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[webmasterworld.com...]
The poor advertiser has been trying to filter out the site with negative keywords to no avail.
IMHO, the thread offers a good illustration of why advertisers need more control over where their ads appear--even if that control is as simple as a "block by domain" filter like the one that publishers already have.
I also think that it would pay off in the long run as the filtering process on both sides would/should lead to enhanced revenues for both parties by slowly weeding out the fluff.
2odd...
I know I have to get one site past google editors, but if I know I have to make my money making sites appeal directly to the advertisers, I'm going to pay more attention to my own quality, both presentation and traffic wise.
The way I see it is, if the advertiser has the ability to filter out the bad guys (which I am not one of) then the value of my clicks go up. Hence more revenue for me.
As it stands now, advertisers cannot block part of the AS traffic effectively bringing down the value of all AS clicks.
As publishers, we should be almost as concerned about our advertisers ROI as they are. Their return goes up and guess what...the value of the traffic we send them does too.
As publishers, we should be almost as concerned about our advertisers ROI as they are.
Best not say that too loud around here.....I get beat up everytime I even suggest that both sides should work together and maybe even ....gasp.... explore other options to make this whole thing better ;-)
JAG
What did I find? A site, running AdSense at the top, that features regurgitated summaries of posts from various forums. All this valuable "content" hanging below a multi-hyphenated domain name that suggests a good buddy using his/her first name in her/his domain name was selling widget software.
This complies with AdSense standards?
How very disappointing to anyone who labors to create real, valuable content. How clear an indicator of a system that is broken and certain to fail, a good idea gone rotten in its implementation.
What I'd really like to say is "what a total, all-around crock of crapola".
To add insult to injury, if you search "widget software" Mr./Ms. spam-the-hell-out-of-the-SERPs with regurgitated forum posts ranks in the first 10 results for this major software category.
One more example of how broken Google really is and likely the work of one of the many very nice people I met at PubConf.
<Edited out reference to the specific type of software to protect the interests of those nice people who exploit the weaknesses of G. Darn-it! I love ya and I hate ya "sinning ways" at the same time ;-) Just like your average marriage, sometimes, I guess ;-).>
[edited by: Webwork at 9:30 pm (utc) on Mar. 2, 2004]
I think it is high time for G to review their Adsense publisher base, and start getting rid of the crappy ones.
Plus, I've never been a big fan of their policy of allowing accepted publishers to submit one site for evaluation, and then allowing them to put the codes to other sites they own. That is just one big loophole in terms of quality control. While this policy makes the application process run faster, there is a lot of danger in terms of quality. One "good" site is not a guarantee that the ten or so sites controlled by the publisher possess the same "quality."
They're going to do it by giving the publishers more control, too. That doesn't address all of the issues here, but it would target things better if they allowed (but not demand) a site to say their finance, health, technology or entertainment, then the ad buyers who cared could target those sites if they wished--or just let AdSense do it for them.
this is why Quigo is all excited about their product
Better targeting wont help if they don't have a good advertiser base. Just like there are better search engines than google that get no traffic.
Aside from EPV's suggestion which I fully support --
I think it is high time for G to review their Adsense publisher base, and start getting rid of the crappy ones.
I agree totally with both you and EPV. These poor content (I use the word loosely) only cause advertisers to drop all content sites. This hurts the good publishers.
Google, if you aren't going to review your publishers base and weed out the poor content sites, then let the advertisers have more control. After all, it is the advertisers dollars that fuel the system.
The way I see it is, if the advertiser has the ability to filter out the bad guys (which I am not one of) then the value of my clicks go up. Hence more revenue for me.
Exactly my sentiment!
I can see why Google can't let the AdWords folks handpick which sites they go on. On the other hand ad sponsers need to be able to be sure their ads aren't going on sites that don't reflect well on them. If we weren't allowed to screen out some AdSense ads some of us wouldn't even be here because trashy ads make our content sites look trashy. In the long run qualtiy pays off.
The ability of a few nefarious webmasters to turn advertisers sour on MY income is something that concerns me greatly. We all know that google DOES actively screen applicants and active publishers, but can it ever be enough?
Perhaps some kind of "Certified" or "Google Approved" class could be created - paid or otherwise. The objective of course would to put an extra degree of trust and control into the advertiser's hands without having to go to a per-site filter granularity. Who knows it could lead to premium revenues.
While I was running content distribution I not only found my ads on less than professional sites, but found them running on competitive sites. I know that at least one of these sites is run by someone with no scruples. I would expect false clicks to be generated from that site if the owner can figure out how to do it.
