How Google Matches Up Adwords Advertisers With Websites Displaying Adsense 1
Adsense, on the other hand, is an ad serving program that allows website owners to unobtrusively display relevant text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. It is also a way for website owners to add Google search in their websites and to earn money by displaying ads on the search results pages. The ads posted on each site are administered by Google and creates revenue for the website owner. Although website owners need not pay to join the program they still get paid for each click received by the ads shown on their site or for the every thousand times a specific ad appears on the website. This is why AdSense is called a pay-per-click and pay-per-impression program.
Keyword Targeting and Site-Targeted Advertising
As mentioned earlier, Adwords and Adsense are two sides of the same coin. For both programs to work they need the other. Adsense affiliates need the data provided by Adwords advertisers to be able to display relevant ads in their websites. But how does Google know which ads are relevant? How does Google match the ads to the websites?
In their Adsense FAQ, Google answered the question. According to Google they use Google search and page-ranking technologies to deliver the ads to the websites. Google matches advertisers and websites using two different techniques ? keyword targeting and site-targeted advertising. The choice as to which technique will be used in the matching process is up to the advertiser.
Keyword Targeting
Keyword targeting uses keywords or key phrases to match the ads to websites. Google compares the keywords to the content in a website and decides whether the ads will be relevant the site?s visitors. However, Google matches the ads to the websites not only using the simple keyword matching described above but also using a complicated algorithm that factors in keyword analysis, word frequency, font size, and the overall link structure of the web. What that algorithm is, of course Google will not tell.
Site-targeted Advertising
Site-targeted advertising is an option Google offers to its advertisers. In site-targeted advertising advertisers are allowed to pick the sites that they want their ads to appear in. This site-targeted advertising option is beneficial for advertisers who know their target audience and the sites they regularly visit. This option does not use the complicated algorithm used in keyword matching. Instead it simply matches the ads to the websites as requested by the advertisers in a straightforward manner. This option is just as effective as the keyword matching option if the advertiser was able to choose the best sites for them to appear. Best being sites whose majority of visitors belongs to the advertisers? target audience.