Not seeing any ads

Is it just me?

[ThomasB]

I'm using GMail since about 10 days now, have approximately 40-50 emails received and 20 sent but I don't see any ads. Is that for everyone or am I the ad-free lucky guy? :)

[jbarr]

I typically see ads in about 1/2 to 3/4 of my emails that I read, but not in every one. Maybe it's the content of the emails you are sending/receiving? Not sure. Some of my emails are from technical mailing lists, so maybe Google finds "hits" better.

So far, I am very happy with the ads. They fall into two general categories:

1. They are either very relevent that I actually look at them.
2. They are so unobtrusive that I just ignore them.

I guess it's really the mood I'm in.

[chicagohh]

I have ads on most of my emails.

I guess your lucky.

[anallawalla]

Maybe there are fewer ads aimed at Germany? I don't see them in short emails - I tried sending various keywords in emails but they did not trigger ads. A longer email with 3-4 paras might be needed.

[ThomasB]

Ok, I did some research on it and it seems like they show ads for english content only.

I took a text from a german news site about travel stuff and sent it to my GMail account. I didn't get any ads, even after 3 minutes.
I translated the text using Googles language tools into english, sent it to my account and I got ads. Right after I sent it I got one ad, 3 minutes later I got 3 ads, which surprised me a bit, but still is an increase compared to german ads.
I translated the text into french, spanish, italian and portugese but didn't get any ads even after 3 minutes. That makes me believe that they don't show ads for non-english emails.

The reasons for that could be legal issues, performance problems or just because it's BETA. Very interresting though imho.

[ThomasB]

Just sent an email with 19 SEO related words and I got lots of related links and ads. It looks like the email must contain at least 2 words that you get some ads. Maybe it depends on the keyphrases contained, but 1 word doesn't trigger the ads for me.

[blaze]

Well, I guess this means that if you ever need to figure out how to trigger AdSense ads and which keywords to use on your webpages, you could always use Gmail to quickly find out.

[ThomasB]

Will be nice for SEMs to play, much possibilities like newsletter advertising, adsense optimisation ....

[eWhisper]

Well, I guess this means that if you ever need to figure out how to trigger AdSense ads and which keywords to use on your webpages, you could always use Gmail to quickly find out.

Is anyone doing this yet?
Old thread on the subject: [webmasterworld.com...]

There are a few medical terms (and probably more), that just don't seem to to trigger ads in Gmail. I've sent several highly targeted emails to see how they would display, and even with 10-20 competitors, not seeing ads for certain topics (not the pharmacy banned stuff, quite legal/searched for medical items).

Is it possible that G is filtering out certain terms for general ad display until they make sure their system won't inadvertenly trigger certain ads and lead to more well known cases for people to point to, such as the old luggage ad?