Unfortunately I can't even use conversion tracking since the main focus of my sites is community. Most of the money comes from advertisers that want to reach these communities. There is almost no direct conversion to track.
JAG
I mean how can Google offer the option to block a single site and leave it to the advertiser to find out which one?
I think this option will be available around October 2006. Six months after the launching of the competing program ;)
Allowing advertisers to filter out sites sounds good but how do you do it? Content sites have just a few advertisers to weed through to filter. Broad reaching advertisers may have thousands of content sites to weed through to filter.
Not necessarily. In some niches, advertisers may have a quite small number of sites to weed through and filter--and there's a good chance that they'll be familiar with the best and worst sites. But the real usefulness of a blocking filter would be the ability to filter out sites that are known to be delivering low-quality traffic. A good example would be the site mentioned by an advertiser in the AdWords Forum:
over the last few weeks I've noticed more and more of my adword referrals are originating from one specific domain (an online mapping service).Click throughs from this domain never convert, and I really do mean never. At this point upto 40% of my budget is paying for this useless traffic.
For this advertiser, a blocking filter could mean the difference between sticking with content ads or dumping them altogether.
An even better option would be to let advertisers choose between an exclude ("no ads on these sites") and an include ("ads on these sites only") filter. The ability to include only certain domains would be useful to advertisers who:
- are skeptical about content ads;
- are in categories where quality varies enormously from site to site;
- are concerned about fraud;
- are media buyers in advertising agencies who are used to having control over where ads appear and don't feel comfortable offering a pig in a poke to their clients.
I mean how can Google offer the option to block a single site and leave it to the advertiser to find out which one?
That would indeed be tough. Plus I would imagine that on sites that have constantly changing content it would be a whole new ball game to deal with. An advertiser might think the site is OK one minute but not the next, and vise-versa.
JAG
But the real usefulness of a blocking filter would be the ability to filter out sites that are known to be delivering low-quality traffic.
Shouldn't that be handled by the people responsible for letting them into the system in the first place? Isn't high quality traffic the basis of calling Google a top tier player?
I can certainly see the usefulness in such a feature I just can't see the practicality of it as discussed so far.
JAG
Shouldn't that be handled by the people responsible for letting them into the system in the first place? Isn't high quality traffic the basis of calling Google a top tier player?
I don't think even Google would claim that AdSense offers high-quality traffic across the board. In launching AdSense, Google chose ubiquity over selectivity--presumably to achieve a dominant market share. What's more, it's chosen to put all of its "content ad" publishers into one tent. An advertiser who buys content ads on Google may see its ads on information sites, affiliate sites, e-commerce sites, forums, or even parked domains. So whether Google should be responsible for delivering high-quality traffic is irrelevant at this point. It's too late for that; the responsibility now lies with advertisers, who are forced to make a binary decision ("on" or "off") because they're unable to control where their ads run or don't run.
It's too late for that; the responsibility now lies with advertisers, who are forced to make a binary decision ("on" or "off") because they're unable to control where their ads run or don't run.
It's never too late. Give the bottom feeders the boot or lower the amount paid to them or.....
The on/off thing reminds of years gone by......it shouldn't be like that today :-)
JAG
However when do you decide to block, after 30 clicks no conversion, 50, 100.
A site might bring in 30 - 50 no conversion clicks and then the next 50 clicks could have all been conversions, but you missed them.
However in the case you highlighted where 40% of the Ads budget was spent with clicks from just one site, and no conversions at all, that's very clear case for blocking a site, and yes i would want it nuked if i could not block it, must be very frustrating.
As for only having to get one site approved & checked out to get started as an Adsense Publisher, is clearly where the big hole is in this program, and i can see it damaging the quality of its reputation very soon, as it allows for other websites to be set-up and creating of pages targeted purely for Adsense and the code added with no checks, these sites are easy to spot and should eventually get chopped once a manual review has been done, but that takes time and costs the advertiser money which also degrades the confidence of the advertiser to stay with the program, which means less money for the publisher too.
Its better to control and approve all sites that can show Ads from the start, rather than wait until later to try and do a clean up.
It's never too late. Give the bottom feeders the boot or lower the amount paid to them or.....
As I've already expressed, I'm all for giving advertisers more control or Google giving "the bottom feeders the boot..." But, can you imagine the posting on WW from upset publishers that got the boot? Look at all the complaining and grumpy posts when someone is booted for click fraud. I can see them now, “I just got the dreaded email, but I have one of the best niche content sites on the web. How dare Google give me the boot! This isn’t my fault. How do I appeal? Google has just destroyed my life.” Then will come dozens of sympathetic “How dare Google do this” posts.
