anti-widget sites & pro-widget ads?

[Celicaphile]

I just bought the domain for a new site today & now that I'm thinking about it more, I'm starting to worry... Say you have an anti-widget site, but all the adsense ads are pro-widget, or "buy widgets here" type ads?
I guess there aren't a lot of people spending $$ via adwords ads that are anti-widget when there's more $$ to be made selling the widgets...
Should I try to target my content toward "widget problem attorneys" and "related-topic dangers"? It would be much harder to compete in SEO if I stray too far from my main anti-widget theme... It seems I can only have one or the other, or am I missing something? Any suggestions?

[jdvjdv]

That's a problem. Try targeting ads that offer solutions to anyone who is anti-widget. Such as vegetarian foods to anyone anti killing of animals, etc.

[Celicaphile]

...that's the problem... I'd have to have the majority of the content (theoretically) be about vegiterian food (using your example) which may be a more saturated market than that of being against the killing of animals. In order to corner the anti-animal death market, I'd have to have more content focused on that, but then the ads may be for places like "BilyBob's steak house" :P

[hunderdown]

I don't know how you'd find them, but there have been discussions about this in the past.

You might also try contacting AdSense and asking them if they can block certain kinds of ads....

[jdvjdv]

Hard to say without knowing the widget in question. You might be lucky in that you can filter everything out until you hit anti-thing ads. Otherwise as suggested, an email to adsense?

[jimbeetle]

Not much you can do on an anti-widgets site if pro-widget advertisers bid more for widgets than the anti's -- the higher bid/ctr ad is going to appear.

Much of it is out of your control unless you use the url filter to knock out the ads you don't want appearing.

[OCSupertones]

I have the same problem with one site, and now my URL filter is a few pages long.

Although, I eventually found the right advertisers... they just don't pay much :)

[Celicaphile]

ahhh, good idea hunderdown... I didn't know they could do that.. I guess I didn't really think about it. I'll get the site set up and see how it turns out... who knows, maybe I can get the SEO and ads I want & I'm just worrying for nothing... but I've already learned quite a bit from these forums in the short time I've been here. I don't know why people on other forums tell others to stay away from here, but most forums serve their given purpose and this is not theirs. Anyhow, I'm still interested in other suggestions or ideas :)
Thanks again

[Celicaphile]

"I have the same problem with one site, and now my URL filter is a few pages long. "

That's what I'm afraid of... mine is already big & it didn't help trying to filter out even more sites that serve drive-by installs...

[lammert]

I know the problem. I once had a nature protection page which was attracting ads for trophy hunting in Africa. I didn't add the ads to the URL filter though, because I was hoping they would make some money. Bad me ;)

I removed AdSense about one month ago from that site because it didn't bring much. Non-profit pages with commercial ads didn't work out to be a good combination. Now the ads are gone I see a larger number of visitors that stay on the site. It seems that visitors to such a site are very sensible for the type of ads displayed.

[hunderdown]

celicaphile, they may say no--that it's something they would only do for a premium publisher.

[Celicaphile]

That's what I figured after I posted my response... I was thinking why would they do that if that site hasn't proven anything yet?

[AdSenseAdvisor]

Celicaphile –

I just wanted to let you know that I’ve passed along your feedback to the product team.

As you know, ads are automatically determined by our crawlers based on the text-based content of your site. Although we’re currently not able to filter ads by keyword or category, we’ll keep this in mind for the future.

-ASA

[spharalsia]

ASA, just to add to the feedback, I'm experiencing the same problem. I'm developing a site around a particiular religious denomination -- but many of the ads I get when I test AdSense on those pages directly contradict the message of the religion. (Funniest example: "Get your pagan products here!") I'll see whether the ads get more focused when the site has been up longer, but if they don't, I may have to pull AdSense from the problem pages. Keyword filtering (e.g., no ads with "pagan" in them) would help.

[Celicaphile]

Great ASA! Thanks for the reply and attention to this matter! :D

[david_uk]

I think it is a problem, but not necessarily so - depends on the site.

My site deals in male widgets, but I see a lot of ads for female widgets. That isn't a problem for me because there are a lot of people out there wanting information on male and female widgets before deciding what widget to get. But I can see the problems with a vegetarian site getting lots of ads that are 100% off target.

I'd suggest contacting adsense and explaining the situation and asking them for help. In the meantime, use the blocklist - that's why it's there.