Pick something – a Web browser, toothpaste, whatever – that you’ve set against comparable products.  Maybe you gave those alternatives a fair chance, and came back to Product #1 in the end, anyway.  As Joel Comm weighed various contextual advertising options at Affiliate Summit 2007 East, it seemed like that same sort of circular journey was taking place, but you won’t hear me complain; it’s always nice to have extra choices.

Product #1 is, in this case, Google AdSense.  Comm led a session called “Contextual Advertising Options: Clicks Equal Cash,” and first mentioned the massive amount of money flowing through AdSense – an estimated $14 billion this year.  The author of “The AdSense Code” then complimented AdSense’s design and video ads.

Yet Google’s not perfect.  Comm, whose ClassicGames.com was sold and is now called Yahoo Games, is concerned about unknown payout percentages, Made for AdSense sites, and accounts being closed for invalid clicks, so he moved on to discuss the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN).

Comm recommends using YPN if you are banned from AdSense, if your AdSense click-through rate is low on a page, or if your YPN earnings per click are higher.  Otherwise, well . . . he prefers ol’ Google.

One more option, however, is Chitika.  Comm notes associations between Chitika, Shopping.com, and PriceRunner, and thinks that people should consider using the service if their pages are product-related.  He also gives fair warning that some family-friendly sites have been provided with porn links, though Chitika has recently conquered this problem.

So there you have it.  Good luck with your comparison shopping.