We're retiring AdSense Referrals
We're constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term.
Context & Ripple Effects
AdSense had expanded the program through the 2007 rollout of Referrals 2.0 to all publishers, then signaled referrals changes in January 2008 and issued a follow-up later that month. The retirement closes that short sequence of expansion and adjustment.
Google frames the decision as a resource-allocation choice: development support will concentrate on publisher features it judges more effective for long-term monetization.
First-order effects
- Publishers using AdSense Referrals lose that monetization feature and must rely on AdSense offerings Google continues to support.
- Google can stop maintaining the referrals program and redirect product effort toward its remaining publisher monetization features.
Second-order effects
- The withdrawal makes Google’s retained ad products more central to publishers seeking monetization through AdSense, rather than a referrals-based option.
- Advertisers and partners that depended on referrals lose an AdSense distribution route as the associated pay-per-action beta is retired.
Third-order effects
- The move points to a publisher-ad platform strategy in which broadly available features are still removed when Google judges their monetization performance insufficient to justify continued investment.
The trend: Publisher ad platforms are consolidating around fewer monetization products that their operators consider scalable and effective over the long term.