Double Checking on DoubleClick

Google has announced that its workhorse advertising product AdSense will be merged and rebranded with DoubleClick. The new DoubleClick Small Business touts itself as easier to use then its predecessor and offers advanced features such as Web APIs.

My experience with DoubleClick could never be called easy, and I hope that Google doesn't dirty the muck with a "DART for dummies" implementation attempt.

All your existing code should continue to work as it does with AdSense. I just hope it wasn't like the last AdSense upgrade that made me upgrade all my easy-to-read -- and easily programmable -- code into obfuscated AdSense gibberish, because sometimes I want to program in conditionals to create different channels on demand.

Let's continue to talk about DoubleClick Small Business. I'd like to know what the limits are on impressions and campaign management. When exactly do I need to pay for DoubleClick enterprise? When you have competitors like Open X, it wouldn't really be a smart idea to start to limit functionality at all, would it?

If this news really scares you, then check out Open X, Yahoo or AdBrite for your general run-of-the-mill ads. In my opinion, Open X is the best because you can also do full campaigning for your site.

If your current hit rate is high enough (over 10k a month), you can use one of the more selective advertising systems out there such as Federated Media. But don't forget about those other speciality advertising companies such as Chitka for targeted post-search ads and Pheedo for RSS feeds advertising (if you're not interested in Google's Feedburner service).