New way of combatting smartpricing and crappy ads

[david_uk]

This is the simplest way of all. I'm removing the adsense code.

My site is top 4 for my keywords on Google and has been for a couple of years. It gets good traffic, and up until recently was earning good money - enough for my wife to not have to work.

Since QS, I've seen a non-stop barrage of useless ads for scrapers, loads more MFA's the last few days and to top it all, today the few remaining well targeted ads have been removed in favour of some prankster site. Earnings have dived to the point that I could make as much money from Fastclick, and the ads they now show are just as crappy.

My site is a respected authority, and good ads used to work well. Good ads seem to no longer exist - Google have driven them away by allowing them to be the victims of non-converting MFA's, and now QS has simply made things a lot worse. I've had enough. I don't need to give over a large area of prime ad space to Google and wreck my site's credibility in the process by allowing them to target prankster ads, and other junk.

I'd rather show no ads - and that's exactly what I aim to do for the moment. I have a few cpc ads I run myself that don't earn much, but they are appropriate for the site. I'm going to concentrate on direct advertising even though I will be taking a cut in earnings.

A great shame, but I'm not going to allow them to place MFA's for peanuts. Google aren't going to resolve the MFA problem. They haven't even tried to date, and I suspect they never will. In the process they have killed my sector because all the quality advertisers left. I leave them to it.

Oh, and I will at some point be emailing adsense support. But as they have no intention of doing anything about this, and I'm too angry right now I suspect I won't be talking to them any time soon.

[greedy player]

same thing here no money anymore from adsense, going to quit it too.. will be writing e-mail to adsense to request that they fix smartpricing bug or I'm out of the picture until smartpricing is removed. I'm making less than 0.02$ a click when I use to make for a year+ over 0.40-0.60$ a click... I'm outraged.

The end. of adsense.

[danimal]

what a coincidence, my sites are also adsense-free zones... everything contextual is ypn for now, sorry that you overseas guys can't get it yet.

the final straw for me was the slowly dwindling epc, and a sudden rash of untargeted ads.

[Car_Guy]

I can certainly understand what you're saying. I share the frustration of putting years of time and energy into a site, then thinking all the work is going to pay off, and then after putting AdSense on it, seeing the ads deteriorate to so many useless MFA sites, many of which are bogus "search results" or "buyers guide" pages.

After 2 1/2 months, my "competitve ad filter" doesn't have any competitors in it, but it already has about 160 junk domains in it. There have been times when I've felt like copying and pasting the whole list of them here.

I've seen some unbelievably bad MFA sites lately. It makes you wonder how they got approved.

And I'd sure be surprised if any Google employee ever added something to this thread.

[Scurramunga]

Sorry to hear this David.
Who knows how many other quality publishers have decided to go the same way for exactly the same reasons.

[walrus]

Hate to hear of stable acounts performing so poorly, hopefully Google will straighten out its serps and rework its Adsense program.Seems like they are trying to with the recent Advert landing page terms, but the MFA problem remains unadressed and untill(unless) we can BLOCK BY ADVERTISER not by site, it will continue to ruin the program. September is only a week away, maybe consider hanging in a bit longer, Summer has been tough for a lot of publishers.
Good luck either way.

[edited by: walrus at 10:45 pm (utc) on Aug. 23, 2006]

[Scurramunga]

Hopefully Google will straighten out its serps and rework its Adsense program.

Possibly.

So far I am starting to see significant gains this month. David, maybe you should just reduce the number of ads and sit it out.

[Hobbs]

I understand and respect your decision David, just 2 little points:

- Give it a little time before firing Google, wait till you are calmer for your own sake, do not make decisions and take actions in an angry sate of mind.

- If you go thought with it, consider keeping the account active and running a referral banner in a small section of your site to keep it active while putting payments on hold, this way you can easily come back later whenever you decide it is good time, also you will still be able to test AS on your pages every once in a while to see if things improved.

Good luck

[danny]

There should be an option for AdSense publishers "Don't run ads by other AdSense publishers" (or that link to pages with AdSense).

[Scurramunga]

David,
Just a suggestion. If you opt to keep your account open in anticipation for the return of better days, take this as an opportunity to conduct an experiment. I seem to recall a previous discussion on WW about MFA's and remember reading about someone here contemplating running an experiment using a single ad on their highest performing page just to see which advertiser the Google algo ends up choosing. If it doesn't take up too much real estate space (and if you were still determined to remove all the ads) you'll have nothing to loose anyway.

[greedy player]

and "smartpricing is supposet to make us publishers earn more" says google, when adwords users do not even benefit from such a "fix".

Bless old adsense, out with the new. HORAH.

[andrewshim]

reading this sort of confirms my plan... make as much as i can from Adsense before they burst their own bubble...

[ann]

David-UK,

You and others witnessed my "Custer's Last Stand" In the test thread I started. I am glad I hung in there and kept trying but if the last all out efforts had failed I too would have moved on.

So Please, give it one all out push, take out all the stops and really do everything you can think of (within reason) then if it doesn't improve do what I had planned to do--move on with your site. Remember, there is more than one way to skin a cat and I sincerely hope you find yours.

