I was looking through the Home Depot website today, and I saw something that I think is a bit strange, and I wanted to see what you think about it:  Google Adsense advertising blocks on HomeDepot.com.

I was shopping for a bathroom vanity at Home Depot, and I saw a link to PlazaGallery.com, which is a competing website/company. Why would Home Depot want to make a tiny fraction of the revenue for my click than they would if they would sell me a full vanity, sink and faucet?

I monetize some of my smaller website with Adsense, especially the sites that don’t have direct advertiser relationships and don’t offer products for sale. I like the flexibility of Adsense, and I appreciate the fact that I can make money on some of my sites without actually having to sell anything.

I’ve always been taught that it doesn’t make much sense to send potential customers to a competitor for a fraction of the revenue that you could make from a sale. For instance, if I was selling $100 sneakers with a 30% profit margin, it wouldn’t make sense to have Adsense where I could get paid $.50 for a click, while sending customers who want to buy from me right to my competitors who could make a lot more money and gain a new customer.

I understand that their site has millions of visits, and they probably have a significant revenue stream with Adsense monetization, but it strikes me as odd, when the Home Depot has such a huge selection of products.

What do you think?

Here is a guest post from Pat Quinn of Big Iron Design, LLC.

Will Google’s New Adsense Policy for Alcohol Ads Increase Manufacturer Spending Online?

Last week Google changed their advertising policy on alcohol to allow ads that promote the sale of hard alcohol and liquor.

Will this new policy encourage the adult beverage industry to spend more of their 2-3 billion dollar annual budgets online? They’re not spending much of it online right now, that’s for sure. According to this 2008 report, the top 12 advertisers in this sector spend less than 2% of their advertising dollars online. More than half of that amount probably goes to their own web sites judging by this chart which breaks down the spending by venue. That amounts to roughly 2 million dollars a month for internet advertising aside from the manufacturer’s own sites. By contrast, they’re spending almost 69 million a month for TV, 50 million a month for Point-of-Sale, and 29 million a month for Sports, Sports Teams and Athletes.

In 2008 Google changed their policy to allow ads that promote the sale of beer, but I’m not seeing a lot of beer ads in my daily surfing, are you? I wonder why. It may be because there are myriad local and state laws regulating this advertising, and the manufacturers are just afraid to go there (yet). But, I don’t really get why there would be regulation differences between running ads online and running them on TV. Certainly the football fans among us are bombarded by them, even on the earliest games (Go Steelers!). Are they afraid kids will see the ads online? Give me a break.

What’s this have to do with domaining? There are hundreds of cocktail names and dozens of generic liquor names, with new drinks being created all the time. Obviously, popular drinks will generate searches because people want to try new things. The CPC and Competition on even many highly searched ones are pretty much rock-bottom, though. I think it goes without saying that most domainers are always on the lookout for any product-related terms with high search numbers. But if the potential advertisers can’t advertise because of restrictions that certainly kills any potential value of these domain names.

So, the question is – will this policy change be enough to drive a few more of those huge advertising dollars to Google, and by extension the owners of these types of domains. I’d love to hear your thoughts, particularly if you have real-world experience in the alcohol names domain (and I don’t mean drunk dialing your ex).

Disclaimer: I own a number of cocktail related names. That’s why this policy change sparked my interest.

I recently received an email from a long-time reader who I have spoken with on several occasions and have done business with in the past who is looking for Adsense advice.  He gave me permission to include parts of his email into this post to get opinions from my blog readers:

We finally launched the websites last week (www.FoodBlogs.com and www.MommyBlogs.com).

We’re not in a big hurry to sign advertisers on FoodBlogs.com yet, as traffic is just starting to build.  My developer suggested I put up Adsense (color matched to the site) as an interim solution.  I’ve heard a lot of positives. I’ve also heard that there are negatives to putting up Adsense ads on a newly developed website.

These are fully developed websites targeted to a very large (yet niche) audience.   We intend to develop them further and grow the user-base and traffic to its full potential.  In other words, we’re in it for the long-haul.  Eventually, we will have relationships with direct advertisers or with Ad Networks.
What are your thoughts on Adsense as an interim solution versus something else.

Would you put Adsense on a newly launched site or hold off? If you would hold off, when is a good time to add your Adsense blocks? How do you balance the “stigma” of adding Adsense too quickly with the need to begin generating revenue on an expensive development project?

When developing a website, I really like to use Google’s Adsense. Not only can I customize the ad units to integrate into my website, but I can also use graphical banner advertising, which not only generates revenue, but it helps give the appearance that advertisers want to be advertising on a particular site. Technically, they may not know they are advertising on certain websites at the time, but they are able to block them if they don’t wish to advertise there any longer.

One drawback though is that certain advertisers, who may have opposite beliefs than your website, can still advertise on it. For example, on a religious website, a website that is owned by a group who has conflicting beliefs can still place advertisements depending on the keyword match they are choosing. These links can take visitors of your website to another site, potentially angering the visitors, especially because people don’t always realize how Adsense works.

A website owner is able to block certain urls from appearing, however, there may be hundreds of different website urls with the same message that want to advertise, so it can be a never ending battle. That said, it’s very important to monitor your websites to make sure objectionable advertising isn’t being displayed. While the ads don’t violate Google’s TOS, it could violtate your own site’s standards.