Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Do you monitor the quality of ads on your site?
If so do you do it regularly?
Do you find it makes a an impact to ecpm or ctr?
Do you have a problem with unethical sites targeting your niche?
Once or twice a day I check the site for relevant ads, just a brief glance. I follow up on funny looking ads.
Does it make an impact? I don't look at it in terms of ecpm or ctr, I look at it from a user experience - if people are clicking on ads on your site that are not "quality" or ethical (as you mention), then they might not look upon your site favorably. Just because it may say "Ads by Gooooogle" doesn't mean they won't associate bad advertising with your site.
I feel that if the user clicks on ads on my site, and they are good, honest, relevant ads, then their chances of coming back to my site are high. That's hard to measure in ecpm or ctr, although if they have a good experience with ads on my site, then they won't hesitate to click on them again. I look at it from their point of view - if I come across a site with an ad that interests me, but the ad leads to a crummy site or service or whatever, I'm not going to pay attention to ads on the original site in the future.
First impressions are important.
I have had a problem with unethical sites targeting my niche (if you are talking about Ads/AdWords). Google's response - use the filter. Disappointing to say the least - I expected more from Google (my site was being targeted by some AdWords advertisers using products that did not exist, but if they had existed, would have been of interest to my users).
Do you monitor the quality of ads on your site?
Most deffinitely. I've always felt that ads for real goods / services complement the site, and encourage visitors to click back to the site having clicked an ad. This has been proven by installing one of the tracker scripts - visitors who click ads are more likely to have the highest number of page views.
If so do you do it regularly?
I look at the site probably once a day.
Do you find it makes a an impact to ecpm or ctr?
Looking at the site doesn't make a difference, but blocking MFA's certainly does. I've been doing it since last July, and initially the ctr went down by 60%. However, the earnings from the real advertisers clicks meant that there was no loss of income - it increased in fact. Long term the effect has been that epc and earnings have increased - maybe thanks to smart pricing reaslising that the site generates good leads to real advertisers.
Do you have a problem with unethical sites targeting your niche?
Not really - just the usual lot of MFA's chancing their arm. All of whom get blocked.
I too believe that enhancing the user's experience is important. My site sells my services and products. It is also an information site about my aspects of my particular industry. I would much rather see my competitors ads competing directly against my products giving my audience a viable exit point rather those MFAs or junk sites that leading to nowhere. I believe that retaining those MFA's and junk sites would do not do well for my site's credibility and would hurt my adsense revenue also.
I too have been checking for undesirable sites daily. I must say that because of this my revenue has increased. Ctr can go down initally in some case after a url blocking spree, however in some cases I find the opposite is also true. For example, I might find that a particular page that had preformed well previously, is suddenly underperforming. I go to that page and I find a poorly written ad (or two)hogging the block, that is not only underireable but leads to a junk site in any case. after blocking these i find ctr is up again.
I can't believe the poor quality of some of those MFAs too. some of the ones I saw today consisted of a couple of google ad blocks with barely a line of content. a couple of others didn't load. Surely they are in violation of Adwords/Adsense TOS? Then of course there are the ones promising one thing with their adwords pitch and delivering something totally different on their sites.
I guess that my point is that it seems that these bogus adwords advertisers are about as numerous as legitimate advertisers and I can see that keeping on top of it all needs to become a daily occurrence.
My problem is that my comp blocking filter is now full and I have been removing older entries from it to enter the new ones that I find. Does anybody here have the same problem with a full (url blocking) filter list?
I agree that we publishers are a little ill equipped to combat this problem but I sure hope that Google would at least increase our capacity to block more undesireable url's.
On the whole I have been keeping a closer eye on the adverts recently though and have been tempted to block some of the adverts that I've felt really don't fit my site or seem poor quality.
Do you monitor the quality of ads on your site?
As frequently as possible (in markets where there are thousands of ads it's tricky).
All rubbish goes in the junk filter. Brand and user perception of my sites is important to me.
