Are you a website owner that has AdSense ads up on their site? If so, you may have been concerned when you heard about Google’s new service ‘Google Contributor’, which aims to eliminate the AdSense ads that visitors see on your website.
Google Contributor has been around since the summer, but just last month was graduated from ‘beta’ and opened up to anyone. Here’s how it works:
1) A google user signs up for the Contributor service with Google. They choose to pay $2 – $10 per month, in exchange for seeing less ads on the internet.
2) When the user goes to a website that contains AdSense ads, they are instead seen an image of their choice.
3) The website publisher gets a portion of the monthly fee that the visitor paid Google.
How does this affect my AdSense revenue?
If my AdSense ads are not being shown, does that mean I’m going to lose revenue? Google says no, and explains “their monthly contribution is used to bid on their behalf in the ad auction—so they end up buying the ad slot rather than a traditional advertiser.”
This means that you should still be seeing the same revenue coming from your website, regardless of how many of your visitors have signed up for Google Contributor. The publisher is still getting paid the same amount for the ad, it’s just coming from the visitor’s pocket instead of the advertiser’s spend.
What do AdSense publishers need to do?
In short? Nothing. If you already run Google ads on your site, your website is currently taking advantage of Contributor.
Google urges you to link to the program and let your users know about it if they want to see less ads on your site. But other than that, there’s no opt-in process, no terms agreement, no nothing that you have to do to start getting the benefit from users of the Contributor service.
Can Publishers opt-out?
If you feel like you’re receiving less income due to the Contributor program, Google allows you to opt out of it. If you do this, then even Contributor users who visit your site will still see your AdSense ads, allowing you to reap the benefit of things the way they used to be.
To turn off Contributor for your site, login to your AdSense admin and click the “Allow and Block Ads” menu link. From that screen choose the ‘Ad Networks’ tab. Search for ‘Contributor’, and then click the toggle button to turn off that ad network:
Would you like to see less ads on the internet?
Are you interested in becoming a Google Contributor user?
It sounds like a service with trying out, but you should note that even if you opt for the most expensive $10/month plan, you’ll still see 50-75% of all AdSense ads – plus all ads that aren’t on the AdSense network.
If you’re interested in Google Contributor,
Learn more and signup here