Australia.com and the Comic Side of Google Adsense

For publishers, Google Adsense can be a great way to monitise traffic. However, we don’t recommend the following approach currently in use at Tourism Australia.

While conducting research for one of our clients, I came across a very interesting implementation of Google Adsense on Australia.com that left me scratching my head. Whether by design (without knowing Tourism Australia’s strategy there’s a chance that they wanted this outcome) or error, the Australia.com website is only showing their own ads (see screenshot below).

As a general rule, most advertisers use Adsense to display ads from other businesses so they can make money. So using Adsense to pay Google to display your own ads defeats the purpose of using it in the first place (at least it would if I were using it).

Of course it doesn’t mean I’m right. I’m sure someone at Tourism Australia has a very valid reason for using Adsense in this manner. I’m just not sure what it is.

If you do, please feel free to drop us a note to clarify their strategy.