If I were part of Google’s management, I’d figure out how to let the advertisers control the process.
But, can you imagine the posting on WW from upset publishers that got the boot?
You're right about that!
I’d figure out how to let the advertisers control the process.
That would be ideal. It's just not such an easy thing to do. Giving away the flexibility to do such things could also lead to AdSense just being the biggest research tool for creating direct relationships that was ever created.
Google would have to be careful because once the initial match is made, and advertisers could see what sites do well for them, then I would think there would be more than a few emails going out by the advertisers offering a higher click amount for a direct link to their site but still paying less than they pay now. Then they could just put a block on the content site so they don't get double served and effectively remove Google from the equation.
JAG
Its better to control and approve all sites that can show Ads from the start, rather than wait until later to try and do a clean up.
I'm not so sure. It would make it difficult for new content site to get in and would hurt the broad reaching aspect that AdSense has now.
But the ability of the advertiser to filter out content site would result in getting rid of the worse of the bunch without changing the overall dynamics so much.
It would be ideal if Google would take care of the problem but they appear to have decided that quantity over quality is necessary to build the program.
So my thoughts:
- Really surprised that adwords doesn't block by domain. Really is needed.
- Would definetly want the black/white list approach suggested by EFV.
- Can't wait for some competition to Google Adsense - I really would like to rotate the adverts so that different ad's are displayed to the visitors during their visit to my sites.
The only thing I can think of that would stop them implementing these changes are the impact on performance in displaying ads. Another set of filters on a per advertiser basis would have an impact...
I've seen some really low quality sites running Adsense - I can't understand how they ever got approved. My only guess is that they had one site approved and slapped ads onto all the other 2 bit sites once they had a publisher id.
I've also noticed some frankly clueless advertisers - some of the links go to 404 pages! (investigated using the 'ads by Google' link)
Other than that - I'm really glad to have joined up and look forward to my check :)
Publishers will often submit for approval their "best site." There's always the likelihood that the 10 other sites the publisher owns/controls and where the Adsense codes will run are not what any advertiser would want their ads to run.
This policy was good at the start when G was just building its publisher base. Now that there appears to be a significant number in the program, it is high time to tighten the application process. If G only allows the code to run on the site they reviewed and approved, we would see less of the crappy sites that are hurting both the publishers and advertisers.
Now we can always discuss about how strict the process is or how many resources Google devotes to the ongoing quality control, but that would be another story :)
Google would have to be careful because once the initial match is made, and advertisers could see what sites do well for them...
To address that and the other concerns you mentioned in your post, advertisers could be given stats by publisher site with a code displayed for each site instead of its domain name, click and impression totals could be shown as ranges and date ranges could be vague. I'm not suggesting Google should do something like this, but I wanted to show how data could be shared that might be useful for making a decision about blocking, but not useful enough to easily identify the publisher and ad performance for that publisher so Google could be bypassed.
So host.domain.tld would be displayed as Publisher 823214 (that publisher would be assigned a different # for each advertiser so it would be difficult for publishers to share info. and determine a publisher's identity). Stats could be shown as follows:
CTR Range: 1.0% - 2.0%
Impressions: 5,000 - 9,999
Period Covered: A 5-day period from past 10 days
Don't focus on the specific ranges above. They could be narrower or wider. They could also be shown in qualitative terms instead of numeric.
CPCretirement, would you opt back into content distribution if you could filter out sites like we can filter out ads on AdSense?
A qualified yes. As an Adwords advertiser I am concerned that my ads are showing in places where I am not even aware of them showing. I like to know where my ads are running so that I can make informed decisions. If I could tell which sites they were run on, and had the ability to choose, then I would be happy. This would take care of my concerns.
As an Adsense publisher I would not mind at all if advertisers could opt out of my site. I am confident enough of the professionalism of my sites and the quality of the traffic that I don't think it would prove to be much of an issue.
I think that there are some issues for Google to be concerned about though. If they give advertisers a complete list of where the ads are run then there is the potential of cutting out the middle man. I don't know if this would be a big issue or not but it is certainly a concern.
This is all when speaking of my more established sites. On the newer sites I tend to take more of a do anything I can to generate traffic point of view. If I can't get enough traffic to eat up the budget on the search results then I will use content distribution. Once sites are established I turn it off.