TJ
what are MFA's?
Mostly adsense with little or no content
Brand and user perception of my sites is important to me.
Everybody has probably seen this article [nature.com] on Nature.com about "Web users judge sites in the blink of an eye
Potential readers can make snap decisions in just 50 milliseconds."
If you look at it in terms of that article, you want to make sure that the ads appearing are not MFA/poorly done. It all goes back to first impressions people have - if you use the heatmap and have your ads where people will naturally look first, part of how they judge your site will be based on those ads.
To answer your question about smartpricing and culling your ads vs conversion, I think if you do work to make sure that the best ads show, that you will get higher conversion rates over the long-term, because it goes back to the user experience we talked about.
I think it's pretty rare that questionable ads would display on my travel site, because my topic isn't a magnet for scam artists. But some topics are. That's why I quickly pulled AdSense from my site for aspiring freelance writers: Nearly all of the ads were for vanity presses and other soak-the-newbie-writer schemes, and it was obvious that there was no way to use AdSense on the site without looking like a scumbag.
Some topics aren't appropriate for AdSense (and vice versa), and freelance writing is one of them.
Some topics aren't appropriate for AdSense (and vice versa), and freelance writing is one of them.
EFV, I've got to disagree on that one. I have a site about children's book publishing, which gets many of those ads. I block the real scams and am planning to add articles that provide basic information about finding agents, choosing a self-publisher, etc.
I also get some very useful ads. I figure that my visitors can make their own decisions, especially if I provide them with the tools to do so, but I also don't want to be associated with certain companies. So they get blocked. Companies that I don't like, but that are honest--such as xLibris and iUniverse--don't get blocked.
Still, if you have the patience for that kind of drudge work, more power to you!
I can't control the ads on my site, because I don't have time (or the inclination) to use the preview tool to see what ads are displaying around the world.
Well, the preview tool isn't any use for this purpose anyway. Google's help file points out that the ads in the preview tool are "sample" ads, and that "..you may find that the ads in the preview tool do not exactly correspond to the ads on the page."
I think it's pretty rare that questionable ads would display on my travel site, because my topic isn't a magnet for scam artists.
Looking at your site from here in the UK, I saw some scrapers, and other junky sites. Overall I'd say the targetting was OK.
You end up spending too much time monitoring ads. And monitoring ads isn't as easy as just looking to see what's showing up on your screen, since geotargeting means that different ads may be served in different parts of the world.
Still, if you have the patience for that kind of drudge work, more power to you!
I can see where this may be time consumming, and I take the point about the chocolate fireguard algorythm - adsense preview tool to give it Google's name. However, I would be inclined to look at the problem from a different angle. I'd use one of the adsense trackers, and look at what people are clicking. If they are clicking a lot on a junk site, then I'd consider blocking it.
I can see where this may be time consumming
The amount of time required obviously varies with the size of the site. My site has 5,000+ editorially diverse pages, so we'd be talking about a lot of ads to check.
I don't even attempt to look at ads from regions other than the US. Most of my visitors are from the US, and I tend to assume that most of the scams are targeted at the US.
I do try to remove the real scum, but there are limits to what I can do, and I think my visitors understand that. Frankly, it's a losing battle anyway. Some very dodgy literary agencies, for example, that I block on my site appear on some very reputable (and better-known) writing sites.
So I block MFAs (though I haven't seen many) and scum, but that's as far as I go.
However, having a diverse site doesn't seem to me to be a good excuse for not looking at, and ditching the worst of the scum - how on earth does having them on a reputable site help? Here is where the tracker scores. If there are ads, at some point someone will click them. Then you can examine and dump them - no matter where in the world they, or the visitor were from.
OK - not the same as looking at the ads on site and dumping before they get a click, but it seems a pretty reasonable method to do *something* to remove the garbage.
I do agree that if you had a site of 5000 pages or so, it would be very time consuming to be constantly weeding out these scum sites.
