MarketMe 2.0

What you see below is a 300×250 rectangular Google AdSense Ad unit. Ideally an ad unit this size should show 3-4 different ads but maybe there isn’t enough inventory and therefore, all you see is 1 ad somewhere near the middle of the rectangle.When a website visitor hovers the mouse over this Google Ad block, the cursor changes from a pointer to an hand and he can click anywhere inside the rectangle to visit the advertiser’s website.

However, this will soon change as Google has redefined the definition of a click.

Now a visitor will have to click either the Title or the URL of the Google Ad for the publisher (you) to make money. Going back to the screenshot, only clicks made in the Red Area will be treated as valid while clicks in the Yellow Area will not generate any revenue though the yellow areas will remain clickable.

While it is absolutely valid for Google to come up with new ways to deal with accidental clicks, I think they have gone a bit too far here because most clicks in whitespace areas may not be accidental.

For instance, if a website reader is interested in visiting the advertiser’s website - he will hover the mouse cursor over the Google Ad (yellow area in the screenshot) and as soon as the cursor changes shape (from pointer to hand), he releases the left mouse button to visit the advertiser’s site. That was on purpose, not accidental.

Publishers would be more more pleased if Google changes the default behavior of AdSense ads so that only the Title and URL area of the ads (highlighted in red) are clickable and not the whitespace areas surrounding the links (highlighted in yellow).

That ways, a site visitor who is genuinely interested in the advertiser’s site will have to position his mouse cursor exactly over the red area in order to visit the - that keeps both publishers and advertisers happy.