On a recent Backwards Gang episode of the Gillmor Gang (hard to tell which one eh?), Jason argues about AdSense being more like Direct Marketing and that it will be the incumbent form of marketing for next few decades. He also touches upon the YouTube/AdSense relationship at his blog
Well, he’s partially right but he’s missing one important part of the recipe.

I agree that AdSense is more like Direct Marketing than advertising and  it’s way more efficient than prior forms af advertising given that it’s pay-per-click.
The important piece of the puzzle that Jason is missing is the quality list, something of a cornerstone for Direct Mail or Email advertising.
A better list is a better open-rate, and a bigger ROI.

The fact that AdSense is only contextual is a shortcoming, and for both Google and the advertisers, making it more efficient will make more money for each respectively.

Despite it being pay-per-click, more click-throughs mean more revenue for both Google and the advertiser.

Where is the quality list in AdSense?

You could argue that it’s in the context of the web page, but this is only superficially true.

To rev things up, or “press on the gas,” as Jason would say, a bit of behavioral targeting needs to be added to the mix.

Get more of these ads in front of people who really want them, or are at a particular point of the buying cycle and your CTRs will go up, and revenue will follow.

This can all work in conjunction with contextual data, but will enhance contextual delivery immensely.

So while I agree with Jason’s prediction that AdSense will dominate for years to come, I think Google must improve upon it, or else risk losing marketshare to a behaviorally enhanced version of adsense that may provide a similar ROI, but in a condensed amount of time, which equates to money.

If Jason thinks that Google will rise to Microsoft levels of dominance in this space, they are going to have to address the quality list or lead, in this case, by the use of behavioral targeting.

I think they will. In fact, I think  it will be an integral part of their Cost-Per-Action experimentation that began when the rumblings about click-fraud were at a peak.

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Jeneane Sessum with some thought-proking ideas about Attention.

. . .anyone concerned with what you’re paying attention to is out to make money off of you. Trying to paint attention monitoring or tracking or trust or what have you as anything other than that is dishonest.

Hmmm. . .

I think there are exceptions, though rare.

But there are also differences in the way people make money off of their customers.

Providing a valuable service is a lot different than war-profiteering, no?

Thanks to Kent Newsome for the link.

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Kent, Kent, Kent!! I love ya buddy but slow down here , I think.

And Tom Morris concurs, I think.

I suppose by linking to them , I can’t also support the idea of gestures, but I don’t think that’s the case.

I’ll just put one half-baked thought out there for now. The discussion really needs a podcast, and I’m trying to get motivated on that one OPML gang. I’m just busy.

Links are dead. Long live Links.

Right, now links are the king of how we get information. Google PageRank, Technorati rank, etc.

Okay we agree.

But wait. We filter out Spam Blogs and SEO sharks so that we get better results.

But wait. We add context and history and dare I say “Attention” data to get better results.

But wait. We add the wisdom of the crowd to get better results.

There is so much additional metadata that is, could be, and will be added to the tools we use to get and give information, that you must at least agree the link is overrated.

As I’ve said before. If I write a good post reviewing a new cell phone and engadget writes nonsense and mentions that same phone, who do you think will show up higher in a Google search.

That indicates a system that is broken. But it doesn’t yet want to fix itself, because links are the basis of it’s economy.

Now, you may have heard about Google’s talk about pay-per-action as opposed to pay-per-click.

In that case, the point isn’t to get as many click-throughs as possible, but to entice the right person through the door. One who has the right intentions.

The way you do that is by examining what they have been paying attention to and what gestures they have implied.

I agree all of this can be rather silly sounding, but I have one real example that I gave to Steve Gillmor. and maybe you think this is as ridiculous as Scoble’s example (I’m not linking).

It’s happy hour and a local pub wants to draw a crowd in with a beer special.

You’ve been a patron there before and payed with your GoogleWallet. They know you like Guiness.
Fine, send out a text message to all who bought Guiness in the last year during the hours of 5 to 8, offering a free cascading treat.

But wait. The web service polls for my geocode and realizes my cell phone is in Austin, Texas.

I have just made a implicit negative gesture that I don’t want that message.

Damn, and I was thirsty.

A link is one of the most useful tools we have in the bag right now., but it doesn’t always have to be that way.

Me, I’m counting on the teleport to be the winner.

“Kosso had 500 people teleport to the RSS platform. Must be a an authority Flissl!” ; )

Don’t bother filing a patent on Pay-Per-Teleport. I already did.

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Around six or seven years ago the subject of free site vs. subscriber-based was a big one. Big surprise that I have never waivered from free.

But I just realized how ahead of the game I was back then when I said to one editor, “we may want to charge different rates, because some of the site-users will be causing a drain on us, but others will be contributing. ya know what I mean?”

“No,” she said, which was understandable since we didn’t have forums of any kind at the time.

On a side note, at that time I was pushing for the company to adopt the Arsdigita Community System (see OpenACS ), and I admit that my notion of “paying contributors” was heavily influenced by Philip Greenspun.

Scott Karp seems to be thinking that the time has come to pay the users.

What a great way to promote Citizen Journalism (or whatever you want to call hyper-local-non-journalist-majors-traditional-media-aggregated-content)

For less than one yearly salary (I hope!) a news company could pay for ten local blog posts a day at ten bucks a piece.

10 X 10 X 365 = $36,500

Fifteen bucks if a photo, audio or video is included, of course. ; )
But really, we should just let the bloggers keep all the Google ad money, even though we might be driving traffic, and figure we’ll make it up at a higher level of long term relationship marketing.

In other words, they get the nickle and dimes and we get the gesture and attention data for the big payoff.

Sounds perfectly fair to me.

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