Google AdSense Moving Into Rich Media Ads

Rich media encompasses those ads you see like interstitials, expanding ads that open up in browser when you hover over them and floating ads which are those that stay in a fixed position while you scroll or move into the screen when it loads. I personally hate them all. Google AdSense will soon be providing them and has been in contact with publishers for a limited beta test.

Jensense has more, including this ominous part.

... if AdSense did offer rich media to all publishers, they could easily add a new clause that would mean companies such as Fastclick and PointRoll would suddenly be competitive ads and not be permitted on the same pages as AdSense. Many AdSense publishers implement rich media ads to compliment AdSense, and as non-contextual, most of these ad products are well within the AdSense terms. But if AdSense decided to not permit rich media ads on pages also running AdSense or AdSense rich media style ads, this could mean that many publishers would drop competitor's ads and just show AdSense... as well as those advertisers flocking to AdWords to get their rich media creatives showing through the AdSense program.

While I love AdSense I wouldn't like being restricted to using them only throughout a page. It would be an all or nothing deal and as most successful website owners tell you it's not smart to rely totally on one form of advertising. The main reason being that if it is taken away (say you get your account closed by Google by accident) you could lose weeks and months of revenue while you are trying to get things squared away.

One other thing to contemplate with rich media ads is in the case of flash and other forms like it. The load times are significant enough on a dial-up connection to either not appear in time or to totally piss an end user off. And yes the majority of people are still on dial-up.

Did I mention I hate rich media ads?

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Google AdSense Archive

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