Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I am beginning to be convinced that all the good advertisers are jumping ship and leaving Google in droves rather than putting up with the waste of their money.
I don't beleive they are simply opting out of the content network as I have also seen MFA's in the serp ads beating out good companies for placement.
I actually killed off a ringtone ad! Has nothing to do with my sector....grrrr..
End of rant
An
It is with great horror that I noticed today that MFA's comprise 60% of the ads displayed, despite my efforts at blocking them.
I don't know if the good advertisers are jumping ship, but the bad have outnumbered the good.
My sector is crafts - nothing fishy or cut-throat.
But my thinking is that if people keep clicking on Ads leading to these crappy, useless MFAs with phony search results surrounded by ads of all kinds, they're going to stop clicking.
My site now has up to 60% MFAs. It is a disaster in the making.
I cannot spend all my time excluding them manually.
There will come a time when Google will regret being so greedy in the short term that and sabotaging the long term.
1) Regular advertisers who have a healthy budget and wish to continue advertising, have switched almost exclusively to the Search network;
2) Other regular advertisers have simply stopped advertising as much as they used to;
3) Some advertisers have opted (as ann stated) to jump ship, seeking better ways to spend their advertising dollar, yen, kronor, schilling, pound, etc.
In this connection, all AS sites are suffering the MFA ads spam.
I wish Google would get a handle on this as I like them and believe they are a good company but I fear that love of the almighty dollar is blinding them as they head for disaster.
Ann
Not a direct knock on ASA, as I'm sure he/she abides by whatever rules Google has in place... (in reference to mentioning particulars about the Adsense and Adwords programs)
Ideally we would like to hear something to the effect: "Yes, we're actively working to clean up MFA's", or "Google realizes this is an issue and has noted good points from WW members. We are working to correct the MFA problem and hope to have it neutralized very soon."
Unfortunately, I don't think we'll hear such statements.
MFA makes Google earns less now and tomorrow too.
I don't believe MFA is a technical issue, but Google's management decision/ control resistance to change, and that is the sign running to vanish or being taking over by other emerging approaches.
[edited by: GoldenHammer at 4:03 am (utc) on June 21, 2006]
Are the good advertisers jumping ship?
I don't know how you're defining "good", but if you mean those who run ads that attract clicks...............
........no, not in my experience.
Things are looking good from my perspective. I spent the evening working on my pages.
A simple definition for "good" ad. - your user find it useful... :P
If there indeed is a general falling of earnings (wich I doubt) I think it could be caused by the growth of the number of publishers. The number of advertisers needs to catch up to fill the gap!
I too was feeling the way you are and each month showed a good increase until in November it suddenly went kaput...overnight, yes, literaly overnight my clicks were cut in half but the traffic was the same or a little better and the PPC was still good.
Now the pay out on those clicks are also going from 4 cents to 9 cents each, fluctuating all during the day...
I thought at first that Google was blocking something or other but now...I don't know what to think.
Just keep hoping I guess.
<edit by me> Oh yeah another big factor is the same ads never changing for a year or more along with a good rate of return visitors.
People are tired of them and may have ceased to click especially when the other choices are MFA's.
there are millions of sites in my sector, there should be no shortage of advertisers.
While AS still shares the major partion of my income, its delining trend let me turn to believe that AS would be completely out from my websites sometimes later, not very soon though ... :P
My monthly income has dropped substantially as a result of starting over with several new sites; but I feel that the internet is changing rapidly and stand by my decision. I don't think AdSense will tank, in fact - I intend to continue using them in part. I do however believe that the value of the click is going to get a reality check. It's just extremely important, and I can't stress enough - advertiser diversification. Anyone who has spent any amount of time on this forum has read it a thousand times, "DIVERSIFY!". This has got to be one of the most volitile industries on earth. Rags to riches - riches to rags, find a happy medium through diversification. The sooner - the better.
However, I can confirm that the MFA problem is getting worse by the day. Whenever I look deeper into my pages, I can easily spot the MFAs in the preview tool. And very often these are the known suspects, i.e. companies and individuals who are running and advertising dozens, if not hundreds, of useless sites.
As said many times before, I feel that we as publishers have simply too few tools to really manage our ad real estate effectively!
The most effective instant help would be
1) bigger filter lists
2) filter all ads associated with an Adwords account
This is not rocket science. It's a matter of will, not a technology problem.
Being able to set the minimum bid allowed on your sites. "Money talks, bs walks!"
The most effective instant help would beBeing able to set the minimum bid allowed on your sites.
Would this not create a high percentage of public service ads being displayed, due to the fact that there wouldn't be enough higher priced ads to go around?
I think that would depend on the sector and how high the publisher was setting the minimum. It's pretty clear to me that if email spammers for example had to pay even 1 cent for every spam they sent out, there would be a lot less of them. Same idea here regarding MFAs - price them out.
set the minimum bid allowed on your sites
This was discussed rather extensively in this thread -
[webmasterworld.com...]
- and it was the general conclusion that this approach ... while it would seem helpful at first glance ... would actually make the MFA problem worse overnight.
I used to want this capability. Now I don't.
I read that thread, thanks - but I don't buy the conclusion. It's specious at best. Money works well at segregating junk from quality - set the price high enough and the junk will disappear.
Set the price high enough and the junk will disappear.
Kind of like going into an inner city area accustomed to low-income housing and building $1.8M (US) priced condominiums.
Either you can afford it, or you find somewhere else to live.
Exactly. If advertisers had to pay $2 a click to have their ads show on my sites vs. a few cents, I doubt I'd see ringtone or bogus survey ads - ever.
