You may have noticed that I now have a Google Ad running on the sidebar of the website. I realize that I am never going to actually make money off of the website, I am just running the ads for fun.
Every day at work I manage a big Google AdWords account promoting Invest In Canada. I spend a lot of time optimizing the campaigns, working on new keywords, targeting specific sites on the Google Content Network, and writing new ad copy.
Google AdSense
By running AdSense on my own website I get to see the flip side of the equation.
I wish there was an ad image quality filter.
So far I have been impressed with how AdSense works. Not in terms of how much money it is generating (none!), but how easy it is to started. After waiting just one day to get approved, I was able to have ads running on the site. Since my website is new and has very minimal content and traffic, the ads have not been the highest quality.
I find the typical Google text ads look very tacky on most websites. For now I have limited my ad spot to images. Unfortunately that did not improve things much. These bottom of the barrel ads that Google is serving up are not the most attractive works of art. I went through and blocked a few of the more ugly ads that came up. Hopefully as my website is around longer the advertisments will improve.
Going Forward
I want to continue to experiment with different ad solutions. Next I am going to look into Google AdSense for Feeds and may even put some of my domain names that are gathering dust to work with Google AdSense for Domains.
If anyone has some experience with this sort of things I would love to hear about it. Send me a note or feel free to comment below.