Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Lately there has been a rash of site-targeted ads on my web site for all sorts of off topic nonsense that I would never allow advertised on my site before. Lot's of people have asked me to run all sorts of ads for various things and I've wisely declined as I know my market and visitors. The site is very specific and the traffic has been well monetized via extremely targeted advertising.
However, apparently when you are site-targeted in AdSense it doesn't matter how far off topic the ads are. If someone runs a CPM campaign you get stuck with garbage about anything from trailer hitches to tampons instead of those nice targeted ads Google used to serve up that paid good money.
CTR and Earnings are dropping since I've seen a rash of site-targeted ads and the only tool you have to stop it is the competitive ad filter and that has limited space and you must spend all day combing the ads to make sure you aren't a target of garbage.
I find this situation 100% unacceptable and something must change, and it may be my contextual advertising network of choice.
[edited by: incrediBILL at 1:04 am (utc) on Oct. 26, 2005]
Nice post. I've been itching to switch the last few weeks myself. Chitika, YPN. Maybe Chitika will work. I've spoken to YPN and I know they are fixing the issues I've had with them.
Funny thing for me with this site targetting thing is, my regular advertisers, big and small are site targetting like crazy....without reducing their regular ads... I just scratch my head at that...
It is relevant ads so I'm loath to filter them, but just get the feeling even they are dragging down earnings a bit. I'm wondering if there are eventually more and more site targetters if G will somehow "reward" the site with an upswing in smart pricing. (Not yet!)
I think Google really needs to offer us two things:
1. Not just rhetoric about us making more from CPM ads than we would regular ads. Not in my experience. They don't have the credibility to convince.
2. A list of advertisers and allowing us to say Y/N as mentioned above.
Without that, alternatives have an open door and will be very welcome.
You should have the option of accepting all site targetted advertising, no site targetted advertising or certain advertisers from a list.
Incredibill - I think Goodlucre must have been having a bad day to take what you said so personally. Give her another chance!
They've done some flip flopping on that. First they let Jenstar do it. Then she told everyone that you could do it by emailing them. Then they told "regular" people that they can't do it. Which is I think official policy now.
