon Biersch Brewery in Mission Valley – 5010 Mission Center Road San Diego, CA 92108. Hope to see some of you there before the holidays!

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More and more, search isn’t just a matter of lots of text and ten blue links. Mixed media – think pictures and video – is a big deal. And an important Yahoo executive recently explained how this affects search from the perspective of his company, search engine users, and publishers.

Larry Cornett, Vice President of Product Management and Design for Yahoo Search, said in an interview with Abby Johnson that Yahoo is attempting to create a “personally relevant search experience” for people. The company wants to provide a comprehensive amount of information so that individuals can always find what they’re looking for.

To this end, Yahoo’s introduced a universal header that helps determine users’ intent. It can help direct someone who’s searching for a football player to Yahoo Sports, for example.

Of course, this approach means that publishers should take more than text search results into account. According to Cornett, they need to pay attention to how their brand is portrayed in image and video search results, and on Twitter, too.

Cornett then boiled the matter down to a fairly simple question publishers should ask themselves: “Am I really being represented the way I want to be in every one of these search experiences?”

At the recent Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East conference, WebProNews talked with Yahoo’s David Miller about the company’s paid search efforts in terms of what the company has in the pipelines for conversion improvement, user control, etc.

Miller talks about how the tentative Yahoo Microsoft deal will be bringing more competition to search as well as more innovation for advertisers, users, and publishers. The deal is still subject to approval, but Yahoo is hoping it will be approved early next year.

Miller reiterates that Yahoo is not giving up on search and intends to add value, control, and transparency. With regards to control, Yahoo has launched the ad delivery report, which allows advertisers to see how campaigns are performing on different parts of sites. Early next year, Miller says Yahoo will be launching “network distribution,” and advertisers will have the ability to separately bid on campaigns for Yahoo, the partner network, or both.

Miller also discusses a tool Yahoo currently has in beta, which is expected to roll out early next year as well. It is an offline tool that lets advertisers control their accounts without having to be connected to the Internet.

Yahoo has also been working on enhancements in ad selection to help advertisers maximize conversions. Miller talks a little about these too.

In this guest post internet marketer and full time blogger Lynn Terry of ClickNewz shares one of her newest tested blog marketing strategies.

On the current theme of Content Marketing, I have a super simple strategy I have been testing to increase exposure and profit that you’ll really enjoy. It’s simple, it’s free… and it works.

Darren gave us 9 ways to seed content to consistently grow our blog readership with each new blog post. This 10th method will bring you a lot of readers as well, without even writing a new blog post…

Putting Your Best Content To Work For You

If you’ve been blogging for any amount of time at all, you probably have some incredible posts buried in your archives. Even blog posts written only a month or two ago rarely get a new comment. Properly optimized posts might continue to receive new visitors through the search engines, but most of your content is buried – both in your archives, and in the search results.

I make a regular practice of browsing through my archives for pillar posts. I often repurpose these posts into articles for Article Marketing, meaning I make a few small tweaks and submit them to EzineArticles.com.

There are 3 good reasons to submit your better archives to EzineArticles:

1. A keyword-rich title on EzineArticles can easily get your article ranked very well in Google search results, as EzineArticles is a content authority site. If the article is not ranking well on your domain, or if you have a relatively new domain, this is a great way to get “indirect” top rankings very easily.

2. Each article you submit may include an author bio, or resource box, which will have a live link back to your blog. Readers and search engines alike follow these links, and inbound links will help your blog get indexed or better ranked.

3. Publishers search EzineArticles.com for great content to use on their websites, at their blogs, and in their email newsletters. In addition to getting more inbound links, you may also find your content in front of a very targeted audience.

Duplicate Content?

There are many theories about duplicate content, and possible penalties for using the same content in more than one place on the web. Most of these theories are completely unfounded. Read this if you’re concerned about duplicate content.

Basically, Google wants to offer a wide variety of results for any given search. If your blog post is not already ranking in the top 10 results for a specific keyword phrase, you can easily achieve an “indirect” top ranking by submitting the post to EzineArticles.com as an article with a keyword rich article title.

Taking it one step further…

This method has been working very well for me, so I decided to take it one step further. Instead of repurposing a great blog post into an article, I turned a couple of my posts into short reports.

It’s the exact same content, just a new format: PDF.

