Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I'm seeing MFA sites take it to the next level. They are placing AdWords ads that read something like "We've found the 4 best sites for widget cleaning information." If you click on the ad, you end up at a page full of widget ads.
So I guess the lesson here is not to call attention to your ads via text on your site, just call attention to your ads via an AdWords ad.
FarmBoy
I hate to say this, but we're feeling less happy about how adwords is run, and how adsense is displaying this trash. If we have to block new sites every day, then it becomes MUCH less cost effective to run them.
What gets me is that these ARE or were running on content network (clearly since they are or were showing up on our sites) so they HAD to be manually approved by google staff.
Encouraging (and in this case if they are approving these ads, it's ACTIVE encouragement) is hardly not doing harm.
Encouraging (and in this case if they are approving these ads, it's ACTIVE encouragement) is hardly not doing harm.
The slogan is "don't be evil" - it originally meant don't be Microsoft (the 'evil empire'). I think it will ultimately work against Google - a big company is going to get caught doing something unsavory sooner or later. Imagine a multibillion dollar company with thousands of employees with a primary focus of stockholder profit. Callous and uncaring are almost guaranteed, except maybe for the friendly greetings when you walk into your local video store franchise (like they really care how I am doing). Maybe "don't stab little old ladies" is a clearer, easier to follow motto. ;)
What was the topic? Oh, yeah, MFA pollution. I'm against it.
The slogan is "don't be evil" - it originally meant don't be Microsoft (the 'evil empire'). I think it will ultimately work against Google - a big company is going to get caught doing something unsavory sooner or later. Imagine a multibillion dollar company with thousands of employees with a primary focus of stockholder profit. Callous and uncaring are almost guaranteed, except maybe for the friendly greetings when you walk into your local video store franchise (like they really care how I am doing). Maybe "don't stab little old ladies" is a clearer, easier to follow motto. ;)
I'm really not that terribly interested in the political and ideological discussions of google, and the nature of the company, except to the extent that these things affect my business.
I AM concerned about the potential damage of having low quality ads approved in adwords, and the effects on adsense revenue. I'm involved in both, and low quality is going to affect CTR on the revenue side, AND ad blindess on the advertising side.
Yes, these things will affect the health of google as a company if not addressed, but they are also doing damage to the entire online advertising industry. I don't think there's a long window of opportunity to fix this either. I hardly look at adsense ads any more, because it's almost always 50-70% MFA and misleading ads. I don't want to be associated with them as an advertiser, and I don't want them on my site as a publisher.
...but then again, there's not much to be done. We'll look at pulling our ads on the advertising side, and we may even look at reducing our display of adsense.
