AdSense Referrals Bites The Dust

By jeffcAdvertising

Google is making some big news today as they have announced that they will be retiring their AdSense referrals program at the end of August and will be substituting it for the Doubleclick Performics Affiliate Network. The Google Affiliate Network works in a similar fashion to the AdSense Referrals program in that, it enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser defined actions, instead of clicks or impressions. Also, if you have less than three AdSense content units on a page, you can replace the referral ad units with the standard AdSense for content ad units.

Since the current program will be retiring at the end of August, Google is recommending you take the following steps:

  • Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your ad space.
  • Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create and save all reports related to the referrals program on your desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign information.

What does this news mean to you? How have the regular AdSense referral blocks performed on your blog?

6 thoughts on “AdSense Referrals Bites The Dust”

  2. And think of all of those who use these types of programs who never reach that $50.00 plateau. Someone could make it up to 30$ and give up which would mean Google would make use of that $30.00 and not the affiliate advertiser. Must be nice!

  3. Won’t affect me at all since I’ve never used referrals. By what I’ve read there are a fair amount of complaints surrounding how a publisher is paid from the affiliate program. Here’s an excerpt from one such comment placed on announcement on the “Adsense Blog”:

    The fact that you have to earn $50 before you get paid and the $50 has to be from a single advertiser – AND only if the advertiser PAYS what is owed. The way I read it is if you have 3 advertisers you publish for and each earn you $30 in a month for a total of $90 you still don’t get paid until one of them hits the $50 mark – and then you only get that single payment.

    Reading the “Terms and Agreement” blurb at “Double Click Performics” sign up page for myself, the above apparently is true. You only get paid if an advertiser’s fees to an affiliate is equal to or exceeds $50 then you get paid for that particular advertiser.

    Not being well versed in affiliate advertising per say, I’m guessing that there had to be a reasonable minimum amount set before payment from an advertiser to the affiliate program (and thus to the affiliate) is made. Otherwise it wouldn’t be cost effective for the advertiser in the long run meaning; would you as an advertiser condone the time and expense for sending out payments of say $11.29 or thereabouts every two weeks? I’d say it’s not but I don’t know if this is reasonable assumption on my part or not.

  4. they performed well on my blog, i think it really depends how many readers you have and where you place them.

    if darren from problogger.net used it, he would make hundreds =]

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