PDF files are very easy to create. You can use any number of free PDF converters. Or you can download OpenOffice.org for free, which will allow you to turn any document into a PDF file with one click.

Don’t be overly concerned with the length of the report. Even 3-5 pages of great content will make a very nice short report that you can give away.

You can also add a cover page, a copyright/disclaimer, and an about page to round it out if you like. If you want your report to go viral, be sure to include a paragraph that clearly spells out the giveaway rights to your reader.

The Results

I decided to try this with a great how-to post I had written for my blog. This particular post ended with a recommendation for Darren’s workbook titled 31 Days To Build A Better Blog. I didn’t do any fancy formatting, I simply copied the blog post and pasted it into a document – and then converted it to a PDF file.

The result? The PDF file converted readers into buyers almost 4x more than the blog post!

Thanks to that short report, I am nearing the $1,000 sales mark for a product that sells for less than 20 bucks – which makes for a nice little commission check… on just one post!

The obvious conclusion here is that a report, or a PDF file, has a higher perceived value. The exact same content, with the exact same call-to-action, has proven to achieve a much higher conversion rate in PDF format.

Using Reports For Links, Traffic & Sales…

You should use one of your new short reports as an incentive for your readers to subscribe to your newsletter or blog updates. This is a great way to increase your subscriptions, and therefore your readership.

You can use your other new reports much the same as you use articles, as well. Submit your reports to free ebook directories, the same way you submit articles to article directories.

Google will index PDF files, so the links within your report will count as inbound links to your blog. Your report may also rank well in Google, which is another great way to funnel new readers into your blog.

Tip: Don’t submit the report you use as your opt-in incentive in other places around the web. Your new visitors will be disappointed to arrive on your blog, subscribe, and receive the same report that brought them there in the first place. Mix it up!

Make sure you include a strong call-to-action in the PDF version of your content. If your content is not directly recommending a product, you can invite the readers to related articles on your blog – or to subscribe at your blog for more great free reports on the topic.

Browse through your blog archives today, and locate some of your best (buried) posts. Repurpose those posts into short reports, and put that great content back into circulation to bring in more readers – and make more sales!

Best,
Lynn Terry
ClickNewz

p.s. I found this method to be working so well for me, that I contracted someone to convert and format my posts into attractive PDF files. You can easily outsource this task by posting a request on freelance sites, or on Job Boards at various forums.

If you would like to see an example of one of my repurposed blog posts, feel free to download How to Write a Product Review.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

A Simple Way To Funnel New Traffic & Sales From Buried Blog Archives

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How many methods do you use to increase your traffic? One, two, three? Write articles and submit them to e-zines is a killing way to increase web traffic. Include your business information and web address at the end of the article.

Link to web sites that provide useful information or services for your visitors. If you have many useful links on your site, they may make it their start page.

Share customers with other businesses that have the same target audience. Offer their product to your customers if, in exchange they do the same for you.

Form an online community. It could be an online message board, e-mail discussion list or chat room. When people get involved in your community they will regularly return to communicate with others.

Start an e-zine for your web site. When people read each issue they’ll be reminded to revisit your web site. They’ll see your product ad more than just once which will increase your orders.

Participate on message boards. Post answers to other people’s questions, ask questions and post appropriate information. Include your signature file at the end of all your postings.

Give away an electronic freebie with your ad on it. Allow your visitors to also give the freebie away. This’ll increase your ad exposure and attract people to your web site at the same time.

Trade links with other web sites. They should be related to the subject of your web site. Instead of trading links, you could also trade banner ads, half page ads, classified ads, etc.

Exchange classified or sponsor ads with other free e-zine publishers. If there is a huge subscriber difference between e-zines, one can run more ads to make up for it.

Combine your products or services into one big package deal with other businesses offerings. You could share a web site and advertise the package deal; which means double the traffic.

Over the last week or two there’s been an increase amount of chatter on forums and blogs about invalid clicks and AdSense. Some of the talk has contained information that has been a little confusing and perhaps even ill-informed (and some ‘influenced’ by companies with their own agendas) – so I got in touch with AdSense and asked if they had any information to help their publishers protect themselves against invalid clicks.

The following is what they replied with – in their words it is ‘a concise guide to how to prevent and monitor invalid clicks, and keep an AdSense account in good standing.’ I hope that it is helpful to AdSense publishers everywhere:

The Google AdSense team has heard many concerns about how Google treats invalid click activity on publisher’s sites, and there have been questions on how to keep your AdSense account in good standing. The Google Ads Quality Traffic Team wants to help all publishers keep their accounts in good order, so here are some tips to keep in mind.

