Adsense Update: Fred, $500, and Is Google Trying Harder?

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Fred Wilson seems to be tempting fate by posting on his Google Adsense numbers, but I for one am pleased he's doing it, as it might spur some innovation in the space. Fred's pretty pleased with his $500 a year from AdSense, but I think that's not close to what Fred could or should be pulling in. Thomas Hawk has some comments on the post. Given experiences like Fred's and my own (which are similar in scope), I would be upbraiding Google on Adsense as it relates to blogs and smaller sites in particular, but this week when I got a call from a nice fellow in their New York advertising office. He was calling to inquire about Boing Boing and Adsense - basically, it was a cold call - Google was doing marketing outreach. While sites like Fred's and Searchblog are not getting these calls, the Google rep told me his job was to call "mid size" sites like Boing Boing (I'm the "band manager" there) and convert them into Adsense customers. (He did not realize that I write Searchblog, and was not treating me with any kind of special preference, as far as I could tell. I did inform him during our conversation.) I explained to the rep why Boing Boing is not using Adsense - the list is rather long. First, the ads are not very relevant - Boing Boing is pretty eclectic and updates quickly, and the content confuses the Adsense algorithms, forcing them to default to lowest common denominator type ads - like mortgage offers and affiliate sites. The Google rep countered that for sites the size of Boing Boing, Adsense can crawl more quickly, increasing the chance that more contextual ads will appear. He also reminded me that Adsense has updated tools which...

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