Alternative Ads Question

[designaweb]

Hi All,

I have been reading a couple of posts about these alternative ads, but what I can't seem to figure out if the following is possible...

We have page A, which serves targeted GA ads. Then we have page B, that serves PSA's. Can I serve the ads for page A into page B?

[loanuniverse]

Nope. The reason behind the "default ads" is to get another ad network ads to be shown instead of non paid Public Service Announcements. You can also use this feature to show your own ads.

Showing another instance of your Adsense code would probably create an endless loop.

[designaweb]

So no option to load the ads it would normally show on page A?

[loanuniverse]

Remember that the adsense ads are different than regular banner ads as they are contextual and need to be able to spider the page to serve the targeted ads.

So the answer is no, you can not load the ads from page A into page B.

[designaweb]

:(

[killroy]

Theoretically you could, by creating "content" on the aternate ad page (inside the iframe) that will be clipped and not shown, but enough for th ebot to target.

This would probably violate a dozend TOSes and STRONGLY advise NOT to use it. I do not use it myself.

SN

[Livenomadic]

this was my question too... but nobody understrood it

[richmondsteve]

killroy, I don't remember if it was you or someone else that mentioned this idea a week or two ago, but I'm embarrassed to say I didn't understand what was suggested until it clicked after reading your email in this thread.

I'm not going to test it since I don't think it's ethical and I'm certain that if it doesn't violate the TOS it violates the spirit of the program and it should be trivial for Google to detect it.

Ignoring special circumstances I'm aware of, but aren't relevant to my point, whenever the alternate ad is displayed there would be 2 calls to pagead2.googlesyndication.com with very close timestamps, the same IP and same user agent. And unless the publisher was clever and rotated b/w multiple URLs for the alternate ad, the second referring URL would always be the same.

killroy, I'm not shooting the messenger since I know you just were clever enough to think it through and don't condone it, but for everyone's benefit, given what most of us know about Google's ability to manipulate, analyze and discover patterns in data, once this type of fraud is brought to their behavior how long do you think it would be before they monitor for it (if they don't already) and warn/boot publishers for doing it?

[loanuniverse]

this was my question too... but nobody understrood it

Hehehe nope, many people understood it.

[richmondsteve]

Livenomadic, I didn't know that was your original question either. Please do not try this technique. There is no way Google will allow publishers to get away with it. And I want the AdSense program to be successful. It will not be as successful if Google has to deal with those committing fraud and trying to find ways around the TOS and it will not be as successful if advertisers don't respect publishers, think that publishers want to manipulate the system and ultimately abandon AdSense or spread the word that publishers behave this way, causing other potential advertisers not to use AdSense.

This technique is not nearly as bad as many of the things I've heard proposed here and I do understand why someone would want to try it, especially if the pages in question are a good fit for the ads forced to display there, but before any of us try something or propose a new strategy, let's consider whether it would benefit all parties involved and whether advertisers would take kindly to the strategy. Especially since many of us here are both publishers and advertisers and from what I've heard and seen, advertisers lurk in this forum (as well they should).

My 2 cents.

[designaweb]

I don't see everyone's point about this being unethical? All I want to do is serve ads that show on my main page on a page that Google cant find the keywords for. Since the visitors visiting my page have a certain interest, I want to show the ads about this subject. What's wrong with that?

[loanuniverse]

The system works by targeting ads acording to the page's content. The assumption by Google and the advertisers is that this will be done by using their targeting algos without the publisher forcing a particular topic. Although you might be only after showing ads that are in topic {those shown in page A}, other people might not have the same intentions.

The whole thing centers in getting around the way that the system works, and without question will lead to your termination from the program. Trust me Yes, even if the ads remain in topic.

[richmondsteve]

designaweb wrote:

What's wrong with that?

Instead of Google deciding what ads are a good match, you want to decide. What is considered a good match is in the eye of the beholder. Google and advertisers might not agree. And it opens the door to displaying untargeted ads and ads with a high EPC. If allowed, it would remove the necessity to create well-written content, would lead to advertisers not trusting the system and abandoning it or never taking part and would ultimately cause the system to fail if used wide-spread. For the technique to work, it could only be used by ethical publishers <holding back laughter> or Google would need to monitor and approve the technique's usage, increasing manpower requirements and ultimately costing more money which would undoubtedly come out of publishers' pockets by reducing EPC.

Don't get me wrong - I can see situations where this technique (if it does in fact work) could be used by ethical publishers to display relevant ads that even the advertisers and Google would agree are a good match and benefit all parties (users, publishers, advertisers, Google). I have a site which will not show paying ads on the majority of its pages due to the fact that the pages contain what Google considers to be "negative content". However these same pages used to display paying ads and the CTR was very good and due to the low EPC being paid and my own forecasts it appeared that the advertisers on those pages were generating nice ROIs.

So it really comes down to the fact that it opens the door for lots of abuse and lots of advertiser distrust and pushing the reputation of the AdSense program over the cliff. But, hey, that's just my take.

[designaweb]

O.k... I think I get it... Too bad though...

[ronin]

We have page A, which serves targeted GA ads. Then we have page B, that serves PSA's. Can I serve the ads for page A into page B?

I think the resounding conclusion is that you ought not (and I support this conclusion).

But why not replace the PSAs on page B with an advert for page A?

[designaweb]

Well, since page B is a subpage of page A, people already know about page A.