InsideGoogle

New Version Of AdSense Referrals Launched

Google has significantly improved its referral program for AdSense, calling the new version Referrals 2.0. They say that the new version has thousands of products to choose from, category and keyword targeting to suggest the best products for your site, and a “Pick best performing ads” option which automatically displays ads expected to perform best. The new interface is pictured behind that link.

I found at least one referral product I liked in there, for
, which makes these amazing protection shields for iPods, cellphones, and other portable devices. I’ve got two, one for my touchscreen phone, and I swear by these things.

See how well that referral link blended in my post? Would you believe it required a WordPress plugin! Yes, Google insists that referrals, which cannot really suffer from click fraud, be placed using SCRIPT tags, which means many blogging software won’t allow it. I have to create the referral code in a WordPress plugin, then use an HTML comment to insert it into my post. Worse, RSS visitors don’t ever see the referral. Google needs to consider letting you just link the damn thing for better ease of use.

In the meantime, Microsoft’s affiliate program lets me use standard text links and images all I want, and edit as necessary. Sure, they don’t have much to offer, but I can at least tell you to download a 90 day free trial of Windows Live Onecare without jumping through hoops.

You can read more about that program at InsideMicrosoft.

June 29th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | AdSense, Advertising, General | one comment