Once again The Great Google has reared its ugly head upon the masses. Not only do we have to deal with the epic battle of seo results with them but also the paid traffic has taken a turn for the worse.

This week I saw a big chunk of my income vanish due to Google now enforcing a quality score on content network ads. This applies to image ads as well as text ads.  I have confirmed from this post that I am not the only one who has seen this happen.  Now none of this has been announced or even shows up in adwords and talking to Google will get you nowhere.

If this week you have seen your content network impression drop to zero then your account has been manually flagged for review. Every campaign you try and setup will now have to be check over by someone at The Great Google. This has all been done to enhance user experience and to make Google tons of money.

First the user experience bit, Google has flagged all of these accounts due to your site not meeting their standards. If you ask what their standards are you wont get a reply so you basically have to guess.  One thing we are finding out is Google is out to kill the whole landing page/middle man business model. If you have a site that gives users info and then takes them to another site you are considered unfit for Google users and can expect to no get anywhere advertising with them.

So how is this going to make Google tons of money? Well they have learned that instead of taking your advertising money and getting a small piece of the pie they can just cut you out and be the only middleman. They only want advertisers that link to their sites and keep the user there to sell the product.  This will of course lead to advertisers willing to spend more money on advertising since they don’t have to pay affiliates. Cost per click will probably sky rocket as competition for ad spots disappears.

This is going to affect affiliate marketers, online marketing firms and anyone else who are helping struggling business with out in house experts. If your business is helping others get sales you’re going to be out of work soon, at least with Google. The future of marketing is going to be very different in a few years and only those who can adapt will survive. Hopefully I will be one of them.