Adsense Referrals Beta Feels Like an Alpha

Critique of the AdSense PPA program

[Leva]

Okay, this program has some issues. Google really needs to work the bugs out.

(1) I've selected one program for a prime location on my index page and referral ads for entirely different programs have shown. Totally unrelated ads. This is the most expensive "real estate" on my site and I am very careful about what appears there; the right ad there can do very, very well. One of those programs appearing -- that I did not select -- is banned from my site in adsense contextual ads and I do NOT want it appearing. Particularly not in the best slot on my site! It doesn't convert, it's considered a company for amateurs in my industry, and I do NOT want to look like I'm promoting it. And yet, even though I selected something entirely different and unrelated, I get ads for THAT company.

(2) Googlepack does nicely on my front page. I tried to go back to googlepack and the ads are now ugly -- pixelated with "ads by google" appearing in a box at the bottom. Plus I cannot seem to select the message I want to appear, which is any banner mentioning browsing, which will convert ten times better with my traffic -- it keeps displaying referral banners with messages about photo (picasa) on them. These. Do. Not. Convert. on my site. I am now LOSING money. I cannot go back; I've tried.

(3) On multiple occasions I've selected graphic banners & had text ads appear on my site. One single text ad in the middle of a 250X300 box rather than a nice loud animated ad. It's annoying, a waste of space, it looks awful (because it doesn't match the site's colors), and it's in flash -- why would you do a text ad in flash? I've yanked these ads off and gone back to adsense contextual ads, but grr!

(4) The interface to select ads is really awkward, really slow, and has bugs.

I rarely complain about Google because they've been pretty good to me over the years, but how hard is it to make the right ad appear in the right place? And NOT show programs I haven't selected?

Leva

[trinorthlighting]

Wow, we noticed that the advertisers doubled. We are noticing some click throughs on our site.

[Content_ed]

We just gave up on Referrals for the time being. Somehow, untargetted ads are appearing! I thought that selecting advertisers from a list would at least ensure that the ads wouldn't make the site look spammy. Apparently, the keywords are being used to bring in contextually selected PPA ads, and the advertiser base is so limited that the targetting can go even wonkier than contextual sometimes gets.

[Content_ed]

I'll be darned if I didn't put the referals right back up on our best widget selling pages. Happened to take a look at our widget sales during the five or six days we were trying PPA in a big way, and our widget sell-through was double the norm!

Yes, it may be a statistical blip, but it also might be that our web pages don't look "commercial" enough to get some visitors in the buying mood, and those extra ads may have done the trick! Worth trying another trial.