http://www.thegadgetblog.com

My new website
http://www.thegadgetblog.com

Too busy to post here .. So just see above.

Thanks

How relevant is Google Adsense and Yahoo's Publisher Network Ads

How relevant is Google Adsense and Yahoo's Publisher Network Ads


With some of the Yahoo employees running Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads on their blogs, I thought it would be interesting to compare relevancy between

YPN and AdSense and see how the two compare.

I compared the ads by seeing the ads displayed on the blog entries - selecting entries where ad inventory would not be an issue - and then using the

Google AdSense Preview tool to compare YPN against the ads that AdSense would serve on the same page, then took screenshots

Read more

technology | yahoo | adsense | blog |

Ultimate Tag Warrior 0.1

Great plugin for Wordpress to add the tags function to your blogs.

This is the first release of my latest and greatest wordpress plugin Ultimate Tag Warrior. It’s a tagging plugin for wordpress with normalised data (Oooh. Aaaah); and three ways of getting tags back out (Tags on a post, popular tags, and an archive a-la my Category Archive plugin).

Via neato

How to make Google Sitemaps

Installs a whole bunch of sitemaps to your blog, including sitemaps compatible to Google’s Sitemap standard (http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps).

You can see it in action on this page: Google Sitemaps

Via here

FeedShark - Submit RSS

FeedShark - Submit your Site's RSS to many directories using Feedshark. Access all the sites on 1 page. Its good

WordPress Sitemap Generator for Google Sitemaps

WordPress Sitemap Generator for Google by Arne Brachhold

Arne has created this cool sitemap file for Google to index your webpage more efficiently.

Google announced yesterday a new tool for webmasters. The Google Sitemaps! You can submit you sitemap to Google and allow them to find all your pages without crawling every link. You can read more about this cool feature at searchenginewatch.com.

I created a small php file which will do the generation of the sitemap in a Google compliant format for you. At the moment, only posts, home page and static pages are supported. If you have better knowledge of WordPress than me, feel free to modify the script and include category pages etc.

Every URL in the sitemap may have a priority which represents the page priority on your website. My script calculates the it on the number of comments. This should be ok for most blogs, maybe i will add the post date to priority generation later.

Try it !

UPDATE 3:
Check the beta of the new version at Google Sitemap Generator v2 (BETA) which comes as a WordPress Plugin and a grahpical administration page!

Get Paid to Receive Advertising by AerialTextPhilly

Mobile Weblog talks about AerialTextPhilly

I used to join a lot of this free money making programs and most of them went bust. How is this company going to survive ?

The company recruits people to sign up to receive sms advertising by promising to pay them US 15 c for every advertisement they receive.

This would all be hunky dory, except the model NEVER works and frankly, I'd advise them to change their model or shut up shop. Sorry if this is blunt, but if they take my advice, they'll thank me for it in the end - or end up kicking themselves if they ignore it.

There have been loads of these kinds of propositions online and they never worked there either.

And it's been tried in the UK on mobile by, among others, The Mobile Channel, who morphed into something else, when they discovered the inevitable. We even tried it at ZagMe, against my better judgment, but when the CEO of your main backer insists, you don't have a lot of choice in the matter...

Let's look at why it doesn't work, for a moment.

If I sign up and they send me the maximum number of advertising messages of 2 per day (which will be unlikely in the beginning as they have to sell to advertisers), I can earn the princely sum of $10 a month (roughly). In return, I have to have my phone beep at me twice a day with ads where I have no control over content, if they're well targeted to me etc.

$10 to most US citizens is not a lot of money, quite frankly. So the sorts of people attracted to this deal will be....people with not much money. This, in turn, does not make them very attractive to advertisers.

The company promises advertisers:

And, because our audience is subscription based, your messages are seen by the consumers interested in buying your products and services.

No they're not. They're interested in earning $10 a month. That's all. So even response rates will be unimpressive.

That's not to say a subscription-based sms service can't work - I've written a whole free white paper on it, if you haven't read it. But the main learning is that people welcome sms advertising, if they buy into a promise that they'll like what they receive, it'll take into account their preferences and interests and they can stop both the service or a specific advertiser easily and at any time.

