July 15, 2003
The shortcoming of ad programs like Google Adsense
Mac Net Journal is wondering about the value of Google Adsense. There are clearly limitations to the program, especially for site that are very focused. This is particularly bad for Mac oriented sites, as Google always seems to serve the same 5-10 ads. Most of which are for Mac hardware. It's not particularly conducive to drawing clicks from people who probably already own a Mac.
So far the ads on this site have seen enough clicks to make them worth having, but not enough to really make a difference. Fortunately I write about enough different topics that there is some variety once you get off the homepage. For me it's been pretty interesting, as I've actually learned about a number of pretty interesting products through the Google ads. This is especially true on the XML pages where the ads have a little more variety. In particular, I've found a couple new XML databases that I wasn't aware of.