Just while on the topic of scum sites offering freebies through adwords: I think I have given the boot to a large handful of these over the past week. I agree they look tacky and go a long way to insulting the intellegence of our visitors. I argue that this would raise concerns about some of my visitors forming a low opinion about my credibility for displaying such ads, or for wasting the visitors time if they are tricked (by their misleading sales pitch) into clicking them
Whilst I take the point that some visitors attune themselves to ignoring the garbage ads, I think at best this would contribute to the phenomena that I have seen described as 'ad blindness'
The tracker sounds like a good idea. Normally I track my stats using my isp's logs and a tird party traffic tracker. I might start shopping around for something that is more suited to the needs of an Adsense publisher. I have seen a couple mentioned but I am not familiar with any of their strengths or weaknesses just yet.
However, having a diverse site doesn't seem to me to be a good excuse for not looking at, and ditching the worst of the scum - how on earth does having them on a reputable site help?
It obviously doesn't help, and if the owner of the site notices persistent problems, then he or she will need to reconsider using AdSense. That's why I dumped AdSense from my writing site.
However, it is not remotely practical for the owner of an editorially diverse site with thousands of pages to constantly monitor hundreds or even thousands of ads. That just isn't going to happen. (And it's one reason why, unlike some publishers, I'm delighted that there's an "Ads by Google" caption on the ad box. I'd insist on that "Ads by Google" even if I were a premium publisher who had the option of getting rid of it.)
I'm delighted that there's an "Ads by Google" caption on the ad box. I'd insist on that "Ads by Google" even if I were a premium publisher who had the option of getting rid of it.
Amen. That's worth repeating.
It obviously doesn't help, and if the owner of the site notices persistent problems, then he or she will need to reconsider using AdSense. That's why I dumped AdSense from my writing site. However, it is not remotely practical for the owner of an editorially diverse site with thousands of pages to constantly monitor hundreds or even thousands of ads. That just isn't going to happen.
This rather suggests that if you have a large site you have the choice of accepting scrapers and junk in, or leaving adsense. That's rather a stark choice, and not at all what I suggested if my post is read. It's obviously becomes harder to check the larger the site - you simply adapt your strategy. That is my suggestion. The block list doesn't have to be huge to be remarkably effective. My site is a couple of thousand pages, but it's not a problem to manage. Partly because I only use adsense on pages where I know it is effective. decreases ad blindness, increases profit.
Obviously webmasters need to look at their own sites for overall add quality at the same time we check layout, works on all screen resolutions / browsers etc. Dump any bad apples then.
Looking at other regions isn't necessarily a productive exercise. Look at the regions your business is in - that's why I concentrate on the US / UK areas only. In your case, I guess much of your traffic is from the US, as the site is very clearly aimed at Americans. Therefore looking at every page in every geographical region is not really worth the time.
The other part of the strategy I suggested was to use a tracker to see what was clicked. They aren't difficult to implement on a large site if you use a content management system, or even a text editor such as NoteTab Pro that has a global search and replace function. Not exactly a pro-active method, but much more effective than having scrapers and other garbage denting the brand image.
Obviously using the retro-active method, you aren't going to zap every ad. You fill up the block list very quickly that way. I don't block every junk ad I see - just the persistent ones. That IMHO is a much more effective method of work. You are going to get the odd stray, but as you have pointed out they will mostly not show that often in any case.
People really do judge you by quality of ads, therefore it is an exercise worth doing to at least monitor the ads.
(And it's one reason why, unlike some publishers, I'm delighted that there's an "Ads by Google" caption on the ad box. I'd insist on that "Ads by Google" even if I were a premium publisher who had the option of getting rid of it.)
Having "Ads by goooooogle" is probably a plus, as people know the brand name. I might remove a few of the ooooo's if I had the option, but I guess it would stay. I don't think it's that big a deal either way personally. If people are blind to ads, they they certainly are blinder (new word for the dictionary :) ) to who provides them.
