Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I ask because we have adsense running on a number of domains.. anytime we see a scraper site or site we feel is low quality displaying in the ads, we will add it to the competitive ad filter. Google appears to allow anyone to use adwords and so our competitive ad filter is now maxed out.
I sent a suggestion to G about this months ago and all they say is "thanks for the suggestion". I wonder why they have not increased the ad filter to allow more than 200 lines.
The only option I have thought of is to create a unique adsense account for each domain to at least give us 200 lines for each of our domains. even with that solution in place, we still will max out it out and then the junk sites appear again in the ads on our site - not providing the best opportunities for our end users who are viewing the advertisements (and clicking those of interest).
Anyone else stuck with this problem of a maxed out competitive ad filter?
I don't know why Google won't increase its capacity. They have already heard complaints about this, and they already know that there's nothing preventing just one advertiser from buying ads for their 200 different domains.
To see evidence of Google's tolerance for MFA sites, go to google.com and do a search for the word "adsense". When you get the results, look at the ads that appear on the right.
Maybe G's masterplan is to let them all spend a couple of K on Adwords then kick them off AdSense for violaton of TOS just before payday.
The biter bit, the scammer scammed: that would be sweet sweet justice IMHO!
Can't quite believe that it would be official policy however! B^>
Rgds
Damon
I am also cutting from the bottom letting some undisireable sites back in to block the real bad guys.
I've got 8 clicks of minor devils left before it is all scammer vampires.
Really starting to worry.
I'm thinking of flushing the entire list (except for genuine competitors) after the AdWords API quota/price goes up on October 1, and seeing what happens. I'm in my slow season anyway, so it won't put a major hurt on me either way.
It's somewhat remarkable that they haven't done anything about these quality control issues given all of the manpower they have now. Any thoughts as to why they might not want to provide more than 200 lines? I would think quality control would be a priority for them. Bummer to see a good product be taken advantage of by the webspam sites .. it would seem that allowing more than 200 lines would provide an immediate short term remedy.
The reason this is necesary is that a lot of people are able to game the system effectively, and Google's "Technology" places these ads instead of ads from bonafide advertisers. We have discussed this many times in the past. Publishers want to see bonafide ads - not scammers on their sites. That's why I currently don't show adsense on my site as discussed in other threads.
[edited by: martinibuster at 7:46 am (utc) on Sep. 7, 2006]
[edit reason] TOS 4 & 19. [/edit]
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Having or need over 200 domains in the filter list does not imply a publisher has to opt out AS, provided that it still generated a reasonable income.
The real question is ** WHY ** publishers have to keep 200 or more domains in the filter list in order to maintain their income level?
By getting rid of the worst gamers you allow real ads to show. Removing an ad doesn't necessarily show a worse paying MFA - you are removing someone with more skill to game the system than joe public advertiser. Remember that many genuine ads are not from corporates, but individuals who don't have the time to work out how to game the system. They just want to advertise effectively.
By doing this (so the theory goes), you increase your standing with smartpricing, and effectively price out the really poor paying MFA's. You can go too far with blocking though, that's why I only added persistant MFA's and usually only the worst ones.
I am just limiting myself because of the 200 lines limit. - Given the speed and volumes at which MFAs appear and disappear, it does often make no difference whether I am blocking 170 domains or 200 domains.
But if I *could* go beyond the 200 entries limit, I would not hesitate one second to do so. And if I *could* block by advertiser, then I would not hesitate one second to do so either.
Just testing against a possible smart pricing that may have been applied .. On a travel site .
May not be smart pricing at all.. this is a slow air travel time of year ..so could just be lower bids because of that.
I guess I'm just testing.. The line of thought is release 200 idiots back into the bidding and seeing if the influx of competition causes PPC to rise ..(I know thats simplified way of looking at it..)
It's been a few days and havent noticed any effect yet .. and
I've already added 2 of the worst of the worst advertisors back in the filter ..
Having or need over 200 domains in the filter list does not imply a publisher has to opt out AS, provided that it still generated a reasonable income.
I didn't suggest that publishers have to opt out of AdSense if they require more than 200 domains on their filter lists. However, publishers who spend a great deal of time editing domain lists might want to look for revenue sources that aren't so labor-intensive.
The real question is ** WHY ** publishers have to keep 200 or more domains in the filter list in order to maintain their income level?
Supply and demand, a.k.a.:
- Too many publishers chasing the same keywords and keyphrases in certain categories.
- Too few legitimate advertisers who are willing to advertise on the "content network" for those keywords and keyphrases.
- Too little profit potential from clicks on ads about those keywords and keyphrases, so that legitimate advertisers can't justify outbidding the click arbitrageurs.
It's a perfect example of the free market at work. Whether Google should allow a completely free market is a separate issue. (If Google feels that MFAs are bad for the credibility of "Ads by Google," it may decide to take action against MFAs. That hasn't happened yet, which doesn't mean it couldn't happen in the future.)
I think the real question is why you'd want to run AdSense if you had to filter more than 200 domains
Cause there's at least 200 advertisers out there that I don't want to have on my sites. That doesn't mean I don't want the other thousands. But more than that, my sites vary wildly in topic and demographic, and the ads that show up and might be appropriate for a punk rock or metal themed site might not be the ones I want to show on a more family oriented site on a different topic entirely. For the most part the ads that show up are in context, but not always. That's why I'd like to be able to filter on the site level. There are some advertisers I'd like to keep off my sites entirely, and others I'd just like to keep on some sites but not on others.
However, publishers who spend a great deal of time editing domain lists might want to look for revenue sources that aren't so labor-intensive.
It's an excercise worth spending the time on IMHO.
I regularly earned 20 times my Fastclick earnings from Adsense, a good proportion of that was due to blocking MFA's.
To be honest, it doesn't take a lot of time and is cost effective. If every member of this forum that posts regularly spent 5% of the time they do on posting here blocking MFA's and maintaining the list instead of posting, there would be a lot of people better off by more than 5%.
I just emptied my ad filter (...) I've already added 2 of the worst of the worst advertisors back in the filter
I did that a while ago, only to find that over time the same crap advertisers would show up - and end up in the filter again. This helped to keep my EPC solid and also to provide useful, relevant ads to my visitors.
If I had known the uselessness of emptying the filter list, I would not have done it. There is only one positive side to this - some sites that do not advertise any longer could be removed from the list.
Like parked domains with 50+ trash links and (I don't know how they do it) those sites that some how generate AdSense only landing pages from my AdSense ad content!
The shear quantity of these sites makes me wonder what's goin' on? One page of ads leads to another page of ads that leads to another page of ads... Jeeze Louise no wonder my filter list is so long and so many quality advertisers are opting out of content.
These filtered sites are not the kind of ads I can even think to run on these sites, I don't mind competitor and related adverts as there is some value and user benefit... but no-way can I buy into this round-robin ad crap. Your thoughts?
My bad. I have been away for a while.
