Rooting out site targtetted ads

how do you do it

[Powdork]

After months of spiraling (down) epc and ctr, I added a large company to my competitive ad filter that had been site targeting my home page. The site in question is very related to sections of my site and I actually employ their affiliate banners and text links with some success. I assume they have targeted the entire site, but their creative is limited to leaderboards and those only appear on the home page. Since filtering them, all parameters have returned to and surpassed levels before these ads started appearing.
Now I'm starting to see revenue in channels without clicks again, but have not had luck finding all the site targetted ads to block.
Additionally, the several that I have found are video ads. How does one find the url to block without actually clicking the ad?

[Jon_King]

Use this Google tool to find the URLs:

[google.com...]

[Powdork]

Currently, the preview tool is only available for Windows versions of Internet Explorer version 6.x

edit-I tried my daughter's computer which still has 6.0. The ad on the page (a video for chevy) is not one of the ones listed by the preview tool. i think perhaps the tool only shows what Google would target, not site targeted ads.

[edited by: Powdork at 6:37 pm (utc) on June 20, 2007]

[celgins]

Are you referring specifically to Flash video ads? If so, you can easily locate the URL for the video in Firefox, but not in IE.

I had this problem over a month ago and asked Google about it. They confirmed that the URL wasn't visible in IE (via the Preview Tool, or IE's copy-shortcut feature), and that they would "look into it."

In Firefox, go to: Page Info > Media -- then locate the media data associated with the Flash video ad.

You will need to scroll to the end of the URL to find the domain name you wish to filter.

[timwestla]

This might help you. Do a Google search for "adsense sandbox" - my favorite is the one by Labnol.

[zett]

The Preview Tool also works with IE7 on Windows.

[Powdork]

Thanks celgins,
The flash ad used a call to action to go to chevy.com, but blocking that did nothing. Now i know it is chevrolet.com.

It would sure make it easier if we could opt out of the site targeting altogether.

[Jon_King]

>>The ad on the page (a video for chevy) is not one of the ones listed by the preview tool.

Did you try right-clicking in different parts of the content? I have found differences in the ads depending on the exact location of the right-click ... Not as overall page topical as I think some might suppose.

[celgins]

The flash ad used a call to action to go to chevy.com, but blocking that did nothing. Now i know it is chevrolet.com.

Cool. I also fought that same Chevy ad and another one from Universal Studios.

Did you try right-clicking in different parts of the content? I have found differences in the ads depending on the exact location of the right-click ... Not as overall page topical as I think some might suppose

Tried it several times, but it doesn't seem to work on Flash video ads since the links are embedded in Actionscript.

[netmeg]

It would sure make it easier if we could opt out of the site targeting altogether.

Why can't you? All you have to do is email support and tell them to turn it off.

[Powdork]

FYI, to remove this ad you need to add both chevy.com and chevrolet.com to your filter.