PSA and refunds

[ubaldo]

Today, for the first time in almost 4 months, I'm just getting mostly PSA ads (the stats definitively shows it) .

Every couple of weeks I see a message similar to the one I'm writing and usually there seems to be a couple of "me too"s but I don't recall people thinking, oh my, "adsense engine is broken today". So it probably isn't for 99% of people but it's centainly not working for me.

It definitively looks like my day is going to end with at best 20% of the usual revenue. Am I out of my mind for trying to even consider a "refund" from google? Has anybody attempted to get one?

Thank you much

[Blue_Fin]

A refund? You haven't paid them anything to refund.

From the AdSense FAQs:

5. Do you guarantee to have relevant ads for my site?
Since the ability for us to serve ads on your site depends on a number of factors, such as our ability to crawl your site, the content of each of your web pages, and the availability of related AdWords ads, Google does not guarantee that we'll always have relevant ads to display. If we don't have relevant ads for a given page, or if we haven't yet crawled your site, we may display public service ads or your specified Alternate Ads, for which you will not accrue any AdSense earnings.

2. Does Google guarantee revenues?
Since the revenue that you may earn through Google AdSense depends on the content of each of your web pages and the availability of related AdWords ads, Google does not guarantee that you will earn any revenue amount.

This should actually be modified to indicate that Google's technology may not always properly read the content of your page causing them to be unable to serve relevant ads. My site has been a perfect case study for that over the past 5 weeks, and Google has acknowledged it to me by email. It also received media attention last week, referenced elsewhere on WW.

[jomaxx]

You want them to pay you for revenue they never received from clicks that might hypothetically have been made if Google had theoretically been able to show different ads on your site?

I don't think you're out of your mind, but that does sound kind of arrogant. If AdSense has been working for you, then I'd count my blessings and cross my fingers.

[richmondsteve]

ubaldo, I've had a site go days with nothing but PSAs several times. It's frustrating so I can definitely relate.

It's definitely possible that you are seeing a higher volume of PSAs that you usually do. You said something abuot stats so I'm curious what stats you are referring to. Some people mistakenly believe that the impressions in the AdSense reporting doesn't include PSAs, but impressions includes PSAs.

There is *no way* to accurately track the # of impressions that are PSAs. However, you can use the alternate ad functionality Google introduced a few weeks ago and use that to track as long as the alternate ad URLs you use are on servers you control so you can parse the web server logs for those files or do like I do and have calls to those files log data in a database.

[richmondsteve]

In addition, by using alternate ads you have the opportunity to either promote other parts of your site, other sites of yours or insert other advertisements that potentially generate revenue. A lot of AdSense publishers setup alternate ad URLs that load affiliate program ads.

[ubaldo]

That's precisely waht I do, I have a one pixel transparent gif to help me measure the PSA impressions.

I can't afford the time and effort involve in setting up affiliates (I’m small publisher, I serve about 900,000 page views/month), etc so my space goes completely wasted. I also don't want for my site (community oriented) to get anything flashy. I would definitively love to fill that space with similar system (text ads, easy to configure, etc) but none exist as of today (that I know of). I guess overture is cooking up an adsense clone.

Thank you so much for the recommendation.

Ubaldo
P.S. Not sure why jomaxx feels that he needs to make attacks ad hominem. Sorry, I don’t respond to those.

[Blue_Fin]

If you cannot afford the time to set up other affiliates, then if not for the AdSense program, you wouldn't be earning anything, right? So what is Google's obligation to you that you feel they owe you something?

Just to be clear, I'm just as frustrated as everyone else when non-relevant ads or PSAs are served. I just don't see how you reason that you are due a "refund." Google has given you a means to generate income from other sources, yet you have chosen to not participate in their alternate ad option.

I also have to say that I don't feel that jomaxx's comments were attacking you.

[jomaxx]

I certainly didn't mean that to be an attack. I know you're just sounding out options right now, but to actually go to Google and ask for a share of revenue they never received would be a bit much.

[richmondsteve]

ubaldo, now that it's clear you are tracking PSAs, you can give us details if you'd like and maybe we'll be able to help advise you on why you're seeing an increase on PSAs and what you can do about it. Have you made any changes that would prevent the Mediapartners bot from accessing the pages displaying PSAs? Have you made any changes to those pages recently? Do those pages contain "negative content" trigger words (rape, murder, etc.)?

ubaldo wrote:

I can't afford the time and effort involve in setting up affiliates (I’m small publisher, I serve about 900,000 page views/month)

It's all relative, but to a lot of people here 900k pages per month is a lot. There are definitely people here with not even 10% of that number of page views who earn well into the 4-figures (American $) monthly via affiliate programs. If your goal is to earn money you should at least consider finding a handful of quality affiliate programs you can work with. I don't know your site so I don't know what programs would be a good fit, but if you spend half a day researching I'd be very surprised if you couldn't find a half dozen programs that are a good fit, join them and implement using an ad rotation script via the AdSense alternate ad parameter.

And I'm not suggesting that affiliate programs are the only way to go. You can also solicit advertisers directly or...

I would definitively love to fill that space with similar system (text ads, easy to configure, etc) but none exist as of today

Use other 3rd party advertiser-publisher matching services, some of which use text-based advertising, though not contextual like AdSense (though some use a category system). I'm not sure that I'm allowed to name services here, but maybe someone can clarify.

[ubaldo]

I definitively appreciate everyone’s advise on alternative ways to fill the adsense blanks. I’m total rookie when it comes to revenue sources. Google adsense gave people (like me), who come from the programming world an easy path to the monetization and has definitively opened up a new world for me. I had lost all hope of making any money out of my "project" and now it pays rent and some more. Still, I always try to err on the side of prudence when it comes to sponsored context, I think it should not be overbearing or completely out of content.

I guess in my profile you could see the site I’m talking about (if not, send me sticky), it’s pretty much a geographically confined community oriented site (heavily categorized) that covers pretty much about anything (housing, jobs, personal, etc) that keeps growing on its own (I’ve done no advertising since I started about a year ago). I simply optimize it for google, and I’m very lucky that my competitors don’t read WebmasterWorld, they are totally clueless.

So, if anybody would be so kind to point me in the direction of affiliate, another text ads systems reasonably targeteable, that would be grand (spanish market, though). I’ll definitively report back any experiences with them so everybody could learn. Maybe I'll need a 101 on the subject first, I'm sure that I'll find it here.

As of the topic of refunds, I think there is nothing to add (we’re beating a dead horse already). In my frustration of what happened today, it occurred to me that something could be done about it, to make google aware that their mistake (presumably) is costing me and google $. In retrospect, I could see how WebmasterWorld fellows would have reacted, it's obviously silly to ask them for a "refund".

Now, I have experienced negative words hiccups, etc in the past. But this time, I’m a 100% sure it wasn’t a a negative word problem, my bug, a robot.txt problem, etc. BTW, google how seem to have recovered, but it’s hard to tell (ctr is now higher, about 50% of a normal day). That's one thing with adsense, the stats they provide are the absolute minimum to make publishers believe that the payout ammount isn't decided by a magician.

Again, I appreciate the help and the advise.