by H Douglas Forbes

Created on: October 07, 2009   Last Updated: October 08, 2009

You would be very hard pressed to find many people using the Internet who were not already familiar with AdSense and the concept behind it. Indeed many of you are in no doubt earning income from AdSense right now-and or using AdWords to drive traffic toward one of your promotions or websites.

AdSense has become so popular that to some it is almost a religion, and the Great Google God can do no wrong. This type of thinking is of course reinforced by Google, and until recently they even prevented publishers from using many of the

AdSense Alternatives that are available to the public.

The very notion of using any other form of advertising is to some as foreign as a visitor from Alpha Centauri would be. There is no need to use another when you already have the best-right? I mean if you own a Cadillac why would you also want a Chevrolet Aveo?

Actually-you may well want to also use an AdSense Alternative for the same reason why a Cadillac owner would want to drive a Aveo at times, to save money; in some cases, to make more money.

AdSense is a form of contextual advertising, which simply means that the ads fit the topic of the site. This if your article is about life insurance AdSense is going to deliver ads about insurance to that website. There is be no ads about dating, or travel, making money from working at home etc, o the ads will be all about the Insurance Industry.

This is of course just my opinion but it occurs to me that if you are selling insurance on your site, you just may not wish your competitors advertised on the same page. I do know you have the ability with AdSense to stop specific ads from appearing, but I can see that being a time consuming endeavor and one that you are bound to forget to do every day.

I recently read an article where the author made the claim that as high as sixty percent of the clicks made on paid per click advertisements were done by people on a whim. They saw a topic and spontaneously made the decision to investigate further. They may have been reading that page about Insurance and saw an ad about Dating or Travel or any of the other thousands of things that get advertised other then Insurance.

The use of contextual advertising is of great importance and is a vital part of many websites. I would never suggest giving it up. I do suggest, and do so with a great deal of passion, that you also include non contextual ads as well.

There seems to be a great deal of debate on this subject, however from my own personal experience I

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