If you look at the Internet a few years ago, you will see that advertising was done in a way that was very similar to other types of media such as television, or actually more like what you see in newspapers. You would go to a website, and somewhere you would see a banner (often quite a few and very large) representing and promoting whatever company was paying to be added to your space. But this type of advertising had one problem. It didn't really take advantage of the fact that the ads weren't in any newspaper, but were presented on the internet. You've probably noticed many similar things on the sites you've browsed. You're browsing an online store, looking for a watch, but you see a banner advertising a car. Even if you want to buy a car sometime later, you're looking for a watch right now, and it sure would be nice if the banner advertised a watch, because then you'd probably click on it. That's also what the folks at Google were thinking, so they came up with a killer idea. This is known as Google AdSense and is known as a targeted advertising program What you do (as a web designer / website owner) is instead of jumping through hoops to get some banner on your site that your visitors won't even care about, you just allocate a certain area of the screen. Then you sign up for Google AdSense, put a small snippet of code on your website, and Google will ensure that a banner appears in the location you specify, representing the add-ons relevant to your site's content. This is very easy for Google because Google is a search engine company. It looks for keywords on your page, searches a database of websites to find those that relate to anything on your page, and there you go: targeted advertising. You (the webmaster) get paid for every visitor who clicks on an AdSense banner on your site. Now, this is sure to happen more often than with a traditional banner, because people actually care about what's on the banner (otherwise they wouldn't be on your page, right?). But it also works wonders for people who want to advertise. And it is for the same reason. The best thing about Google AdSense is that all banner content is relevant. This relevance is the key to the success of the programs and also the reason why everyone is satisfied. The advertiser has a relevantly placed ad, the publisher makes money from their content, and Google takes it. Of course, as always, Google has set high standards for its AdSense program in terms of appearance and functionality. You cannot have more than two such banners on your site, and Google only inserts text into these banners. Another advantage is that AdSense advertising is much less intrusive than regular advertising. But this also means that you should place the banner better because it is possible that visitors may miss it completely. So, in the end, Google AdSense is an advertising program that is unique because the ads are relevant to the content on the site. Anyone who wants to advertise pays Google to do so. Anyone who wants to place ads on their site does so through AdSense, getting paid by Google. All transactions go through Google, and advertisers and publishers have access to statistics that help them understand and manage the effectiveness of their campaign. The whole process is elegant, simple and efficient for anyone in the chain, from site visitors to advertisers, and it's one of the reasons why Google is known for innovation and new thinking.
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