AdSense ads becoming less clickable

Darren Rowse is reporting that Google AdSense ads are about to become “less clickable”.

Currently, a reader can click anywhere on an AdSense block and it will be registered, but with the changes, only the title and URL of ads will clickable.

The idea is that this will dramatically cut down on accidental ad clicks, saving advertisers money.

But what will the change mean for publishers?

Well it’s difficult to predict exactly what will happen, but it’s likely that most publishers will see an initial drop in revenue from AdSense.

But you may also gain a few extra readers and increase reader loyalty too. Accidentally clicking an ad can be frustrating for a reader - and less people leaving your blog via ads could mean more of those people hanging around.

But if you’re relying solely on AdSense for your revenue, then now might be a good time to diversify. I’ve talked about the problem of relying on Google before, and this is a pretty good example of the issue.

The good news is, there are plenty of other ways to generate revenue from your blog, and I’ll be looking at some more of those in an upcoming post.