AdSense in 2007
There is an interesting article in WebMasterWorld about AdSense predictions for 2007. I will try to summarize what I like the most and whether I think it will happen or not:
- Google’s overall revenues will either stay the same as 2006, or rise slightly. True
- Marginal quality sites will become less and less profitable. True
- Continuing trend from 2006, advertiser behavior will continue to change pushing DOWN ad prices, but overall ad expenditures will increase. True
- Google will not allow any third-party audit of their click-fraud rate in 2007. Unless they will be forced to do so
- 2007 will see the first documented case of click-fraud blackmail. The same lightweight criminals in poorly policed countries that currently collect blackmail from mid-sized companies by threatening DDOS attacks will realize that they can get the same effect much, much easier by threatening to get AdSense publishers banned. The ransom note will go something like this: “On Thanksgiving Day, you will see hits on your home page from over 5,000 unique IP addresses that contain the unique URL of www.yerdomain.com/#payup-or-else. You will wire $2,000 to the following bank account by Dec. 15th, or else we will use 5,000 other unique IP addresses to click-fraud your account during the second half of December. Google will then freeze your Christmas profits and then ban you. If they don’t ban you, they will still keep your funds. In any case, we will attack again until Google does ban you.” Interesting, however, I think that google have the power to distinguish these clicks.
- The total number of AdSense publishers will continue to swell, which means the average AdSense payout will continue to drop. By the end of 2007, the average monthly AdSense publisher payout will be under $10 (it’s probably well under $25 already). Another good one, so actually there will be more millionaires and more and more publishers who’s only aim will be to pay the hosting fees from AdSense revenues…
- More and more money is put into internet advertising. Hmm… most probably true
- Spam and black hat stuff though will also escalate. Unfortunately most probably true…
- Webmasters will continue to whine for solutions that require Google get into the human intervention business. Google will continue to ignore all such suggestions. They will need to make changes. I guess currently their technology - human intervention ratio is about 80-20%, in my opinion, in 2007 this will go toward a 70-30% or even 65-35%. You can resolve a lot with IT but not everything.
If you want to read more, go to WebMasterWorld and read this post.