Adventures in Google Adsense

Recently, my blog was approved for monetization with Google Adsense. I was curious how Adsense worked, so I tried it out. What followed was a comedy of errors.

The First Rejection

I didn’t realize that blogs are frequently rejected for Google Adsense. My first application was rejected due to “low value content”. This surprised me because the Perspective Notes page of my blog received a considerable amount of traffic (more than all my other pages combined), and I received many comments from colleagues, students and aspiring artists who found my content helpful. However, it turns out that Google does not actually evaluate the value of your content. Google bots simply check boxes. For example, the Google bots check to see if you have been posting regularly over a length of time. In fact, when I first applied for Adsense, I did not have many posts on the home page of my blog (all my content was on blog pages, which were serving as a make-shift portfolio until I could build a proper portfolio website). So, after a few months of posting on my blog, I reapplied to Adsense and was accepted.

The “Experiment” That Went Too Far

After connecting Adsense to my blog, I saw a notification that recommended running an experiment to find optimal placements for ads, so I clicked “run experiment”. The “experiment” placed ads all over my blog, literally anywhere an ad could be placed, even in the midst of blog posts. I hate visiting websites where I am bombarded with ads, especially pop-up or banner ads that will not allow me to view content without clicking something. Equally offensive are ads that appear in the midst of blog posts, confusing what is post and what is ad. It was a mess, so I switched off the experiment.

Trying to Play Nice with Ads

I tried to compromise: placing ads discreetly on the sides or below my posts, but no matter what I did, they looked obtrusive or distracting. This might just be my inexperience, but I found the user options in both Adsense and Blogger to be rather limited and disappointing. Eventually, I learned how to limit the ads to the bottom of posts – visually cleaner but terrible for Adsense income.

The Final Straw

I decided to remove the ads altogether - but some wouldn’t go away. Some ads stubbornly remained even after turning off everything in Adsense. Eventually, I was able to get even these ads to disappear, but not without leaving a strange empty block at the bottom of posts (presumably this is the widget in which the ad would appear). For a moment, I thought I would not be able to remove the ad widgets without editing the HTML in Blogger (my feeling at that moment prompted the cartoon at the top of this post). Fortunately, disconnecting my blog from Adsense cleared out the widgets, and now my blog is back to its pre-Adsense appearance.  

Moving Forward Without Adsense

Well, it’s been an interesting experience, but I have decided to stay away from Google Adsense for the foreseeable future. Firstly, my blog is an art blog, and its appearance is important to me. I do not wish to clutter it up with unseemly ads. Secondly, I don’t know if it’s possible to control who advertises on your blog (maybe it’s possible to do this, but I just didn’t figure it out), but I am concerned that the appearance of an ad on my blog might be perceived as an endorsement for a product or service that I do not endorse. Also, during this experiment, I saw ads instructing users to download a file or install a browser extension, and I have no idea what these files or extensions do. People come to my blog for inspiration or information about drawing, and I don’t want to compromise their trust. Perhaps others have had better experiences with Adsense, but for now, I prefer my readers see brushstrokes rather than banner ads.

Homage to Drew Struzan (1947-2025)

The above illustration was my homage to the methods of Drew Struzan (1947-2025), who passed away recently. In my illustration, I started with a pencil drawing (see below) on illustration board of a double-wattled cassowary (a great subject for the exploration of textures!). Over the graphite, I applied ink to refine and darken parts of the drawing. Then I airbrushed acrylic paint in layers to slowly build up the color. Over the airbrushing, I applied color pencils, pastel, and acrylic paint with traditional brushes. I used a variety of techniques, such as splatter brush with masking/stencils, and even from razor blades to scratch out texture effects.

It’s difficult to measure the impact of Drew Struzan’s art. Consider that his movie posters for some of Hollywood’s most iconic films  - Star Wars, Indiana Jones, E.T., Back to the Future - were seen by millions around the world, and sparked the imagination of generations of upcoming artists and filmmakers. It’s not a stretch to say that Drew may have had more impact on popular culture than any other illustrator of the 20th century – perhaps even of all time.

I discovered Drew Struzan’s work first in the pages of Airbrush Action magazine, and later through stories shared by my instructors at the Academy of Art (AAU) in San Francisco. Drew taught only very briefly at AAU (back when it was still Academy of Art College), but he left behind a treasure trove of signed prints and posters. I spent a good deal of time feverishly poring over these signed prints, studying every detail in a state of transfixed rapture.   

Drew’s work appealed to me for many reasons, but perhaps the biggest was his emphasis on drawing. I love to draw even more than I love to paint, and in Drew’s approach, the drawing carries the weight of the illustration. Design, composition, anatomy, value structure, and lighting are all resolved in the drawing stage. This frees the illustrator to focus purely on color and finishing touches during painting. It’s a method that resonates with me: I can leverage my strengths as a draftsman, and when it’s time to paint, I can relax, knowing I have a solid foundation of composition and lighting. At that point, I just turn up the music and get lost in the flow of painting.

In an interview, Drew mentioned that once you have a solid drawing, you can get very loose and painterly, splashing paint around the studio like an abstract expressionist. You don’t need to worry too much about screwing it up, because you have that solid drawing underneath, guiding you towards the finish. Well, I can tell you that I screwed up a lot of finishes due to my own lack of expertise in handling color, but I am forever grateful to Drew Struzan for developing this technique and utilizing it so well. Of course, Drew Struzan’s impact goes far beyond developing a technique that I love, but I just wanted to add my own 2 cents of gratitude to the man and his work.