Despite the fact that blog platforms like Blogger and WordPress are moving away from CAPTCHA’s (aka those silly puzzles that verify whether you’re human), it looks like one company is trying to make CAPTCHA’s cool again by helping bloggers profit off of every word typed.

ADSCAPTCHA’s™ innovative Pay Per Type™ platform creates profits from CAPTCHA technology. Instead of paying for CAPTCHAs, website owners and developers can make money from every ADSCAPTCHA™ that is typed in full. That’s 280,000,000 opportunities – and counting – every day. [...]

The ADSCAPTCHA™ model links advertisers, website owners and web developers so that everyone benefits. Website owners & developers get high-level internet security and a share of advertising revenues. Advertisers gain the most powerful marketing tool available today, customized to their targeted audience and budget. The ADSCAPTCHA™ experience for the user is more fun and more meaningful than standard CAPTCHAs, which means it is a powerful opportunity to “capture” the target audience.  (ADSCAPTCHA.com)

Although ADSCAPTCHA is not the first to envision merging word puzzles with ads (as Confident Technologies is also attempting to do this), they probably will not be the last which means that bloggers will soon be arguing whether CAPTCHA’s are still relevant (now that there is money on the table).

Since there seems to be a loyal fan base devoted to CAPTCHA’s (note: I use to be one until I encountered Akismet by WordPress), here are a few reasons why bloggers should (and should not) use CAPTCHA ads for their blogs. read more

When it comes to being scammed, even the big guys can be taken in from time to time.

Gizmodo, Gawker Media’s hugely popular technology/gadget blog, has had to apologise to its readers for allowing ads containing malware to be published on its site during the past week.

Their ad sales team was duped by an elaborate scam that would have infected some users with software that may have caused random passwords and possibly initiated phishing attacks. read more

The Google Adsense Blog helps you to get started with Google Ad Manager, Google’s hosted solution for managing your ads. Ad Manager is free to use, but if you grow big you might have to pay up, be sure to read the terms of service so that you know what you’re getting into.

Here’s part 1 and part 2 to help you get going.

So why would you want to use Google Ad Manager? read more

Google’s general philosophy surrounding AdSense ad placement is to make them blend with the rest of a site’s content, so it’s always struck me as a little strange that publishers have had no control over the fonts displayed.

That’s just changed, with Google announcing an update which allow ads to be rendered in a number of fonts. Don’t get too excited, though, because there’s a small selection — Arial, Times and Verdana.

You don’t get much control beyond that. Obviously, you can’t alter the size of the fonts because the ad blocks are specific sizes and you’d end up clipping ads (this often happens if a user manually increases the font size on their browser). It only works on ads displaying Latin-based characters, and it won’t affect image-based adverts. read more

Chris Garret recently wrote about the suggestion that clicking on ads would be like tipping a blogger. Consider the opposite. Are you the kind of blog reader who would go to great lengths just to avoid clicking ads?

I’m like this sometimes. And it’s not only because I’ve grown desensitized to ads (ad blindness). But it also stems from being overly-cautious. For one, clicking on bad links seems to be one of the popular ways of getting infected with malware. Because of this I try to avoid clicking emailed links. I usually copy the URL and paste. Or if it’s a service I use, I type the URL directly. And when browsing, I always check the URL on my status bar before clicking. If I find an AdSense ad interesting, I usually just type in the URL–if the URL is visible–on another tab to see what it’s all about. read more

In Unrelated Ads Angst and Feed Clutter, part of the WTF Blog Design Clutter series, I talked about how to name the ad and feed sections on your blog so your readers and visitors aren’t confused with jargon or misleading representation.

Many of you asked me what title or label should be used to lure your visitors into clicking on your ads and subscribing to your feeds without driving them away or confusing them. Let’s brainstorm some possibilities.

Naming Ad Sections on Your Blog

If you use a misleading title for your advertising or “sponsored” section, you can really upset your readers and visitors when they click through to an ad. That’s a sure way to lose visitors. You need to warn them, but you also need to entice them to click, if your blog is serious about making money.

Like most online advertisers, Adsense is very clear about what you can and cannot do with their ads, including the use of deceptive titles that infer the ads are not ads. You need an honest, transparent, yet motivating title for your ads.

“Visit Our Sponsors” is simple and generic, as is “Our Commercial Recommendations.” You can be blatant with “Advertisements” or “Ad sponsors” as long as that still complies with the terms of service for the advertiser.

What about something more appropriate to your blog’s topic?

If your blog is about cars, why not title them, “Drive Some Business to Our Sponsors.” If your blog is about cats, what about “Our Sponsors are the Cat’s Meow” or “Here Kitty Kitty! Shop Here!”

Contextual ad services require keywords near their ads and on the page, so why not add more by being clever, not deceptive. You cannot imply the links in the ads are publisher-created content, but you can say they are ads or sponsors with some imagination.

You can also color the background or the area around the ads to set them apart but also integrated into the blog’s design to draw the eye towards them without distracting from the content. There are many ways of highlighting your ads without words that helps the visitor recognize them. Research the guidelines the advertiser provides, as some do not allow graphics or design emphasis, and check their top revenue earners to see what they are doing.

Naming Feed Subscriptions on Your Blog

As featured in the article on feed clutter, I cited an article by Copyblogger about changing the title of your feed subscriptions from “Subscribe” to anything else could improve your blog’s subscription rate and help clean up the WTF confusion that term represents. If “subscription” implies payment, then what terms do you use to promote your blog feed?

The answer depends upon your reader’s familiarity with feeds. If they are familiar with feeds and feed readers, then all you need is the feed icon.

If they aren’t, what words can you use to get readers to sign up for your blog feed?

You can use phrases that link to your blog’s feed, or to a Page with a listing of your various feed options. Here are some phrases to consider:

• Keep up with my blog!
• Add this blog to your feed reader.
• Want to know how to keep up with my blog?
• Track this blog.
• Follow this blog.
• Follow me.
• Frequent Reports and Updates
• Follow me where I lead…
• Stay up-to-date

Again, be clever with the phrasing and match it to your blog’s purpose:

• Cat blog: Track this cat
• Auto blog: Take a trip with us!
• Nature/Outdoor blog: Take our hike!
• Travel blog: Track Our Travels
• Sailing blog: Chart Our Course With Us
• Medical/Health blog: Want a daily dose of My Blog?

Use the feed icon to add some visual hint and have fun with the all the possibilities. Got more suggestions?

You know them. Those ads, often text-based, that appear in the sidebars, headers, footers, between posts, in posts, and all over blogs. The ads use an algorithm to evaluate the keyword content and publish ads related to the keywords. We all know how fallible those attempts are, don’t we? When it comes to WTF Blog Design Clutter, the distracting ad that pulls us from the content to the ad with a “WTF is that doing here” thought can ruin your blog reading experience.

A friend of mine shared the story of her husband’s struggle to recover from a stroke on her blog. There were laughter and tears in her stories, but also distractions. Her husband’s nickname is Joe and the ads in the sidebar showed horrible ads for Joe Cool, Joe Blow, Easy Joe, and other obnoxious things including cigarettes and light porn. Totally inappropriate. So many people complained, she took down the ads.

While online advertisers are working overtime to figure out profiling techniques, aiming as much related contextual ads at the blog’s visitors, a lot of the ads are totally unrelated, often insulting or demeaning.
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