Ann

[martinibuster]

Why not clear out your MFA list and leave it like that for a significant time. Not just a weekend or five days during a holiday weekend.

Clear out that filter and leave it clear for a month.

[WolfLover]

David-uk, I'm really sorry to hear this. I've greatly enjoyed your posts. Without actually knowing you, you seem to be someone I'd truly like as a friend.

I hope things turn around and perhaps your quality advertisers will come back. Is starting a new site with another niche something that is possible for you?

I've been busy building new sites myself in hopes that if one niche runs dry, maybe another one will still be doing ok.

No matter what, I wish you the BEST of luck in all your endeavours!

[alephh]

Have you considered "heavy handed" editing of your content?

A lot of trouble, but can reduce unrelated/generic ads at some degree. I have a list of words (about 20) that I absolutely have to avoid (in my sector), because using them even once will very likely cause a flood of useless ads. Using one of those words twice will torpedo my earnings.

This of course sometimes leads to pretty ""funny"" situations - for example try to write article about Z without words related to Z - makes you maaad. :-D

[europeforvisitors]

David_uk, have you ever told us what topic(s) you cover, or what sector you're in?

I'm just curious, because some of us continue to do well with AdSense aren't swamped with MFA ads. It would be interesting to know what content areas are most affected by the problems you've been having.

[celgins]

While I haven't completely given up on Adsense, I have removed it from most of my pages. Instead, I've added affiliate ads to those pages and my affiliate earnings skyrocketed.

I've seen an increase in badly targeted ads over the past few days, but I'll stick it out a little longer.

I feel your pain, David.

[Jafo]

Blocking advertisers instead of URL's should be a must. That is the only way I can see of combating MFA's.

I tried YPN for about 2 weeks and was seriously disappointed, yet AS is getting to the point where it may be worth giving them another try.

For the sake of Adsense, and the Publishing community, I really hope Google gets on the increasing MFA problem.

[GoldenHammer]

Sorry to learn that, but hold your decision.

You may consider to start from the beginning, remove all AS and affiliates codes, clean all channels and filter list. With all default given by AS, add AS codes only to those best performed pages, see how it is going for the next 2 weeks....

[koan]

I think if they tweaked the algorithm to favor higher paying ads instead of what they think are "relevant" ads, something closer to what it might have been in the past, we wouldn't have so many unprofessional ads. Checking some of the sites and landing pages in the ad preview tool, it's sometimes downright embarassing to have crappy sites like these advertising on my sites. MFAs work because they can bid for 0.02$ ads and they show up. If we only could decide of a minimum or if they put more weight on better paying ads, this could squeeze them out.

0.02$ clicks might be okay for someone in India, I doubt anyone in North America or Europe would really bother publishing them if they had any control. What would be so wrong in letting webmasters decide what's good for them?

[Green_Grass]

Google has already done its bit in 'clearing' up the Search side by knocking off the 'poor quality' advertisers. In this mad rush to throw out everyone except ebay, they thought they had killed off the MFA problem. There are many supporters of this move by G on this forum. I guess, it was not that easy & G will have to learn the hard way that the right way to do things may just not be through an automated algo.

Most MFA's have just changed their URL's and are back with a vengeance on Search and also on the Content side. More so on the content side.

I suggest we review our 'Filter' list to weed out the old blocked URL's which are now redundant and replace them with the morphed MFA's..

This should help. I am doing this on some of my pages and see a diffn. However it is a continuous battle taking too much time.....

[Green_Grass]

"0.02$ clicks might be okay for someone in India,"

0.02 is 92 paise in India. A small toffee costs Re 1.00

What makes you think, Indians want 2 cent clicks? We want USD 1.00 clicks please. As many as possible..unfortunately have to make do with 10-20 cent clicks :-(

[Scurramunga]

I suggest we review our 'Filter' list to weed out the old blocked URL's which are now redundant

From my observations it is very rare to see MFA's become redundant. More to the point, MFA's tend to thrive and multiply exponentially.

[david_uk]

Thanks for all your comments and support here! It is appreciated.

Couple of comments:-

Firstly, I believe that the root of the problem is that the sector as a whole no longer has any quality advertisers, so it's not just my site. Looking at the ads available in Google search, on my site and a couple of other sites in the niche that show adsense (believe me they fare even worse for ads displayed) it's clear the only thing QS has done is to drive quality advertisers away.

My decision to quit isn't to do with money - it's purely the ads that show. If I had relevant ads and was earning a pittance I'd leave the code there. You go through good times, you go through bad times. Fact is, the ads are so scummy it's untrue. I really would rather earn nothing than show the current crop of MFA's.

Regarding blocking of ads. Two suggestions in this thread. 1 from Martinibuster to remove the filter, 2 others saying block them. I've always been a strong voice in favour of blocking, but I hope I've also made the point that you can overdo it. I've always maintained the list and removed advertisers who were wrongly targeted temporarily, and sites that no longer serve ads. I've also been very conservative in adding to the filter. All thats in my list at the moment are about 30 ads that cannot possibly make money. Unfortunately due to the lack of advertisers of quality, blocking one MFA at the moment only seems to show another worse one. Whereas blocking solved the targeting problems in the past, with the lack of ads to replace the off MFA all you get is more junk. Therefore I've only been adding the really bad ones. Bottom line being that there ARE no decent ads to replace the MFA's with. Sad day.

