Why can't we get well-targetted ads all the time?

[crick]

I am noticing quite a lot of non-targetted ads on pages that usually have very well targetted ads. What are the reasons for this change to untargetted ads from time to time? Please enlighten us on this.

I mean they should have no problem in terms of inventory, we are talking about a very competitive subject here.

[annej]

When I get an ad that is extremely poor targeting I suspect it is a site targeted ad. For example I got one on wigs for women. (wigs were big in the 60 weren't they?) My site is unrelated to wigs except that it's on a hobby that primarily interests women.

Since almost all of my ads are well targeted to the hobby I assume ads that are not related to the hobby are site targeted and I block them.

[OptiRex]

(wigs were big in the 60 weren't they?)

And they're huge now and especially so with hair extensions...they are de rigeur.

[ronburk]

I mean they should have no problem in terms of inventory

Google can tell you whether that's true; it's rather harder for you to prove it one way or the other. Do you see lots of other sites with content no better ("better" meaning "providing better ROI for advertisers") than yours that are showing the ads you desire 24x7?

[europeforvisitors]

Sometimes the ad-matching alogrithm seems screwy. For example, in the last day or two I've been seeing AdSense ads for Seattle city passes and "Rome ringtones" (whatever those are) on the home page of my European travel site. Usually such weirdnesses straighten themselves out in a few days, though they certainly can be annoying.

[hunderdown]

I sometimes wonder if they aren't deliberate, either to test for fraud (if the site's CTR stays the same during a period of untargeted ads, something's fishy), or to try out possibly related ads that otherwise wouldn't show. In the first case, the algorithm finds definitely irrelevant ads, in the other they are trying to pull in ads that are tangentially connected.

[annej]

And they're huge now and especially so with hair extensions...they are de rigeur

Oh my gawd. So they are back just like lime green? Does this mean we are heading for poofy hair?

Maybe I should build a 'back to the 60s' site.