Quotes from :
Google Adsense Blog
Image from :
Business Week

Google Adsense announce that they will be retiring their Referrals program by the end of August :

We're constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August.

In asking publishers to remove the Referrals code from their websites, Adsense has also suggested the following monetization programs :

• Google Affiliate Network : As part of the integration of DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For further details, please visit: http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/.
• AdSense for content ads : If you have less than three AdSense for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the referral ad units with standard AdSense for content ad units.

So if you have Adsense Referrals ads running on your website, best to make yourself a cup of coffee and get down to removing the code. Some of you will need to make yourself a pot of coffee if your site(s) are large.

I think it's about time the Referrals program was laid to rest. Google's implementation of the program wasn't very good. I was very hopeful during my first couple of months with the Referrals programs - getting regular clicks and earnings - but that soon deteriorated to downright irritation. For those of you who have been publishing Adsense' Referral Ads, you will know what I mean :

• If the ad that you chose is not available, there would be a big white empty space in your webpage.
• The solution to the problem above is to select the "Automatically choose fallback referral ads" option. However, this would likely result if lots of non-relevant ads showing up instead.
• The last I checked, there was still no way for publishers to create a list of preferred advertisers that Google would refer to when displaying Referrals ads. This meant that every time you wanted to select a new advertiser, you would have to go through the whole set up process which to me seemed like a total waste of time.
• Google's Referral categorization was downright pathetic. You would see "Exercise equipment" ads in "Business services" and other totally mismatched advertisers and categories, which made it a real pain trying to find on-target advertisers

In any case, one thing I like about Google is that they're not afraid to lay non-performing programs to rest. With Google's purchase of Doubleclick, I'm sure they have lots of plans in store so as publishers, we shouldn't really worry too much.