We understand that it’s not always possible to control the behavior of your users, but you can be proactive about monitoring your traffic, and you can take steps to ensure that your site provides a helpful and safe environment for users and advertisers. Here are some top tips for keeping your account in good standing (which you may have seen before): https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=23921

Expanding on the tip “Be aware of how your site is promoted.” we’d like to remind you that, should you purchase traffic to promote your site, you do so at your own risk. There are many site promotion services out there that appear to be legitimate PPC advertising companies or search engines, but actually may be sending artificial traffic to your site for their own gain. (For legal reasons, we’re not allowed to disclose the names of such services.)

To combat this, we highly recommend that you use channels to segment your traffic by source (e.g. a channel for your site’s Google AdWords traffic only). If one channel’s reports look particularly suspicious, you may want to consider unsubscribing from that traffic service. We also recommend using Analytics to slice and dice your traffic reports further to ensure that you’re receiving clicks from users who are genuinely interested in your ads.

Though we encourage you to be proactive about monitoring your site and ad traffic, we highly discourage the use of click tracking via third-party software or custom ad implementations. These methods may:

• inadvertently disclose sensitive information about you or your site to a third-party
• disrupt Google’s ad delivery or click logging in a way that violates our Terms and Conditions

In addition, click tracking may not provide you with significantly more information than you can already find in your AdSense or Analytics reports. We believe that the creative use of channels can help you gain detailed insights into your account.

If you see unusual activity on your account, feel free to submit this form to let us know: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?contact=invalid_clicks_contact Please note that we will only respond if we find a significant issue with your account.

Invalid clicks can come from many sources, as described at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=16737. While we’re unable to go into the details of our monitoring system, you should know that invalid clicks don’t always mean clicking on your own ads or using click bots. Our Ad Traffic Quality Team looks for numerous types of activity that may inflate advertiser costs, then takes the necessary actions to protect our advertisers.

That said, we still find that many publishers are clicking on their own ads, possibly because they feel that Google is disregarding those clicks. Keep in mind that even though we filter the revenue from an invalid click, we don’t ignore it completely. If we detect significant invalid activity on your AdSense ads, we may take action on your account to protect our advertisers from inflated costs. Here are some examples of situations in which clicking your own ads is prohibited:

• Clicking out of interest in the ad content
• Clicking to see an ad’s destination URL, such as for filtering purposes (we recommend trying the AdSense Preview Tool, available at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10005)
• Clicking to ensure that Google is properly registering clicks on your ads (we log all ad clicks, but it can sometimes take up to 24 hours before your reports are finalized)
• Clicking to test your website

For general invalid click questions, you can find more information at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=8426

For questions about AdSense accounts disabled for invalid clicks, you can find more information at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Thanks to the team at AdSense team for providing this information.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Prevent and Monitor Invalid Clicks, and keep an AdSense Account in Good Standing [a Statement from AdSense]

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One of the more commonly requested features that I see AdSense publishers making is for the ability to be able to change font size in their ads.

The AdSense blog today announces this change:

“The font size you choose will be applied to the body of the ad, with the title scaled appropriately. In order to fit the ad text correctly, the actual font size will vary for each format size, font face, and user-specific settings such as browsers and operating systems. In addition, some formats sizes currently have very limited room, so the font size application will be most apparent in cases where the number of ads appearing in your ad units varies automatically in order to maximize your performance.

Your ads are currently set at the default size for AdSense, which is the equivalent of ’small’. You can select a new font size on an account-wide basis in the Ad Display Preference section of your My Account tab, or on an individual ad unit basis for new and existing ad units.

If you’re creating new ad units, you can choose between the AdSense default font size, your new account-wide font size (if you’ve selected one using the instructions above), or a separate size. To update existing ad units you’ve created using the Manage Ads feature, visit the ‘Manage Ads’ page under your AdSense Setup tab. Any font size changes you make on an individual ad unit basis will be maintained even if you change your account-wide default in the future.”

Also announced in the post is that the default size for ads will soon be automatically increased from ’small’ to ‘medium’. This is due to testing that they’ve done which shows that larger size is performing better.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

AdSense Introduces Font Size Choice for Publishers

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This is a guest post by Nick Oba from uniQlicks.

