Web Publishing and Google AdSense

Google's AdSense program is a a great way for even the smallest Web sites to earn money by serving ads on their sites. We've been testing AdSense in combination with the askSam Web Publisher, and it's an interesting way to monetize content and databases that you publish on the Web.

What Is Google AdSense?

Google AdSense is an extremely easy way to add targeted text ads and images ads to your Web content. You supply the content. Google supplies the ads. When visitors click on the ads, Google keeps track and sends you money.

For the vast majority of on-line content providers (with the exception of newspapers, AOL, etc.), this is a convenient way to get revenue from your Web site. You don't need to sell advertising and collect the funds. You simply sign up for the Google AdSense program and insert a block of HTML code on pages where you want the ads to display.

Delivering Relevant Ads... Most of the Time

One of the reasons AdSense works is that Google tries to deliver relevant ads - ads that fit with your Web content.  Google tries to understand the meaning of your Web pages and then delivers ads that fit. For the most part this works well.

We used the askSam Web Publisher to put the text from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on-line. If you look at the ads that appear at the top of the page, they are related to Sarbanes-Oxley (and compliance issues). It works well - and over time, Google appears to have become more accurate with the ads that display.  Perhaps they take into account the ads that users click. One of the problems I've noticed, when I set up new databases - Google tend to default to Sarbanes-Oxley ads (for example, see the John Roberts Opinion database).  

Here's an example of ads served by Google Adsense. You can get a sense of how relevant they are for this content. As I write this, I'm seeing Sarbanes ads - but not ads for Google AdSense:

<script type="text/javascript"><!--

google_ad_client = "pub-1712272742638154";

google_ad_width = 728;

google_ad_height = 90;

google_ad_format = "728x90_as";

google_ad_type = "text_image";

google_ad_channel ="";

google_color_border = "FFFFFF";

google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";

google_color_link = "0000FF";

google_color_url = "CCCCCC";

google_color_text = "000000";

//--></script>

<script type="text/javascript"

src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">

</script>

Google offers a variety of layouts for the ads - and also gives you a choice of colors and other formatting options.

The askSam Web Publisher and Google AdSense

The askSam Web Publisher makes it easy to publish large amounts of information on the Internet. It's how we've been putting information like the Bible, Supreme Court nominee Judge Roberts' Opinions, and the 9-11 Commission Report on-line.

Without any knowledge of HTML, the Web Publisher lets you import import existing documents and publish this information in a searchable, hypertext-linked database. You can take large Microsoft Word documents, text, HTML or PDF files (such as government reports or corporate policy manuals) and break them into multiple pieces - making them easier to search and navigate on-line.

The Web Publisher lets you define headers and footers that appear at the top and bottom of each page. By simply inserting the HTML code for Google AdSense, ads appear for each document you've imported into your askSam database. So if you have any interesting databases lying around... think about putting them on-line. It's probably quicker and easier than you think.

Related Links:

Google AdSense Home Page

   https://www.google.com/adsense/  

askSam Web Publisher

   http://www.asksam.com/wpbrochure.asp