Forum Moderators: martinibuster
After investigating the source of these survey ads, I ended up consuming several of my competitive filter spaces (not to mention my time!) to block the domains that were showing on my sites (at least the ones I'm seeing - who knows how many I'm not).
It's been said here before by others - now I too would like to throw support for publishers being able to "block by advertiser" as an AdSense option.
I gave up blocking due to the same thing. The same advertisers are always back in a day with a whole new URL....we need better blocking.
Ann
Exactly. Having to playing "whack-a-mole" with advertisers that you know are bogus just isn't right. If I know I don't want any ads by a particular advertiser, there should be a way to block all their ads from appearing on my sites - not just the ones I happen to be fortunate enough to see.
I doubt that if an advertiser uses such methods that his other ads are OK.
It would be sooooo cool to just whack all domains from one advertiser completely with such an option.
What you are asking is not easily doable.
How about a simple box that opts us out of displaying ads for pages that contain one or two or three AdSense ad units?
a) remove all duplicate entries from the filter list from that advertiser (freeing up significant space)
b) block all advertisements from that advertiser
The concept is simple - if an advertiser is using one shady site, we as publishers might not want to work with him at all.
As I was saying, it's not easy for Google to loose a bucket of money, also they would argue against it saying that blocking an advertiser could seriously lower your earnings, they even recommend blocking urls not domains on account that the same domain could have another ad that pays well yadi yada blah blah blah!
I did not meant to contradict you - I just wanted to say how I would like to see it done.
I completely agree with you that Google will argue that blocking advertisers reduces income - mostly for them.
From a technology point of view, it should be rather easy. If one can block a domain, then the same person should also be able to block a pool of domains belonging to a unique advertiser ID. Especially if that one is a Google developer. ;-)
Hobbs, I respectfully disagree. If Google is serving an ad on my site and I say (by way of a checkbox next to the domain for example), to block this advertiser - Google already knows who that advertiser is, right? Otherwise, how the heck are they paying them in the first place?
Secondly, the argument that Google somehow loses money by MY blocking some bogus advertiser from showing their garbage ads on MY sites is so insignificant to Google's bottom line that I can't see any rationale to it whatsoever, sorry. Furthermore, as I said earlier by blocking the domains using the competitive filter of this bogus survey outfit, everything went up fourfold! I made money, but more importantly - Google made money as soon as I started blocking the pollution that THEY had allowed on to my site in the first place! I'm convinced those ads were acting as a deterrent to people clicking, not encouraging it. How is it Google makes more money when people stop clicking on ads again?
.. is so insignificant to Google's bottom line ..
We had similar cries for action since Adsense started, and as you said, numbers to collaborate our positive blocking experiences, but to exclude any guessing, it has to be a fact that Google does make good money from arbitrage within its network, so I have to conclude that the only reason we are not given easy tools to block MFA at the root is the Google's bottom-line, no guessing there.
That may be - though I don't see evidence of it on my sites.
> so I have to conclude that the only reason we are not given easy tools to block MFA at the root is the Google's bottom-line, no guessing there.
If Google is going to allow publishers to be able to block by domain using the competitive filter, then they should allow them to be able to block by advertiser as well. Making publishers jump through hoops trying to block an advertiser using the competive filter one-domain-at-a-time does not sound right to me. "Don't be evil"
[edited by: Play_Bach at 1:15 pm (utc) on May 4, 2006]
Now if we tackle those 50% by blocking advertiser, don't you think they will simply create multiple Adwords accounts as easily as they mass produce sites?
And that still leaves the other 50%
That is why I think blocking sites that are both Adwords and Adsense account holders, or just sites that carry Adsense is more reasonable and easier, that is if there is a will to do it in the first place which I doubt.
No I don't. That would mean them having to have multiple credit card cards, bank accounts etc. I find that idea infinitely harder to pull off than generating tons of bogus domains.
multiple credit card cards, bank accounts
You mean to tell me that having multiple identities with credit cards is easy to do? How many Adwords accounts can a user have with the same name and/or billing info?
> and if Google makes it hard to join Adwords, the $$ will jump to other networks.
I don't think so. What would they jump to - YPN?
[edited by: Play_Bach at 1:37 pm (utc) on May 4, 2006]
OK, but then they'd have the same name/billing info. Seems to me Google could flag them easily enough as the same advertiser, right?
[edited by: Play_Bach at 1:44 pm (utc) on May 4, 2006]
Play_Bach you are missing the point, you are saying there is a way, I am saying there is no will.
None I can think of. Different credit cards yes - not different names and addresses.
> Play_Bach you are missing the point,
That may be - wouldn't be the first time! ;-)
> you are saying there is a way, I am saying there is no will.
Didn't you say you're blocking 187 domains? Out of 200 possible block slots, that leaves you only 13 to go, right? Wouldn't you like to be able to say "block this advertiser" and knock off half of those in one fell swoop rather than play games? I would.
I am with you wishing but the fact is that Google is not short of good ideas or technical expertise to implement them, it's a pure business decision.
Anyway I am off now to my daily bike ride.
Hope you a good ride (for what it's worth, I just took a shower).
Conceding for sake of argument that some bogus advertisers are able to use multiple credit cards and accounts to skirt a "Block this Advertiser" option, I'd bet that these folks would be in the minority - not majority. Even still, I'd prefer blocking large chunks of their ad campaigns this way than the piece meal one-at-a-time domain method we currently have at our disposal using the competitive filter. As for there being "no will" to implement this, I'd say just look in this thread - we're not alone.
