New Adsense Targeting is based on the site factor

I have tested it.

[itisgene]

I have a web site, which targets college students in the U.S.

About a year ago, I created an affiliate directory about a totally different topic. After I put the adsense code, I got rid of all the affiliate links as I didn't have time to deal with updating affiliate codes.

Since early April, the site for college students sarted showing the affiliate topic targeted adsense, which is totally off target to the college students.

So, I decided to separate this affiliate directory with new domain name and redirected to the new domain.

Within a few days, the targeting for students came back as before but I lost Google traffic because of the new site filter("Sandboxed").

After two weeks of suffering, I reverted the directory back to the previous places so that I don't lose the extra earnings until new site filter is lifted.

The Google traffic didn't come back yet but the college related site started showing the directory related adsense ads again. Overall the earnings are up due to the moving but will have to wait until google traffic comes back then I can have the previous traffic and earnings.

So...Long story short, the new adsense targeting is based (more) on the site than each page's theme or keywords.

[Jenstar]

A site showing themed ads has been around for quite a while, and sounds like exactly what is happening with your site. It often results in higher-paying keyword ads showing, but can also result in showing completely off target ads for some pages within a site.

You can try forcing a mediabot visit to the non-directory pages to see if you can get more targeted ads. To force a visit, change the ad format (ie change banners to leaderboard) then wait for the mediabot to visit. After, you can change them back to the original ad format. This might result in showing targeted ads.