Forum Moderators: martinibuster
What do you think? Would such blacklists be a good thing for advertisers and legitimate publishers?
By a reputable service provider, or by our competitors?
It's easy to imagine blacklists being provided on a subscription basis (not unlike virus or spybot definitions) or simply being offered as a "value add" for prospective clients.
I don't think Pete "S for Scumbag" Publisher is going to get very far by offering blacklists that deep-six his competitors. That's no way to build a real business.
Bearing in mind that often in this forum we are told that MFA's convert well (presumably by the MFA owners), we might find that our sites end up on the blacklist instead!
I think compiling a genuine list would be a nightmare. To make a comparison, I do know of one blacklist supplier in the adsense area. Can't post the URL obviously, but many here will know the site to which I refer. They went from an automated system to one with a fair amount of manual input because of all the non-mfa sites that found their way onto the list making it useless. I suspect it will also be the case that adwords lists are infected with a lot of sites that shouldn't be there making them equally useless. Also, as we don't know enough data to base decisions upon about conversion of individual sites, it strikes me that the blacklist may well hinder, rather than help.
In general, having lists of MFA's for advertisers to block is something I'd support in principle. I'd like to see open source compliation, but suspect that it's more likely that these lists will be compliled for the purpose of selling.
I don't see how this would make much sense. Just because the site is junk (by our own personal definitions) doesn't mean the traffic is junk.
Many advertisers would disagree with you, to judge from discussions in the AdWords forum. Also, not all advertisers are no-name businesses that don't care where their ads appear. For advertisers who do care about the company they keep (for whatever reasons), a blacklist could be a useful tool.
Also, Google is supposed to be managing the problem already via smart pricing.
Smart pricing is a step in the right direction, but it isn't a complete solution--in part because there's no such thing as a 100% "smart pricing" discount.
It seemed there were too many people submitting their competition. I looked through the top 10 on a few and there were sites that were nowhere close to MFAs. Tons of legit sites listed.
The problem with a blacklist is that there is no trust and no way to verify the sites. If you have to verify it then it's usefulness is limited, or nil.
I think it's an interesting idea, but as has been pointed out legit sites often end up in these lists because they are someone's competitor, someone doesn't like the site or someone hits the wrong button by mistake.
Look at the opposite with publishers who can block domains. I really do not find it realistic to go through every possible geographical, and time based scenario to see who is advertising on my site.
I think it could help the very obvious, as with publishers I am sure many people here have ebay.whatever and loads of similar things blocked.
Every little but helps but I doubt it will make a big difference.
For example, some webmasters are jumping to wild presumptions about affiliate ads, going so far as to ban an affiliate site because it uses the CJ URL redirect. It's self-defeating to knee-jerk ban affiliate sites but some people do.
Many affiliates are among the sharpest online marketers, measuring their ROI to the penny. Those that aren't savvy are bleeding themselves spending too much. Yet I've seen some members here jumping up and down to ban ads using Commission Junction's redirected URLs. Oh man...
Imo, there is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about affiliate PPC bidders, and those sites are going to end up unfairly banned on the basis of the flimsiest unfounded presumptions.
Many affiliates are among the sharpest online marketers, measuring their ROI to the penny. Those that aren't savvy are bleeding themselves spending too much. Yet I've seen some members here jumping up and down to ban ads using Commission Junction's redirected URLs. Oh man...
While I think that advertisers should get a good ROI, I think dealing with those who are "measuring their ROI to the penny" is not the ultimate goal for me. Translated into real world this means: they can only spend pennies for their clicks, because otherwise their business will falter and their ROI is out the window. I am not interested in dealing with these sites. Many of the affiliate sites offer ZERO additional value to the user experience. They offer EXACTLY THE SAME stuff as many other sites (and advertisers!). I am interested in unique sites that offer real unique value and help providing a positive experience for my visitors.
Thus, I LOVE to ban CJ redirects, and guess what? Banning this junk has stabilized my income and EPC and made it much more predictable. It did NOT hurt me. Which is a good thing. For me.
Translated into real world this means: they can only spend pennies for their clicks...
Measuring ROI to the penny means having control and knowing how much to spend, not spending pennies.
No disrespect meant, and I understand where you're coming from because it's a logical assumption, but I'm convinced that's exactly the kind of assumption that can backfire on an AdSense publisher. If conversion rate is a one of the factors driving smart pricing, then these are precisely the sites you want on your sites. Furthermore, many affiliates have already stated that they are able to bid high amounts precisely because they know what the conversion rates are on their ad spend.
Measuring ROI to the penny means having control and knowing how much to spend, not spending pennies.
If you have a website that solely relies on affiliate revenues, and that has no organic links because it does not add any value for the visitors, then you ARE looking at each penny for your advertising campaign. You bid for exotic keywords, hoping to catch a visitor cheap.
An example:
Let's consider that your affiliate revenue is $20 for each purchase/transaction that you generate.
To break even, you should not spend more than $20 in Adwords. Otherwise you are making a LOSS which you will want to avoid.
