Publishing 2.0 analyzes the industries that have cropped up from the Adsense/PPC industry.  Namely, the creation of sites just for the purpose of displaying Adsense ads, and “direct navigation” sites which are just parked domains.

There’s no argument that these industries exist, and that a lot of people are making a lot of money from them.  On the surface there doesn’t seem to be too much harm if advertisers feel the money is worth it to pay for ad clicks on sites that have no other reason to exist then to make money off of ads.

Well, there is potentially some harm. Advertisers can’t breakdown their ROI from various publishing sources via most PPC systems, so the clicks on these suspect sites COULD be the worst performing media they’re buying, and they could have a negative ROI on these sites.  So, even if overall they have a positive ROI from their advertising, it could be even better if they weren’t showing up on fake Adsense sites and parked domains.

Also, many advertisers aren’t even calculating ROI since the PPC systems don’t do it for you or adjust your ad spend.  That’s one advantage buying advertising from someone like Right Media has, is we actually adjust your spend and location based on real ROI.

There’s also the harm in that a lot of these sites clog up search results making it harder to find good content. So what’s the solution?  For PPC networks to not allow their ads on such sites?  For them to provide better visibility and ROI tools for advertisers?  What if they don’t do this and as Publishing 2.0 asks:

What happens when the web becomes one big network of ads?

While that wouldn’t be good, my answer to that is that sites that have real content will just be even more valuable to users, thus making them probably able to earn even more money.

The bottom line is if you’re a publisher, keep doing business legitimately and provide useful content and services and you’ll be fine.  If you’re an advertiser, work for visibility and watch your ROI.