As you may or may not know, Google offers a domain parking service for high-traffic domain investors. As an Adwords advertiser a lot of traffic comes from these sites. While some people consider a web site with no content but ads a con or scam, I have found domain traffic to work modestly well.

Since some of my campaigns do particularly poorly in either search or content, I will often change my bids or turn one of the networks off completely. My question was, does Google’s domain parking traffic qualify as the search network or content network?

Here is the response I recieved:

Thank you for your email. I understand that you would like to know if AdWords ads syndicated through Google’s domain parking qualify as search network or the content network. Please note that ads syndicated through Google’s domain parking qualify for both search network and content network.

Google AdSense for domains is part of Google’s family of monetization services that enables effective and legitimate distribution of your ads. It has been proven to deliver high quality and high value traffic to advertisers. Like all our ad solutions, advertisers are only paying for the actual click generated once their ad shows, not for the impression.

Being on both the publishing and advertising sides of the playing field gives me a two-viewed approach to these issues. On one hand, as an advertiser I would like to be able to pick and choose traffic channels very specfically based on how the traffic converts. Since AOL traffic converts great, being able to bid double what I pay on Google’s SERPs could help increase my profit margins.

On the publishing side of things, I don’t want to miss out on potential income because a really picky advertiser thinks my site is ugly. If all traffic is created equally then I can increase my income by sending lower quality traffic to advertisers in volume.

Thats not all. Some publishers are concerned that a massive volume of Myspace traffic (thanks to a billion dollar deal signed with Google) is going to drive down their revenues. PPC advertising is a real market and more inventory between the same number of buyers will impact your revenue.

Traffic discrimination based on the source is an interesting issue. Whether you are an advertiser or a publisher you don’t have a whole lot of choice. Google is looking at these issues from one perspective — their’s.