Companies forced to look for alternatives as Google AdSense for Domains essentially shuts down.
The fallout from Google removing all advertisers from showing their ads on parked domains continues.
According to one major parking company, parking results have deteriorated quickly in the past couple of weeks after barely budging up until that point. It appears Google is removing some of the “best” advertisers in the last tranches.
Technically, advertisers can opt back in to showing their ads on parked domains. But don’t count on many doing that.
I attempted to set up a Google Ads campaign that includes parked pages. The only indication that parking is opted out is buried underneath one of the options that most advertisers will never see:
You can’t simply uncheck the box to opt in when setting up campaigns. There’s a tooltip if you hover over “Parked domains” that states that opting in to parked domains has to be done at the account level. It includes a link to make the change…that resolves to a 404 error page.
In other words, don’t expect many advertisers to opt back into ads on domains. AdSense for Domains is dead.
This impacts monetizers in a couple of different ways.
Arbitrageurs are moving to Related Search for Content (RSOC). Some companies are struggling with this, while others seem to be doing OK. But I’ve heard that Google continues to refine its rules for RSOC and recently made some changes that might cause more pain for arbitrage.
You can also expect to see more zero-click monetization.
While RSOC and zero-click work for some monetizers, a big group is out in the cold: domain registrars, hosting companies, and ISPs that monetize parked pages and error traffic with ads.
Many people shun these companies for engaging in this practice, but it’s clear there’s good money in it because these companies put up with complaints and legal threats related to this monetization.
These groups can’t throw RSOC up on a parked page, and they can’t use zero-click.
I expect many of these companies will look to non-Google PPC providers. Those new to the industry might not know this, but there was once a duopoly for parked domain monetization before there was a monopoly. Yahoo was a sizeable player before Google took over the entire business. There’s still one domain monetization company I’m aware of with a Yahoo feed, however: Skenzo.
Some people reading this might not be worried because they don’t park domains. But make no mistake: as profits in the industry take a hit, it impacts everyone.
Source: https://domainnamewire.com/