Before I get started, here’s a little sobering notice for those who might be wondering what the fuss is all about.

Hello,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our
advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in advance
for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions about your account or the actions we’ve taken,
please do not reply to this email. You can find more information by
visiting
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

The link in the email from AdSense tells you all about invalid clicks, but by that time, of course, it’s too late start learning. So any blogger generating real earnings from AdSense needs to take proactive and preemptive measures to prevent termination by invalid clicks. In an ideal world, Google would sort out the invalid clicks from the valid clicks, but since they don’t always do it, you’ve got to take charge.

What are invalid clicks?

Many people think "invalid clicks = click fraud" but it’s not quite as simple as that. There are basically three types of invalid clicks.

ToS violations Clicks from the publisher himself are of course not valid. Whether the publisher is genuinely interested in the ad running on his site, or merely trying to find out what kind of advertisements are being syndicated on his site, is irrelevant. Any click from the owner of the site is invalid, and just a small number of these can lead to the termination of your AdSense account. Also, onsite Terms of Service violations will mean that the click is invalid. For example, if you write “Please click on the ads” on your site, the clicks generated will be invalid, since the AdSense ToS forbids exhorting visitors to click on ads.

Non-human clicks Clicks from bots, crawlers, spiders, and the like are not valid. There are not many of these as AdSense ads are served via Javascript, and most bots can’t read Javascript.

That leaves invalid clicks from human visitors. Generally these are clicks that are not unique. In other words, if you get more than one click from the same person, that’s an invalid click. A more stricter definition would be that an invalid clicks is any click that’s not an intentional click from someone seriously interested in the product/service offered, but in practical terms that is pretty hard to determine. So even if someone accidentally taps the mouse button and generates a click, it’s mostly OK to consider it as valid as long as it happens only once.

Clicks from children Young adolescents and preteens may not fully understand the concept of advertising, and release a rapid series of clicks as they explore a page.

Clicks from newbies Middle-aged and elderly users coming online after a lifetime without computers often do not understand the difference between an application and an operating system, let alone ads and organic links. Once they figure out how to use a mouse they may systematically click on each and every link, or use an ad on any given website as a means of navigating to a favored site instead of bookmarking it.

Clicks from non-native speakers People who are not fluent in the language may randomly click on a large number of links and adverts when trying to find something.

Clicks from nuts Not everyone on the Internet is sober. Given the statistics for drug consumption, some people are bound to be on meth, ecstacy, or some other drug which affects rational behavior. Heaven knows what these people click on.

Malicious clicks Now this is real click fraud. Unethical operators will try to drain a competing advertiser’s budget by repeatedly clicking on their ads, often using sneaky tactics to fool Google. If you happen to own the site that carries the advertisements, you will be inadvertently aiding and abetting the invalid click activity. In addition, some of your own competitors might seek to destroy you by clicking on your AdSense ads, with the explicit aim of killing your monetization plan. After all, if you destroy its income, you effectively sink a blog.

How does Google detect invalid clicks?

They look at how long the user spends on the page before clicking on the ad, where the user came from, how many ads the user clicked on, where the user went next, and a variety of other metrics.

In addition, it seems Google rely heavily on complaints from advertisers, which are investigated by Google AdWords technicians. It is unlikely that the best brains at Google are put to work analyzing refund requests, so it’s probably easiest in many cases to refund the advertiser and shut down the publisher. That way, Google doesn’t lose any money even if the advertiser is refunded. This explains why many publishers are shut down even though they themselves did nothing wrong.

Google’s own obtuse answer is here.

Who is at risk?

Technically, everyone is at risk, but looking at the anecdotal evidence, it seems that small and medium-sized publishers are at higher risk than larger publishers. Though there have been exceptions, high-profile blogs seem to be protected, perhaps because Google values them more highly as suppliers, or because of the negative publicity a decativation might entail. For example, ProBlogger is safe because of its size and standing in the community. But if you’re not a VIP and your Alexa rank is > 10,000, you’re probably at higher risk.

Certain categories of sites seem to be at higher risk than others. Forums, social networking sites, and sites which generate a large number of impressions per user seem to be at higher risk than, say, recipe collections (which have less repeat traffic). One would think that scraper sites and MFA blogs are at higher risk, but their continued proliferation seems to indicate that these sites are not necessarily at higher risk, perhaps because repeat traffic and pageviews/user are low.

