AdSense 2007 Holiday Wishlist

What would you love to see this year?

[AdSenseAdvisor]

I haven't noticed a thread about this yet, so I figured I'd start it myself:

In your ideal AdSense world, what would you like for the holidays this year?

We won't be able to implement all of your suggestions, but I'll make sure every idea gets back to the appropriate product teams.

Thanks!
-ASA

[potentialgeek]

Google Adsense Development Team 2008 To Do List

A) FILTERS

1. Fraud Filter (not Competitive Ad Filter) to block false and misleading ads. FTC is busy; we'll take this one.

2. Irrelevancy Filter to block advertisers who spam keywords related to your site which get awful CTR on your site because they are irrelevant.

3. General Filter to block any domain/account, based on any other issues, including, but not limited to: i) tld (e.g., .info); ii) domain age (e.g., less than one week); iii) keywords in ads (e.g., nude); and, iv) home page PR (e.g., less than 2).

Each new filter features:

a) Unlimited Target Domain Blocking (not 200--remember it's not a competitive ad filter--it's separate and distinct).

b) Unlimited Account Bans. Some abusers use many domain names to beat the 200 limit of the competitive ad filters.

B) STATISTICS

1. Average Earnings Per Click (EPC) for Each Channel. Advertisers are told how much they pay per click; publishers should know how much we earn per click.

2. Automated Revenue Updates by Email. Put the total earnings for the day in the subject line. Allow setting to once/hour to once/day. No .csv files, etc., just the subject line.

C) SMART PRICING

* Disclosure with Rating

"Your domain [example.com] has been Smart Priced. Your current Smart Pricing Level is [High/Medium/Low]."

You'd be surprised at the quality adjustments that are made when webmasters know they've been smartpriced.

D) BLACKLISTING

* Automated Weekly Disclosure

"Your domain [example.com] has been blocked by [x] advertisers this week."

You'd be surprised at the quality adjustments that are made when webmasters know they've been blacklisted.

p/g

[HBird]

1. Like most everyone else, I really, really want my previous CPM back. I have been very good all year (more quality content, more traffic, no naughty tactics) and don't think I deserve such a lump of coal.

2. If #1 should be impossible, I'd like to know why. I'd like more transparent communication and/or the reporting tools mentioned in the previous post.

3. I'd also like to see a list of the domains that are site-targeting my website.

[Content_ed]

Multiple accounts, or at least, the possibility of sub-accounts that don't share in SmartPricing. We have Adsense running on less than 20% of our overall page views because every time we tried adding Adsense to lower performing pages, the lower site eCPM led to lower quality ads and a quick decline in overall earnings.

We have different types of page designs and content on our site that are aimed at the best user experience, and which in some cases, simply don't work great with Adsense. Yet if an ad on those pages paid just a quarter of the eCPM of the ideal pages, without dragging the whole site down, we'd both (you and us) be earning twice as much.

Maybe the system isn't intended to work that way, maybe it's just us, but we've been experimenting off and on for three years, and the best solution we've come up with for overall earnings and visitor experience to is defend a high eCPM by limiting the use of Adsense.

Which reminds me. Assuming you aren't going to let us open a second Adsense account to use on the same site, how about a bigger competitive ad filter?

[vordmeister]

Wow potentialgeek - what a concise summary. Let's have Google target adsense at sites that mean well AND help sites improve AND help us get rid of the nasty sites.

If Google followed your advice I'd bet there would be calls for EVEN MORE smartpricing on this forum. :-))))

[sutrostyle]

Revert the algorithm changes made on Oct 20. We want out ecpm back.

[andrewshim]

Ability to add advertisers/advertisements to a Referrals 2.0 Favorites List so I don't have to keep going through the setup. I also don't like to see big holes in my pages when ads from these advertisers aren't available.

[europeforvisitors]

I'd like the option of defeating automatic logout from the Google AdSense Reports page. It's annoying to select a report for certain dates, channels, etc. and find that I've got to re-enter the information because the system has logged me out since my last visit. (It wouldn't be so bad if the report "self-refreshed" back to the main screen upon automatic logout instead of showing me the usual list of reporting options.)

[farmboy]

A new AdSense product - it would function the same as the current AdSense for Content but without the contextual component.

The only way an ad would appear on my site would be when (1) an advertiser specifically selected my site AND (2) I approved the advertiser. The advertiser would still pay by and I would still earn by PPC.

If the advertiser tried to be sneaky and change the destination site after approval, I could block the advertiser.

If this were available today, I'd probably switch all my sites over tonight. It would eliminate most of the need for a larger filter, screening out MFA's at the AdWords level, etc.

FarmBoy

[farmboy]

And my Christmas wish list if I put my Scrooge hat on?

Whenever a publisher added a site to the filter, the advertiser would receive a short automated message from Google: "An AdSense publisher has just blocked your ads"

If we can't have the tools to get rid of misleading ads, MFA's, etc., maybe this would demoralize them by constantly being reminded how publishers are rejecting what they have to offer.

Bah Humbug!

FarmBoy

[greatstart]

I would like to be able to choose a "fixed pricing scheme" rather than the current way it is now set. This would be better for some publishers that would count on a steady pay total per month, rather than the "roller coaster ride" payout.

[bts111]

More channels, less MFAs and I would like my Adsense earnings to grow every year... most publishers seem to be going backwards.

