Forum Moderators: martinibuster
If there is a persistant problem with irrelevant ads then I'd suggest looking at the text on your page, as that's what adsense principally uses to work out ad placement, and I'd look at using the section targeting facility too.
If Google are targeting ads that might be offensive to your visitors as in this thread [webmasterworld.com...] then it's probably necessary to block them.
As to if it's financially a good idea to block irrelevant ads, I have no data to go on. It's been my experience that if ads are real ads for goods and services that are properly targeted, then my visitors will often click them, and the the income is good in all respects. Also, these visitors ofter are return visitors to the site. I rather suspect that poor targeting would lead to less income - MFA's certainly do. If blocking competitors ads leads to a reduction in income I can't say, but again I suspect that if the competitors ad is for genuine goods and serevices then it might. People often block competitors ads because they don't want to see them on their site - money isn't an issue in this.
my site is a phpbb-forum about religions, spirituality etc and in 90% of the time ads are super-relevant and very on-topic.
but sometimes i get ads about "phpbb", "linux", "computers". i guess that's because it is a phpbb-boad and phpbb stands in the footer? :)
As for blocking -- it's my feeling that as it is in G's best interest to serve up the ads that will result in the most revenue; they eventually will.
Blocking was designed to keep competition from advertising on your site, and unless you're being targetted by grossy irrelevant ads, that is the extent of its value.
