בלוג לשיווק באינטרנט, ייעוץ שיווקי, וורדפרס וחיים באינטרנט *

There's a scuffle going on in internet advertising. It's between Google's AdSense and its frisky competitors. Google's advertising strategy has recently been hit by competition from companies offering different advertising strategies to its users. The way Google's standard ad strategy works is that someone puts a strip of Google powered ads, modified to their site, on their page. The site is scanned by Google, which then attempts to match the advertisements with the content on the site, in order that the advertisements fit with what the visitor to the site actually wants, enhancing the probability that the ads will actually be clicked. The advertisers pay Google, and Google pays those who post their ads in accordance with how much traffic they get and how often they are being clicked.

This strategy has a weak spot, and that is, what if someone wants to pay more to advertise on a specific site rather than just be placed at sites deemed appropriate by a computer program? Until now, Google didn't have an advertising option that allowed this. That's when firms like Adsdaq tried to break into the market with just such a strategy.

Apparently, this was enough to catch Google's attention, pricking it in the shoulder ever so slightly until the colossus slowly turned around and saw what was going on. Google's AdSense users have been getting this in their email recently:

"We're writing to let you know about an upcoming update in your AdSense account designed to help you generate the maximum revenue from your ad units. You'll soon be able to allow multiple ad networks to show on your pages, which means that advertisers from external Google-certified networks will be able to compete with AdWords advertisers for your ad space.

"If you're unfamiliar with what ad networks are, they're companies that partner with advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ads on sites they don't own themselves, similar to AdSense. Ads from these networks will compete with Google ads to show on publisher sites, and the ad generating the highest revenue for publishers will be displayed."

With Google now trying to break into that market as well, they are obviously trying to preempt the market before they become overrun with competition from the ad-outsourcing sector. Now it will be a competition between the pioneers of the idea and the internet giant.