Google AdSense Image Ads Versus Text Ads

In December 2004, Google announced a possible expansion to its image ads program within AdSense. This article gives an overview of image ads and provides information to assist you in determining whether image ads are right for you.

To begin, in May 2004, Google began offering publishers the option of serving image ads in addition to text ads on their websites. Image ads are graphical ads offered in four sizes: 728 x 90, 468 x 60, 120 x 600 and 300 x 250 pixels. Like text ads, Google's image ads are targeted to the content of a publisher's web page using AdSense's contextual advertising technology. According to Google, it began running image ads since “running a combination of image and text ads expands the available ad inventory for your site, and offers the potential for increased revenue.” Google stated that its technology determines, on a page-by-page basis, whether text ads or image ads are likely to make publishers more money. It then serves the appropriate format to their pages.

In December 2004, Google announced that it would soon expand its image ad program to include a wider variety of creative formats. Specifically, Google will begin accepting animated GIFs from a small test group of advertisers. While AdSense publishers will have the option to show image ads, they will not be able to choose whether to serve only still, versus both still and animated ads.

Unlike other technological advances that Google frequently announces, the response to Google's expanded image ad program has generally not been positive. Many AdSense publishers believe that Google doesn't even have a large enough inventory of still image ads, and that animated ads will detract from the user experience of their website. In addition, many attribute the successes to date of the AdSense program specifically due to its use of text ads. Text ads are often viewed by site visitors as relevant content, rather than standing out as advertising which consumers started tuning out a few years ago.

The question now is whether visitors are also starting to tune out text ads, and if this is the reason why Google has expanded its image ad program. Does Google know best, or are the publishers right in this case? The answer most likely is “it depends” and that it depends upon the demographics of the site visitors and the site's content. For instance, a site targeted to teenagers, who are used to high-quality animations from video games and movies, may increase profits from animated or still image ads. Conversely, a site about financial planning for seniors should probably stay away from images, as they may detract from the user experience. In the latter case, text that complements the ads (e.g., convinces readers why they need
financial planning assistance) will prompt visitors to click on the text ads, particularly if the text ads include lines such as “need financial planning assistance?”

AdSense publishers must consider the long-term goals of their websites, which typically includes having a positive user experience to ensure repeat visits and maximizing profits. They then should experiment with the different types of ads to see which types best serve their goals. Publishers should use the Channels feature that AdSense offers which allows them to track click-through rates and revenues on a page-by-page basis, so that they can analyze which mix of ad formats maximize their profits.

Google launched Google Sitemaps

From Problogger| Yesterday Google launched Google Sitemaps which they describe as follows:

‘Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to help improve your coverage in the Google index. It’s a collaborative crawling system that enables you to communicate directly with Google to keep us informed of all your web pages, and when you make changes to these pages.

With Google Sitemaps you get:

* Better crawl coverage to help people find more of your web pages
* Fresher search results
* A smarter crawl because you can provide specific information about all your web pages, such as when a page was last modified or how frequently a page changes’

Group dating service Compa sponsors new entertainment blog site Hecklerspray

Compa.co.uk has agreed a fixed fee to take a tenancy slot on hecklerspray's homepage for the rest of 2005, with the aim of driving traffic and generate new sign-ups for its UK group dating service.

London-based hecklerspray.com is billed as a blog site for “discerning entertainment fans” and currently generates revenues via advertising, affiliate marketing and sponsorships. The agreement with Compa represents the site’s first fixed tenancy deal.

hecklerspray said it generated 180,000 unique user sessions in its first month in May.

"We talked about a CPM deal but felt that a fixed tenancy would allow us to benefit from hecklerspray's rapid growth, while providing some upfront cash for what is a new start-up," said Compa CEO Ed Fitzhugh. "It is an arrangement that works for both of us."

Hecklerspray editor Stuart Heritage said: "It made a lot of sense do agree a tenancy deal with Compa. We've got a few partnerships in place and more in the pipeline, both for hecklerspray and for other commercial blogs in the offing."

Formed in November 2004, Compa became the first company to introduce the group dating concept to the UK. It allows groups of users to search for like-minded groups to arrange a night out in order to meet new friends.

via NetImperative