Say bye-bye to pagead2.googlesyndication.com and then welcome (or not) googleads.g.doubleclick.net
December 4, 2008
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Google
Since my first AdSense payout, when they really prove me that the system works and you really can earn money with AdSense, I was wondering why isn’t there a hostname for AdSense. I mean, like adsense.com for example. I know it redirects to the real AdSense pages, but for the matter of the example why the ads are hosted on a third domain, which has a kinda weird name anyway, googlesyndication, what a weird name.
Then Google bought Doubleclick. One of the greatest online advertising networks on the Globe. I thought they will start to use the Doubleclick servers for serving the AdSense ads. And so it happened, nonetheless to mention, in a half a year even our favorite John Doe would have transfer the files needed to serve the ads from one server to the other. I don’t know if anybody else noticed, but our tiny ads are served from the googleads.g.doubleclick.net hostname. But why is that good for us? I mean, it’s good for me, cos the “doubleclick” word is at least related in a way or other to ad serving. But why is that good for the AdSense publishers? I tell you what: it isn’t.
The only thing which has changed in our benefit is that the ad code is not 4kB but 3. Probably they stopped using the Prototype framework which is so uncool anyway, I would have expect something more from them. Oh, wait, that’s more than 1kB, so that can’t be.
Another thing which didn’t get changed is our ad codes. When a user loads a page, the browser makes a request to the old googlesyndication domain, which then bounces (redirect, nerds) the connection to the googleads.g.doubleclick.net. Since redirecting always costs load-time, some of the pages I manage and has AdSense ads implemented, now loads with almost 300ms slower. Per ad code. Thanks to the redirection I guess, since the file size is smaller I see no other plausible reason. You may say that 300 milliseconds is not a big deal. But what if a publisher has three AdSense ads on a page? That’s legal. 3 times 300 makes 900 additional milliseconds, let’s say a second. One second additional is a big deal for the website owners!
On another side of the note, can somebody explain for me, why the Flash ads have errors in them and I get the debugger popping up all the time? And when did I opt in for Flash ads anyway? I opted in for “Image and Text ads”, Flash ads are something else guys. At least if they would look cool…
As an end note, can somebody enlighten me why do I see only and only Google Chrome ads, anywhere I go?
Update: While I realize that my words seems to be offending, my intention was not to hurt anybody’s feelings, neither the guys’ from AdSense or from Doubleclick. I do appreciate your work and the post was just a “steam off”.
So, sorry ’bout that.
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Alex Wendell on Wed, 17th Dec 2008 4:16 am
The load time is not the only problem introduced by the new doubleclick ads. My earnings/click have gone *way* down since the implementation.
Not good at all!
PSM on Tue, 30th Dec 2008 3:41 pm
Uh Alex, the reason your earnings/click have gone WAY down is because your site sucks. Crap design and crap content don’t motivate users to stay on the page long enough for clicks.
methode on Tue, 30th Dec 2008 5:00 pm
Hello PSM,
Just for the sake of the knowledge gathering, and since you didn’t provide a valid e-mail address even though is never shown, AND because I do see your network you belong to, does your statement means that high “time on site” directly influences the CTR? Just wondering… you know.
Alex Wendell on Tue, 30th Dec 2008 7:36 pm
Uh PSM, Besides the site in question–that you commented on–I have several others, that were *all* getting more traffic _and_ clicks before doubleclick.
It seems that some folks like my sites. BTW, my click-through rate was about 19% pre-doubleclick.
Was is it you don’t like about my sites besides the popular topic articles and browser friendly (minimalist & re-sizeable) design?
Constructive feedback helps everyone.
-Alex
methode on Wed, 31st Dec 2008 8:04 am
Hi Alex,
First of all, I don’t agree with PSM. If your website in question performed well till now, then there might be another issue. The look of your site is NOT an issue in this case. Again, not if you say that until now it performed well.
To blame Doubleclick for the earnings drop is neither a plausible thing at the moment. For making this accusation viable we need to know other AdSense publishers’ stats before and after Google switched the domain it serves the ads from. If you can wait a day or two, we will publish an article regarding our stats just before and right after the switch ; it’s quite an interesting case because it’s forbidden in the AdSense TOS to publish our stats, so we have to find a workaround.
Anyway, it might be interesting.
If you want to debug your earnings drop, a good start might be the AdSense Help group: groups.google.com/group/adsense-help
They are quite friendly, and likely they will not blame the look of your website.
Alex Wendell on Sun, 4th Jan 2009 1:32 am
Hi methode,
Thanks, and the problem with my stats is that, I’m using Site Super Tracker as my quick-down-and-dirty AdSense page views and click-throughs. Since the google server change my stats are 0 views and 0 clicks, although, of course, I still see clicks when I login to google.
Yes, I’ve visited groups.google.com/group/adsense-help, thanks for the tip.
methode on Sun, 4th Jan 2009 7:08 am
Hi again Alex,
I’m not familiar with neither of the scripts, but I think I know what the problem is. In fact it’s almost sure that the problem is that in the program is hardcoded the old domain the ads were coming from (pagead2.goog…) and since now it’s served from another domain so it can not be tracked in the old fashioned way. I don’t know what language the script is coded in, if PHP than it’s an easy fix. Open up the files one-by-one and search in them for “pagead2″. If found, change it with the new domain (googleads.g.double…) and you’re probably done.
Hope this helps
Alex Wendell on Sun, 4th Jan 2009 10:44 pm
Thanks again methode,
It is PHP, and I’ll try that fix just as soon as I get back from boating–Have to take a *little* time off.
I’ll let you know if it works. Also, do you know the approx date that google started serving with doubleclick–I could go back and verify (or not) that that is actually the problem with my hits and clicks.
Thanks again,
Alex
methode on Sun, 4th Jan 2009 10:51 pm
It’s 3-4 days before the publishing day of this article, which is December 4, 2008. We observed way before publishing but had to wait for approval for publishing from the owner of the site.
Sincerely, i don’t really think that’s plausible that just because they switched the domain your stats should be lower. There has to be another, plausible reason else the whole internet would shout and scream blaming Google for the loss of their revenue.
(note that the comments coming from the e-mails are linked to the comments)