PS Ads

[slobizman]

When I first signed up last week, I was getting Public Service ads only. After a few emails to tech support, they got it working fine. Then, starting yesterday, I began to sporadically get PS ads again, and not just for a few moments, but sometimes they are on for hours.

To make things worse, I began to often get only 1-3 ads, versus the entire four.

Can anyone tell me why this is happening?

The page is at <snip>

[edited by: Woz at 1:01 am (utc) on Aug. 3, 2003]
[edit reason] No URLs please, see TOS#13 [/edit]

[jrstark]

I've noticed the PSAs more too, even on pages that usually get targeted ads. Advertisers buy a set number of impressions, so I think they are spacing them out over the month and filling in with the PSAs.

There is a section of a major daily newspaper that gets the same ads I do. They also get the PSAs.

[ap_Rhys]

See other threads - this is the weekend, and the beginning of a new month. And the new month is August - not a heavy converting month for many advertisers.

I've been with Adsense for about 7 weeks and I'm also seeing a lot of PSAs since yesterday.

Panic not. I wouldn't be too surprised if things were fairly quiet now until mid-September.

[slobizman]

I didn't calculate this loss of income when I signed up AdSense.

[europeforvisitors]

There is a section of a major daily newspaper that gets the same ads I do. They also get the PSAs.

I see PSAs all time in WASHINGTON POST articles. Still, a PSA is better than the ads for signature machines and electronic signature systems that I saw in a POST article on the California gubernatorial recall petition. :-)

If you see a lot of PSAs on your site, that could simply mean that either your site or the specific pages aren't likely to attract targeted AdWords/AdSense ads. And if that's the reason why PSAs are appearing, you need to decide whether it would make more sense to feature other types of ads or affiliate links on those pages. (A page about U.S. imperialism in the Philippines probably wouldn't attract AdSense ads, but it might be able to sell an occasional book on that topic through Amazon.com.)

In the case of THE WASHINGTON POST, it would make far more sense for the newspaper to include the ad code in the travel section, on food pages, in car reviews, etc. than to slap it on pages that don't attract ads--or, just as important, where readers aren't likely to be in a buying mood. (How many people are looking to buy a widget when they're reading about people getting killed in Iraq?)

AdSense's real strength is in supplying ads for niche topics that attract people who buy related goods and services. Sites that do well with AdSense are likely to be the online equivalent of hobby, craft, trade, and other special-interest magazines--not the online equivalent of THE WASHINGTON POST, NBC, or PEOPLE Magazine. In that respect, AdSense is a lot like affiliate programs: The more targeted the page and the audience are, the more likely it is that readers will click and buy.

[slobizman]

Since mine is a politcal site, I assume the ads will get heavier as we move more into the election cycle starting when summer is over. Does that also mean that it's possbile that the payments per click might also increase?

[amoore]

Maybe it's because your page is a javascript body.onload redirect.

[slobizman]

Why would "javascript body.onload redirect" have any effect?

BTW, after you mentioned that, I took it out. I had to do that originally so that people who keyed in .../index.htm got my home page of .../index.php. It used to be .htm, so I was afraid people had bookmarked that.