How crap online advertising turned you away from my blog

As I am a big believer of learning by doing, I added Google AdSense to my blog a little while ago. Google AdSense allows third party ads to be visible on your blog or website, and gives you a (somewhat bewildering) series of options and exceptions to choose from with regards to what and where you want ads to be included.

I very quickly discovered that I was making money ($ 0.51 cents to date! woohoo!), and that adding ads can cost you in readership and usability even if you think you are making sensible decisions as a content owner.

Both are valuable lessons, and it shows that paying attention and analyzing what and how you advertise really matters. Let me explain what I learned.

The media agency conundrum: advertisers want more, pay less and trust no-one.

Recently, both P&G as well as Mondelez announced they were seeking significant increases on the payment terms they require from their media agencies. Mondelez International is going the way of AB-InBev with 120 days payments terms, while P&G are going with 75 days. This means advertisers are asking their media agencies to bankroll the advertiser’s media costs and fees for a longer period of time (up to 120 days).

Advertisers need to be realistic in terms of what the consequences could be. And then decide if these consequences are not worse than the actual benefit of these “enhanced” payment terms.

Note: a few of the paragraphs that follow were written by me for the book “Z.E.R.O., zero paid media as the new marketing model” (with co-author Joseph Jaffe). Z.E.R.O. is on pre-order on Kickstarter through June 26, 2013. If you haven’t pre-ordered yet, and it isn’t June 26 yet, then you still have time.