Better ads from blog-type posts

[pcmike]

I have a 3-column Movable Type technology news blog... but all Adsense does is return ads for blogs... instead of the many tech things I write about...like DVDs, the Internet, computers, cell phones and the like.
Any help on what in my code I can change to get better ad displays more relevant to my posts would sure be appreciated.

[Galtego]

You may be able to use your block list to squeeze out the blog ads, but check with the AdSense preview tool first to see if other kinds of ads are available for the page.

[pcmike]

I'm thinking that somehow, Adsense is reading the word "blog" and responding accordingly.
I have a lead piece on wi-fi now and you'd think Adsense would key in on that. But it's just blogs and hosting services that it lists.
I'm willing to make any changes but I just don't know where.
It was same yesterday when the lead was about cellphones.

[tvstay]

I had the same ads about blogging for the first 3-4 days, but then the ads started becoming relevant. Now, in the second week of having the ads up, my ads on my blog are super relevant.

How long have the ads been on your blog?

[pcmike]

The blog ads have been up for months...
I have trimmed my side columns... removed the word blogs... cut the number of posts displayed to no more than five and still... all I get is blog ads.
I get a fair amout of traffic every day - 3,000 to 5,000 uniques - and these blog ads are killing me. Enough already.

[chrisnrae]

I'm not big into adsense, but is it possible Adsense is "theming" your site? i.e. I am assuming most of your inbounds are from other blogs, blog directories, blog sites, etc.

[pcmike]

Maybe... but what do I do about this?

[alika]

Unfortunately, at this point nothing. G presently does not allow non-premium publishers to provide hints to Mediabot as to the ads that should be shown in our pages.

We have many pages with ads targeted to the theme of the site, not to the actual page and it can be frustrating particularly if the page contains content with high paying keywords. But such is life ... and we wait for whatever new features G will provide to improve its program. Adsense is just one year old, so there is still soooo much room for improvement.

[Rodney]

Could it be related to some of the hidden tags on your site (like anchor tags, etc)

I had a site on photography that was only showing adds for CSS and HTML editors.

Turns out the Div/alt/ID/anchor tags all default settings (like the div id was "css-validation-introduction").

Once I changed those tags to be related to photography (changed div id to "photography site introduction"), the ads became targeted within minutes.