AdSense: Workable Micropayment?

2005-08-04 07:06

Question of the Day: Are AdSense users more likely to click through on ads on other sites that use AdSense? Personally, now that I’ve seen some first-hand evidence of how hard it is get click throughs in general, I sometimes like to take a moment to tip a weblog for a post that I appreciate by clicking through on one of its AdSense ads. It only costs me a moment of time and it also allows me to satisfy my curiosity and do a little research on the types of websites that our buying ads through Google (since I can’t use the ads on my own site in this fashion).

Furthermore isn’t what I’m doing sort of the ultimate form of voluntary micropayment? People have talked about micropayment systems for content for a long time, but there’s never really been a viable universal infrastructure that I’ve been aware of. Google AdSense finally seems like a workable implementation because it’s the ultimate micropayment solution. Instead of dollars and cents, it allows you to pay a website with something even smaller and easier to part with: a few seconds of your time.

Comments are open. Let me know what you think about this idea.