Web Marketing Strategy Update

I was over at Jeremy Schoemaker’s ShoeMoney Blog today. Jeremy’s one of the internet marketing entrepreneurs who’s been monetizing traffic since the early days, and that’s reflected in his blog (it seems he’s a fellow Mac user as well, which can’t be a bad thing!).

Topical, opinionated and hype-free, with a sprinkling of industry gossip; it’s one of those blogs that you stumble on and then realise an hour’s gone by and you’re still reading …

Besides his other Internet ventures, Jeremy is also well known for generating huge AdSense revenues and hosts Net Income on WebmasterRadio.FM, where he’s interviewed Darren Rowse of Problogger, Wordpress Creator Matt Mullenweg, SeoBlackHat QuadZilla, and SEO marketer Todd Malicoat aka Stuntdubl, amongst others.

There’s lot’s of good stuff on ShoeMoney, but here’s one post you should read right now:

How Hackers Are Using Google To Pwn Your Site

This excerpt should give you an idea why:

In what’s going to be a huge disappointment to a lot of Adsense users, Google have announced that placing images adjacent to Adsense ads “in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads” are violating the Adsense TOS.

Many webmasters have been placing small images to the side of their Adsense ad blocks because it’s been found to increase ad clicks.

Now that’s over.

From Ad and image placement: a policy clarification on the Adsense blog:

“We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads. If your visitors believe that the images and the ads are directly associated, or that the advertiser is offering the exact item found in the neighboring image, they may click the ad expecting to find something that isn’t actually being offered. That’s not a good experience for users or advertisers.”

Google also provide 2 familiar-looking examples “that wouldn’t comply with our policies.”

This short paragraph in the middle of the post is potentially more worrying though, and suggests publishers may be on shaky ground with many of the tactics they currently use to increase CTR: