Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Fading epc and spammy ads. My content is exactly the same as it has been since I joined AdSense except for regularly added content. How did I offend the Google gods so?
At first I tried getting rid of all my ads but one per page. Then I started taking ads off of slow and poor performing pages. Each day I look for MFAs, give aways and those dreaded ring tone ads. I keep blocking them but they still multiply. They're like a great band of spam marching, marching, never ending. Has Google ordained that my site deserves nothing better?
I don't know if it's my content causing poor smartpricing or if it's that advertisers are dropping out of AdSense. But then, does it matter what the cause is?
If a ad's URL is widgets.sellsomethingfast.com will just putting sellsometingfast.com in my filter do the job or to I have to put all the variations the company puts in the URL?
Yes, that will do the job - if you cut it down to filtering just the domain name, with no extensions and no prefixes or subdomains, that should get everything. For some particularly relentless ones, I also put in .org and net just on principle (till I get close to my 200 limit, anyway)
Another thing that has caused me to just want to toss in the towel is the time it takes to get the updated filter working - it's gone from hours after I add someone to my filter to sometimes DAYS before they actual disappear from my site.
The whole thing has just become really disheartening.
Yes it is but I've always had a nice array of ads showing up on my site. It is a content site though. Articles with footnotes yet. Maybe my clicks don't convert well. Maybe MFA clicks convert better. Has anyone studied this?
Have you tried showing your Adsense below the content? Much of our own content consists of articles, and the visitors who don't bail out immediately tend to read to the bottom. Blended leader boards at the bottom of the page seem to work best for our articles.
There never has been and never will be a ringtone ad on my site - it's pretty nichy with lots of high-paying advertisers to crowd out that kind of stuff.
Careful. Remember all those people who said the Titanic was unsinkable?
Unless you are constantly watching and refreshing all your pages with AdSense ads 24/7 and doing that in various geographic locations simultaneously, you really don't know what has or is displaying on your sites. When you put up AdSense, you put a lot of trust in Google.
I used to think those ringtone ads happened only to others. I have a page devoted to a particular industry. Although there seems to be a large ad inventory available for the topic, I only have two ads showing in one banner. Yet I've caught ringtone ads on that page a few times. I have no idea how often it happens because it's not feasible for me to watch & refresh the page all day long.
FarmBoy
The reason (I think), is because you really have nothing to sell (except your content and it's already given to them for free).
No, I have nothing to sell but my visitors are involved in a hobby that sells a great deal of hobby related products and those are the ads I usually get.
Interestingly the page with the free pattern would logically be the best converting as the very people wanting to make a baby widget will be wanting the material in order to make the items I have patterns for. But that logics is a bit to refined for a search engine.
Since content-based sites are driven by repeat visitors who love to soak up your articles, they also become "ad-blind" and stop clicking on things and are only interested in the latest, greatest article.
I get something between. There are those who come back for new articles but I only add one or two a month and get about 1500 visitors a day so a lot must be new to the site. The site ranks very well in Google and MSN and not bad in Yahoo and it deals with a very popular hobby so new visitors keep streaming in.
Farmboy and other who mentioned this; for me getting so many spammy ads is pretty recent. I know I can never stop them all but I can try to keep them down.
Since content-based sites are driven by repeat visitors who love to soak up your articles, they also become "ad-blind" and stop clicking on things and are only interested in the latest, greatest article.
Whether that's true depends on the topic of the site. A camera-review site, for example, will attract visitors who are researching ways to spend their money and are prime prospects for advertisers. Ditto for a travel-planning site (as opposed to an armchair-travel or travel community site).
DoubleClick published a "research before the purchase" study last year that had some revealing statistics. Typically, a buyer of widgets, travel, etc. will conduct online research a number of times (I think the average was 5 or 6 times) before making a purchase decision. If your site is the place where that buyer is researching how to spend his or her money, you won't have to worry about "ad blindness." Quite the contrary: Ads will enhance the research experience for that user, just as they do in special-interest magazines, and users will be comparison-shopping via your ads and affiliate links.
Should I be inserting some key words like "review"?
Sure, if the pages are reviews.
I guess I really don't understand how AdSense decides on the difference between a review type page and just an informational page.
Of course, because Google isn't foolish enough to help people subvert its smart-pricing algorithm. But in any case, smart pricing isn't why you're seeing junk ads. (Smart pricing is a way to adjust the net price per click for advertisers, not an ad-matching mechanism.)
Sure, if the pages are reviews.
My sarcasm was to make a point. Someone could write anything and call it a review. I'm giving very specific information on what supplies would be needed for the project. No it's not a review. I think it's something better. The next step for the reader would be to look for some of those materials. But algorithms can't pick that up.
Smartpricing does matter in this discussion because depressed smartpricing could open the door to more spammy ads.
Or the problem could be that there are fewer legitimate ads available so the spam is showing up more often? That's even more of a concern. If spammy ads and publishing sites drive away legitimate advertisers and publishers things really could go out with that whimper.
There are those who come back for new articles but I only add one or two a month and get about 1500 visitors a day so a lot must be new to the site.
For a site with 1,500 visitors a day really wide income swings with Adsense income actually seem pretty par for the course to me.
If you want to smooth that out, it might help to focus on getting more traffic and also to have sites on a variety of topics. Over time my total income tends to be fairly stable, even though some of the individual sites I own often have huge income swings over the course of a year. (Of course it also helps to even things out to have income from sources other than Adsense, too.)
Tweaking ad filters may or may not help your income, but spending time on tasks like doubing traffic to your site or making another site are almost certain money makers.
This is why MFAs and other ultra-low quality sites are killing AdSense.
Are they?
The best indication would be to look at Goog earnings at the end of this reporting season. Evidently more and more publishers are seeing decreased earnings, tons of crappy MFAs and other spam (since around mid Feb). Google figures should do the same (decreased earnings overall for the entire content network, just like publishers) unless their pay ratio has considerably changed OR Google is actively cheating (something that more and more publishers are suspecting to be the case).
Would be interesting to see....my take, it is probably going to be similar to what is currently happening with oil companies. Justifying price hikes with the excuse of very high crude oil prices while enjoying never seen before bumper record profits.
Someone is cheating if that is the case.
It is much harder to get clean quality traffic (cheap or free) than it is to tweak the filters. Also, you will want to have the filters in place for the glorious moment when your quality traffic arrives.
Just my € 0.02
My sarcasm was to make a point. Someone could write anything and call it a review.
That doesn't mean that Google would treat it as a review. Google aren't as stupid as some members seem to think. :-)
Smartpricing does matter in this discussion because depressed smartpricing could open the door to more spammy ads.
How?
Or the problem could be that there are fewer legitimate ads available so the spam is showing up more often? That's even more of a concern. If spammy ads and publishing sites drive away legitimate advertisers and publishers things really could go out with that whimper.
That certainly hasn't happened yet.
This is why MFAs and other ultra-low quality sites are killing AdSense
I don't think this will kill AdSense as a business. What is dying is a dream; the concept of putting related ads on content sites. That's why I got into AdSense. I would never touch the banner ads etc because they were intrusive and not related to my topic. AdSense seemed to be the answer to being able to get some earnings for my work without hurting the sites.
EPV, Several people on this forum seem to think that low smartpricing brings in more MFAs as they are bidding less plus you lose some of the better ads.
Also there does seem to be less advertisers opting for content and I can't help but think MFAs are influencing this.
So I can understand why it's all happening; it's just too bad - I lose on the AdWords side because Content Network is a whole segment that is now lost to my clients because it's become pretty much worthless, and I lose on the AdSense side because I can't seem to make that pay with legitimate paying advertisers on a highly targeted site with 20k visits per day and a rate of return visitors.
About the only ones winning are Google and the MFAs.
And you are the second fellow from the Adwords club to come here and state this in a short period.
Is the Search network spoiling advertisers by being the easy way out? What did they do before Adwords, throw a dart at serps and advertise on where it lands?
What happened to targeting and testing good sites? Spammy sites have been in the scene long before AdSense, now we call them MFA, glad Google is empowering advertisers with opt out tools, now where is mine? Why can't I opt out of advertisers whose pages contain ads themselves?
This is not going to end well on the long run.
I just don't want to see advertising which lead my visitors (yes my visitors) taken to a page which has nothing on it but zillions more of adds, inappropriate or irrelevant.
I am tired of blocking them. I am tired of having to follow the landing pages myself, instead of Google. I thought in Adwords it was a requirement to have appropriate landing-page for an advertisement.
Arrghhh! Maybe we can start a shared "MFA" list, so we (I) don't have to duplicate all the work of visiting the advertisers... Anyone?
Maybe we can start a shared "MFA" list, so we (I) don't have to duplicate all the work of visiting the advertisers...
Such a ads blacklist already exists. Unfortnately, the service is not really useful as the site actually does not make much of the data contributed, other than
- counting the unique URLs blocked (impressive, 5,700+ sites so far)
- creating a "Top 30" list of blocked advertisers
- offering some texts to help beginners with regards to MFAs
Interestingly enough, the service runs Adsense ads, and guess what the ads are about? "Adsense ready sites" and "I made a million in 10 days with Adsense" type ads. It would be funny, if it was not so sad.
But all-in-all I agree that an overview list of all MFAs is a good thing to have. It should come from Google, though, as they have a valid interest in maintaining their customer base clean.
[edited by: jatar_k at 5:05 am (utc) on June 17, 2006]
As far as Google not being aware of MFA sites, try going to google.com and searching for the word adsense. When you get the results, look at the AdSense ads that show up on the right.
Is the Search network spoiling advertisers by being the easy way out? What did they do before Adwords, throw a dart at serps and advertise on where it lands?
Before AdWords, my clients didn't advertise online anywhere. They ran Yellow Pages ads, newspaper and magazine ads, and tried to get into as many legitimate online directory sites as possible. Overture and then AdWords HUGELY expanded their reach and sales.
What happened to targeting and testing good sites?
Would love to do that, given the proper tools and reports. Don't currently have 'em from Google. The only way I can choose which sites I want to advertise on is to Site Target, on a cpm basis. That seems to work when one is trying to blast out brand recognition, but as a long term strategy, we can't attribute any return on it at all. As far as I know, Google doesn't tell me where my Content Network ads are going to run, or how well a specific site does for me, and if I spend $1500 over a couple of days and get not one single conversion, signup, or anything else I can attribute to the campaign, then I gotta put the money elsewhere where I *can* see some results.
i think that approach used to work in the past, but it hasn't done much for me lately... maybe try giving ypn your worst traffic? you'll be able to earn something off of it, even tho ypn has also taken a nosedive lately.
i don't think the blacklist idea is applicable to all sites, because the spammers use different keywords in the titles of the ads... you might be blacklisting a site doesn't use your keywords, which means that it would never show up on your site in the first place... so you just wasted a valuable slot in your ad filter.
perhaps blacklists are one reason why google will not increase the filter limit? everyone would just copy 'em all over the place.
no value, let's leave it at that
and believe me, having a list around wouldn't help, they would just move around as they do now
maybe people should start looking up "churn and burn" and truly take the time to understand the model
do whatever you want, it won't change anything
returning to the actual topic
- advertisers dropping out
I am sure I am not the only one disheartened by hearing from an Adwords advertiser that they think most of the Content network is "worthless".
I did, I never got any value out of content at all, total garbage. I even let it run for 6 months, what minute clicks there were never converted. The same ads were converting at 10-75% outside of content.
the blacklist site being mentioned is total junk, most of the sites contributed were people trying to set other people.
no value, let's leave it at thatand believe me, having a list around wouldn't help, they would just move around as they do now
I wouldn't dismiss the idea completely. I think there is potential in having a verified list of real MFA's that should be blocked, but I agree that the current idea of users submitting their list as a whole is putting genuine competitors sites into a list they shouldn't be in. I'd like to see Google have two lists. One for genuine competitors who you have good reasons to block, and a "spam bucket".
I think it's possible that the content network has potential to offer better value to advertisers than Google search. Mainly because webmasters of good content sites are removing junk ads either by blocking them, and/or adopting the strategies here to price the junk off of our sites. This makes the ads a lot more relevant and hopefully would convert better than Google searches spammy junky ads they always show.
I run my ads on content as well as search. But my budget is not huge by any means. I find that content works OK for me.
I never got any value out of content at all, total garbage
Yet another disgruntled advertiser, let's go to the 5 mile high picture before more publishers start to feel guilty for this mess:
1- MFA the culprit for bad conversion is an AdWords advertiser hiding under the skin of a publisher.
2- Publishers have no control on the contextual algo that places mismatched ads into their content.
Basically it is an Advertisers gone greedy or parasitic problem and a Google that chooses not to put them in line.
Excuse the over simplification but:
All honest publishers wanted when they joined the program was to be matched with honest advertisers, a third parasitic party is ruining the relationship for both, unless the game keeper disinfects, this match will be done on other grounds (YPN, MSN, direct advertising..) it is a match made to last for the Internet commerce to evolve.
Thank God I have good traffic and good content, my wares are in demand, advertisers and even advertising networks can come and go, only a dent in my wallet, but there will always be a buyer for what I have to sell.
If Google increased the ad filter, and allowed publishers to set a minimum click value on their sites it would almost wipe out the mfa problem some are experiencing.
and G has a list, just like their blacklist for search, there are banned sites in every aspect of what they do
each niche, market, or keyword set is different. I did use it for one thing, branding and eventually geared a small set of ads so people would see them even if they didn't click which fit my purpose.
my keyword set was bad for content, doesn't matter, there are tons that are and no matter how much tweaking there is you won't get beyond a point or once your returing visitors have been to your site enough times they will stop clicking on anything, new or old.
It seems that people think there are blanket rules that should apply to all sites, there really aren't, every one is different.
maybe you should ask the advertisers more about the keywords than other publishers.
If Google increased the ad filter, and allowed publishers to set a minimum click value on their sites it would almost wipe out the mfa problem some are experiencing.
I agree with Foxtunes, especially the idea of allowing publishers to set a minimum click value. I'm not sure how high you would have to set your minimum to prevent most MFAs, maybe .05 or .10. As I understand it the MFAs only work if they can bid one or two cents.
Is very different than saying
> I got no value I didn't say there was no value to content at all
> my keyword set was bad for content
> I did use it for one thing, branding
But there are many other advertisers complaining about the content network and I agree with most of them, it is a common problem we are all having.
The problem started with Google not doing a site review for every site in the network.
Even if Google could turn back the clock and approve every site before AdSense could be added, I think the problem would still exist. The MFA people would just submit some nice 10 page site about doll making or whatever and as soon as it was approved, they'd change it to a 2,000 page MFA site. It would be a practical impossibility for Google to re-review every site, on a daily basis and determine the extent of changes to the site since acceptance into AdSense.
...and allowed publishers to set a minimum click value on their sites it would almost wipe out the mfa problem some are experiencing.
There are some legitimate advertisers I would gladly accept for 20 cents per click and some MFA's I wouldn't want for $1 per click.
Unless the minimum could be set per advertiser, I think you might end up locking out some good advertisers for your content in an effort to kill a few MFA's.
FarmBoy
FarmBoy
I had to opt out of the Content Network, because it just didn't make financial sense. Most of our ads were showing up (and our budget eaten up) on spammy fake search engines and obvious MFA sites, and in some cases, these were *really* expensive keywords (up to $25 cpc) The return just wasn't there.
Hmmm. You don't seem to be saying you made a purely financial incentive, you seem to be saying your decision to leave the content network was at least partially based on the presence of MFA sites, regardless of the return of those sites.
I wish enough advertisers would threaten to leave that Google would be compelled to do something. But the fact that us publishers still exist seems to indicate that a lot of advertisers don't have a complaint about the MFA sites and/or the ROI.
FarmBoy