I don't intend to quit my account. I will keep it just in case things turn the corner. I had considered having the single ad button, but the top advertiser recently has been one that is completely off target. So much so that despite not being an MFA I've blocked it. I will probably go down that route if, and when I return to the fold.

Ann - thanks :) But at the moment I feel it's simply too late. Without any advertisers in the sector, there really seems no point!

Alephh - editing my content for better ads is something I've done all along. It's always worked well, but without advertisers in the pool to be selected, changing the content is pointless. In addition, the site is about content - not trying to go after ads. The reason my site does so well in the serps is because of content and the fact it's an established, repected authority on the topic. Therefore changing that would probably mean the site would lose a lot of traffic. With good ads, the mixture of content and ads worked well. Google need to get rid of the crap, and get some real advertisers back.

EFV, you are right - I've never been specific. I do believe I've hinted, but never said. I don't intend to be specific now either on the grounds that I might return to the fold, and return to posting here at some point. I might still read and post anyway! But the site is in the male health sector. It's the site of a support group, and is very content heavy.

I'm going to finish at that point. I'd love to discuss what I think Google should do, but it no longer affects me, and I feel I've done that a million times already :)

[foxtunes]

I sympathise with you David_uk, things have picked up a little for me this month, but still I'm noticing tons of misleading ads creeping back in.

If they don't want to proactively combat mfas on the content network, why not give publishers the option to set the minimum price per click on their sites? If no one wants to pay that we just show the alternate url instead.

The smart pricing pendulum has swung too far over in favour of advertisers in my opinion. Thousands of legitimate advertisers will pay 20, 30, 40 and 50 cents per click for a lead.

[GoldenHammer]

[...Firstly, I believe that the root of the problem is that the sector as a whole no longer has any quality advertisers, so it's not just my site. Looking at the ads available in Google search, on my site and a couple of other sites in the niche that show adsense (believe me they fare even worse for ads displayed) it's clear the only thing QS has done is to drive quality advertisers away...]

That is the worst situation ever to have - the death of a sector over the adsense network.

Now if there is no more quality advertiser (due to poor ROI), no real potential buyer (tired of spammer ads) and no quality publisher (due to the lack of others), is it AS becomes a game closure between MFAs, fraud user clicks and Google?

What is the best price to sell the Google stock shares? Now or too late?

[edited by: GoldenHammer at 7:44 am (utc) on Aug. 24, 2006]

[miguelito]

I sympathise and agree with almost everything the thread starter says except for this,

Google have driven them away by allowing them to be the victims of non-converting MFA's, and now QS has simply made things a lot worse

allowing themselves to be victims? Google? " victims "?! haha
i don't think so, they know exactly what they are doing and don't give a damn what we think as long as bucks keep rolling in.

google are now share-holder driven greedy corporate players, their motto " do no evil " is an absolute joke as witnessed by their agreement with China to censor the search engine in China in order to gain market entry, remember when the founder said he would never do that? google doesn't seem to mind that they are robbing ordinary chinese of the right to freedom of information as long as they get the bucks for doing it.

same goes for adsense, as long as they get big bucks they will continue to permit any crappy site into the program.

not until we stop moaning about it ( myself included more than most ) and vote with our feet, will they get off their greedy asses and do something about it.

nobody from google will comment on this thread because there is no answer to it without jeopardising their own job in the corporation and we can't blame them for that.

[bumpski]

I mentioned the following in a thread that was moved out of Adsense (I'm sorry to say). I'll have to remember to put some "key words" at the top of a post!

October 1st will be a big day for Adwords and Adsense.
See the Adword API changes, I think we'll see fewer Ebay ads, October 1st!
[google.com...]
[adwordsapi.blogspot.com...]
[adwordsapi.blogspot.com...]

One question in the thread was what did I mean by fewer Ebay ads, I should have said the thousands of Ebay affiliate ads like:
Dog Lice
Get your dog lice
here. Lots of dog lice
www.ebay.com

The Google Adwords API (beta) has made it easy to generate an unlimited number of unique ads.
Oct. 1 it looks like the Advertisers will actually have to pay (more) for submitting these ads.
This program has been on hold quite a while now if you follow the chain of threads above, you'll see the "history"

I'm hoping this makes a huge difference in the quantity, and hopefully quality, of this "bulk" advertising.

So perhaps holding off till October might be a good idea. I think Google intended to make these changes much sooner, now their sequencing is off. Had these changes been introduced in April, the more recent changes might have had a more positive impact.

I'm am an Adwords advertiser, but I don't use the API so I could be wrong about this, but I'm still hopeful.

[plasma]

With all the filter lists, Google should be able to setup a spam filter.

I also wish there would be a configurable minimum cpc. The highest possible setting could be ~10-15c, so that the whole idea of AdSense can still work.