There has been a lot of hype about Adsense being dead from a report by Scott Boulch called Death of Adsense and Life After Adsense followed by gurus claiming Adsense is very much alive such as one by Joel Comm called Adsense Is Alive
The links direct to these reports are above if you want to read what the hype is about (copyright belongs to these authors and not to myself).
The bottom line of what these reports are talking about are the changes taking place within the Google advertising department which covers both Adwords and Adsense.
Adwords is where people place a bid on particular keywords in order to get a higher listing and more prominence on a search for that keyword. Whenever anyone clicks on that ad, the advertiser pays Google a fee. The Adwords can appear on the search results and on web sites which participate in the Adsense program.
Adsense is a program for web site publishers to make money from placing code on their pages which will display ads from people with an Adwords account. The Adsense participant will receive an undisclosed percentage of the money paid per bid for the ad which appears on that site.
Google is always changing its structure because it is trying to give the standard Google user a quality experience. They have to keep changing because there are webmasters which like to figure out how to beat the system in order to get to the top even though they offer nothing but garbage to the public.
Ever since the masses have latched onto Adsense as a way to make easy money hyped by many gurus selling them a manual, everyone thinks they are a webmaster and are throwing up sites left and right that lack the one thing Google really wants - QUALITY. They brought it upon themselves by approving so many sites, but have been cracking down on those who abuse the system.
With so many lackluster sites in Adsense, it has not been a very profitable or productive venture for the Adwords advertisers. So instead of risking losing the ones providing Google and the other Adsense participants money, the system had to make changes.
Smart Pricing was used to make sure the Adwords sponsors did not have to pay their maximum bid, but to get away with paying the least they could per click. For instance, if someone was bidding $25 on the keyword "clinical depression" and the average bid was actually $2.25, the highest bidder would only have to pay slightly more than the average. So someone who designed a site to profit off the keyword "clinical depression" may have made $500 a day in clicks would end up with $5 in clicks.
Google was getting wise to all the garbage sites out there designed just to try and profit from Adsense without giving real value to the readers or the sponsors and adjusted the rate webmasters would get depending on how productive the site was at conversion rates.
Bottom line, if you got into the Adsense program to make a quick buck by trying to corner the market on hot keyword niches, but have nothing real to offer, your days are numbered and it is time to look for the next hot item to latch onto because you know you only did it for the promise of money and not because this is your career dream.
However, if you have always been playing by the rules and offering quality and substance, you will still make money in the program. As with any program to support your web site, never put all your eggs in one basket. Your site needs to grow and evolve. Always keep an open mind and learn as much as possible. Don't let hype make you decide your fate. Use your own judgment and common sense.