What can you do to shut out invalid clicks?

Essentially, you have three options. First, you can monitor your blog manually using tools such as StatCounter, and let Google know if you notice any anomalies. This is extremely time-consuming and you’ll never be able to go on holiday, because you need to keep an eye on your account 24/7.

Second, you can install a script. This is great if you are technically savvy and have the time to code and debug and maintain a solution. If you are not that good at coding Javascript, you could have it done for you by AdSenseClickLock. The drawbacks are that you need an environment that fits the specifications, and you still need to figure out how to install it and keep it up-to-date.

Third, you could go for a web app. There is only one, namely uniQlicks. It’s an ad manager which also has a feature called SureShield, which specifically shuts out risky impressions. The drawback is that you need to pay (about US$7/month) to upgrade to a Premium account to avail of SureShield, so it’s not worth it if your AdSense earnings are, say, twenty bucks a month.

Will invalid clicks ever cease to be a problem?

Only Google have the answer to this. Some ad networks (such as FairAdsNetwork) already tell you that you don’t need to worry about invalid clicks because they take care of it. Anything is possible, but given Google’s culture of secrecy and extreme aversion to transparency, it’s unlikely. Google have been repeated sued by advertisers, and Google will continue to take care of their advertisers in any way they see fit. For Google, that means shutting down publishers and refunding advertisers.

It is important to understand that as a business, Google isn’t a search engine. Google makes exactly zero dollars from search. Google is an advertising agency which runs a search engine to help its advertising business. And as an advertising agency, Google have never wavered from the doctrine that shutting down publishers is a good way to keep advertisers happy and the bottom line fat. It is unlikely that this policy will ever change, especially given the fact that the Google behemoth isn’t under any serious threat from the competition.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nick Oba is the founder of uniQlicks.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Protect Against Invalid Clicks

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Chitika (the #2 way that I make money blogging) have come out with a handy new ad unit option for publishers wanting to monetize traffic arriving on their blog from search engines – the ‘mega unit’ premium ad unit.

This ad unit is a 550×255 pixel sized ad – it’s not small but their testing has shown some pretty impressive results with publishers reporting big increases in earnings as a result of using this rather than their smaller ad units.

Here’s how the mega ad unit looks:

How do Chitika Premium Ad Units Work?

• As with all of Chitika’s ‘Premium’ ad unit range these ads only show to US/Canadian readers arriving on your site as a result of a search on Google or one of the other search engines.
• If the reader is a loyal reader that is coming from your RSS feed or another site OR they are a reader from outside the US/Canada they won’t see them (note: there is an option to have an alternative ad shown for non search traffic if you wish but I don’t choose this option and have the ad collapse and not show at all).
• The ads showing on the unit relate to the search that the person arriving on your site is doing – this significantly increases the chance that they’ll find the ad relevant to them and click the ad.
• The ads can be customized to have different colors and fonts.
• Chitika’s testing finds that this ad unit is converting best if you slot it above your content (as you’d expect) or below content (above or below comments would work). Remember this is only showing to search engine visitors so an aggressive ad placement won’t annoy loyal readers.
• If this mega ad unit is too big or the wrong shape for you – Chitika’s premium ad units come in a large range of other sizes. You can see the add unit size options here (you can also check out what kinds of ads will show for different search terms on that page also).

How do they perform?

I have only started testing this new mega unit sized ad on my blog but have had a lot of success with other sizes of premium ad units for a long time now – I fully expect to see some great results with the larger ad unit.

I have a smaller ad unit showing on my photography blog above posts and have added a mega unit below posts to see how they perform.

What I particularly like about the premium ad units is that unlike previous Chitika ad units these convert on sites of all kinds of topics. Their previous ad units were very much suited to product/gadget related sites – but these ad units are converting for all kinds of sites and topics.

In a newsletter that Chitika sent to their publishers today they are reporting some fairly amazing results from other publishers who have been testing this ad unit. Here’s a screenshot (my highlighting):

I’m sure results will vary from site to site but at the very least I think they’re an option to be testing if you’re looking to make money from your blog.

If you’re not a part of the Chitika ad network yet – sign up here today and give them a go for yourself.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Chitika Mega Units – Publishers Reporting Massive Increases in Earnings

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