Adsense

[michael]

Something that I have been seeing a lot of recently is (small) hosting companies who have adsense on their site. To me this kind of defeats the purpose as invaribly the ads are for their competitors.

Why work hard to bring someone to your site and then make it so easy for them to go elsewhere. It just defies logic to me.

[Host Master]

I can't think of any serious business that would want to send visitors somewhere else to spend their cash. Sounds like kiddie hosts to me who are looking for quick money. Not someone looking to develop a reputation for professionalism.

[michael]

I'm not sure what the average cpc is for web-hosting ads but surely even getting a 1 month sign up would make more for them?

[WebHost Admin]

I would quite agree with the above points - the point of a business website is to attract and retain visitors long enough to convert them into customers - where you can set up a profitable long-term relationship with them (usually). Simply adding AdSense is sending potential customers elsewhere - it wouldn't tell me the company is serious, so I'd be happy to go to their competitors - but would be unlikely to click through their AdSense to do so.

[webmonkey]

I think too many people are being caught up with the adSense hype. Realistically to get past that $100 threshold, you need to be attracting quite a bit of traffic, to even get a few clickthroughs. I agree with you guys when saying that it just makes them look cheap in the end, and puts more money in Google's pockets.

[StreamLine]

I definitely agree. Consumers are only getting smarter when it comes to understanding the website that pop up on their screen, and adsense is obviously an ad. When people see this on a site that should be devoted to only a few things to sell you, they only question your motivation. I think that if you are making a site that is meant to sell something, stick to it and make that thing the best it can be. Don't get carried away, otherwise it just looks like you are after the money period, and your product gets cheapened.

[WebHost Admin]

I agree - I think we're going to see a lot of AdSense blindness creep into the equation soon - especially as the ad formats tend to be fairly limited at present. Once Google allow you to define the font that should help with integration a lot more and work against ad blindness for AdSense.

2c.

[Jon]

I've seen this on many smaller hosting sites and have questioned why they've got it up there. Surely the loss in business is far greater than the minute amount of money they get from the sponsors...