In my niche you get a decent number of clicks on decent sites for, let's assume again, $0.25 - so your $20 generate 80 leads. Now, that's 80 leads, not 80 transactions.
So, at $0.25 only a conversion rate of 1/80 or 1.25% will break even. Still, you do not earn anything from 1.25% conversion rate. You just break-even.
If you buy your clicks cheaper, the required conversion rate goes down.
Here's the table:
$0.25 = 80 clicks = 1.25% needed
$0.20 = 100 clicks = 1.00% needed
$0.15 = 133 clicks = 0.75% needed
$0.10 = 200 clicks = 0.50% needed
$0.07 = 286 clicks = 0.35% needed
$0.05 = 400 clicks = 0.25% needed
$0.03 = 667 clicks = 0.15% needed
$0.01 = 2.000 clicks = 0.05% needed
You see: it's in the best interest of the affiliate to get the clicks as cheap as possible. It's his only way to generate substantial profit. He does not need to maintain a real web site or to create unique content, so he starts fiddling around with Adwords in order to get the cheapest clicks possible. This is where he differs big time from real businesses. These do not have the time, they often do not have the knowledge, and they have a bigger cut of the pie as well (no affiliates to pay!), allowing for higher bids.
Depending on the affiliate program, your average revenue for each transaction varies, and you may well be below $20 for each conversion which does not exactly help increasing bid prices.
Again, I believe your first statement was very true (even if unintentionally).
Also, the question of whether it would be good or bad isn't even the point; the question is what effect such a tool would have on publishers and the AdSense program overall.
I think blacklists (or "site exclusion" lists, if you prefer) represent a business opportunity for SEM or PPC bid-management firms, and especially for larger ones. Why? Because it's likely that many such firms are already filtering domains for their clients, and what I'm talking about here is just an extension of that--and one that's made possible by Google's recent change to the Site Exclusion Tool that allows an unlimited number of domains to be filtered.
If such blacklists or "site exclusion list" services should become widely available, there would be an obvious negative impact on some publishers (which ultimately might be good for the credibility and future success of the AdSense network).
Of course, the whole question of exclusion lists could be rendered moot by Google's introduction of site targeting for CPC ads (at a premium price, of course).
Maybe, maybe if the blacklist was provided by Google themselves the risk would be less, but I wouldn't bet on it.
This idea just screams out for abuse and there is no shortage of people who would be willing to accommodate it for a few quick bucks in return.
I cannot imagine a situation where a "site exclusion list" (a PC term for a blacklist) couldn't or wouldn't be abused.
Abused by whom? Why would a legitimate, serious SEM firm want to protect its clients or blacklist subscribers from publishers who deliver valuable traffic? Your objection might have merit if we were talking about a open-source, Wikipedia-style, anyone-can-contribute-anything-until-caught blacklist, but we aren't talking about straw men here (or at least I'm not).
Also, whether a blacklist could be abused (theoretically or otherwise) isn't the point. The only things that matter in the real world are:
1) Whether a vendor might see this as a business opportunity.
2) Whether advertisers might see this as a valuable service.
3) What the effect of such a blacklist would be on publishers, and especially on publishers who deliver low-quality traffic to advertisers.
Will domain blacklists help to clean up the AdSense network?
Nope. One man's junk is another's treasure so what would be the exact criteria to be submitted to the list? It works somewhat with SPAM because there is a clear definition as to what constitutes SPAM but it is not clear what constitutes a MFA site.
I agree with the others who say a centralized repository would just bring on abuse even if that was not the intention.
Most people do seem to want to target the MFA sites so it's just as easy to set up your own scripts to suit your own needs. Finding MFA sites with a PHP script takes just a few lines of code and maybe 30 minutes for a noob to write.
JAG
What's wrong with using the same criteria that advertisers are already using to populate their domain-exclusion lists?
If it is the same for everyone then fine. But it won't be though. The folks I've dealt with all have different ideas as to what to filter and why. Having all those different views compiled into one list will surely cause problems. I think it best to just spend the few minutes to write your own custom exclusion tool based on your own criteria.
JAG
I also think that site-targeted CPC ads are a possibility. The fact that site-targeted CPM rates appear to be climbing sharply (at least in one sector that I'm familiar with) tells me that some advertisers are willing to pay a premium for certain kinds of traffic
If someone makes a CJ blacklist, you can choose to use it if you agree with them on the subject of affiliates.
I guess you could think of it as an RSS feed reader. You subscribe to the lists you want, and that you trust, and ignore those that you don't like.
While there might be room in the market for a large commercial or collaborative venture, these will almost certainly lead to all sorts of issues. Not the least of which is how it applies to your particular market. Does a advertiser selling Hummel figurines really need to have an exclusion list that includes MFAs designed for the tourist trade in Belize?
Does a advertiser selling Hummel figurines really need to have an exclusion list that includes MFAs designed for the tourist trade in Belize?
Probably not, but since Google allows an unlimited number of domains on the exclusion list, what's the harm?
