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As reported by Andrew of Domain Name Wire, Google AdWords has added a new option that lets advertisers opt out of domain parking sites:

To opt out of domain parking pages, advertisers use the “Site and Category Exclusion” tool in their account (see picture below). In addition to being able to opt out of parked pages, customers can opt out of error pages, forums, social networking sites, image sharing sites, and video sharing sites. Forums and social networking sites are known to have low click through rates, and conversions can also be low.

Google states, however, that ads on domain parking pages have been performing just as well as ads on other websites. I would even argue that traffic originating from generic domains’ parking pages, which is mostly direct navigation traffic, is highly targeted and converts better than ads on other sites in many cases. Still, most advertisers believe parking sites to be of no value, so I expect many of them to opt out of parking pages. This will probably be followed by a further fall in parking revenues for domain name owners and it is yet another reason why developing your best domains would make sense. As I said in earlier posts, I’m going to get my feet wet and finally develop one or two of my domains this year, too. My earnings from domain parking have really gone down during the past year and there is nothing in sight that would indicate a trend reversal.