[shadeofgray]

detailed statistics

I want to see what ads are showed on my site: titles, URLs, impressions for each advertiser. Preview tool is not enough for me - it shows what CAN appear, not what really did. And I can't check every pages of my site to see myself.

[elsewhen]

1) ability for publishers to set a floor for cpc payout... for example, dont show any ads unless you can provide $.03 per click. it seems that such a feature would be mutually beneficial - we could replace poorly performing ad units with navigation that ushers users to pages that have better payouts.

2) more channels

[Rodney]

1. Better control over Adsense video units. For example, if we know of a particular video (i.e. how-to, informational, etc.), we should be able to add it exclusively if it is not currently listed in the Category / Provider list.

I second this one.

And the one about wildcards in the filter.

[netmeg]

I didn't read through this whole item yet, but I just ran into this - with the new Manage Ads feature, there doesn't appear to be a way to delete an ad or remove it from the selection of available ads. Probably don't want to remove it if it has any history, but there should be a way of setting it aside or retiring it somehow, so it doesn't show up in the available ads panel. I have a lot of sites with a lot of different types of ads, and I can see where having a bunch of old, retired ads, or just ads I changed my mind about could muck up the selection pretty quickly.

[poodwaddle]

I would like to see a system to report MFA sites and pages void of any content.

[MikeNoLastName]

1. A simple PPC column just to the right or left of the earnings column so I don't have to constantly download to a spreadsheet or manually calculate it.
2. A preview tool that actually WORKS (including with the premier user options) and always includes the ads which are currently on the page.
3. Like most everyone else said: being able to specify a minimum PPC we're willing to accept by page or preferably ad unit.
4. Filter particular ads - sometimes a particular advertiser is generally acceptable, but one particular ad of theirs might be objectionable. The "word filter" someone mentioned would probably work here if you could specify phrases.
5. Ability to force 4-ad units to always display 4 text ads (or empty spaces if not enough ads are available) instead of bouncing from 4 to 2 to 1 in different text sizes that make the page look like cr#$@!
6. Some way of determining which keywords ads are most often being matched upon on each page. i.e. what does Adsense actually think my page is about?
7. Allow disabling the timeout on the Adsense reports page! It has a use when remotely accessing, but when I'm in the office and get called into another room for a while, I don't want to have to start all over configuring reports.
8. Side-by-side report comparison windows so I can compare say each channel for the month of Nov 2006 to the same channels in Nov 2007. Overlayed graphical reports of the same info would be nice too.
9. 2006 earnings.

[IanCP]

I would like to see a system to report MFA sites and pages void of any content

You can and I do when I inadvertently come across them.

[e-mail]

Of course they don't seem to do anything about it. I've got one outrageous example I reported on 27th November. Still showing heaps of AdSense ads and when you scroll down past all the ads you find heaps of links to sites related to my niche.

I can't believe they would actually earn anything. No one would go to the site except by pure accident.

It has a PR = 0

[moTi]

- the realization that it's absurd to let text ads compete with image/video ads in one and the same auction for the best performance as it's comparing apples (pure textual information) to oranges (branding and entertainment)

therefore:

- for publishers the ability to manage (site targeted) image/video ads independently (review/pricing/communication)

- no supersized fonts on (site targeted) text ads. supersized fonts is branding and therefore requires a premium

in addition:

- transparent backgrounds

- a serious concept on how to handle the future surge of adblock users (fyi: 5% of my users have adsense blocked by now)

[edited by: moTi at 11:43 am (utc) on Dec. 11, 2007]

[Visit Thailand]

no supersized fonts on (site targeted) text ads. supersized fonts is branding and therefore requires a premium

I agree fully. I absolutely hate it when a site tagetted text ad takes up an entire ad space when there are normally two or even four ads there.

It looks really ugly.

I do not mind images at all, but I do hope GAS hears you and they stop this.

[mrSEman]

On the 12th day of xmas my true love gave to me...

12 unlimited channels
11 preview tool that shows all ads
10 wildcards in filtering
9 advertiser filtering
8 Maids a milkin! (niceeeee)
7 Stop words filtering
6 less MFAs
5 Golden Bars (bigger ecpm)
4 more disclosure
3 french toasts (im hungry)
2 more competitors (msn & yahoo)
and a beer with the Adsense Team!

[ArtistMike]

How about a desktop gadget that shows "todays earnings, clicks etc"
===================

I run a Mac, and there is a "Widget" that you can run, (and I do), that will log on and get your stats for you every time you call the widget. I have it running all the time and it updates ever hour.

Mike

[ArtistMike]

I want to decide how much my ad space is worth.

If you pay 1cent per click, you don't get on my site.

If you pay 5 cents a click you DO get on my site.

[Skeptic]

I want to see better targeting with Adsense Videos.

Example - I have a Travel site. I want to create an Adsense video player that targets "Wyoming." I search on the free side of YouTube - great, lots of videos about Wyoming, Yellowstone Park, etc.

I go thru the Adsense side to create my video player, insert "Wyoming" as the main keyword - only ONE VIDEO shows up! Some stupid political ad. How can I get those "Wyoming" videos I found on the free side of YouTube to show up in my Adsense player?

Is there a different inventory of Vids available between the Free side and the Adsense side of YouTube?

(I probably need to create separate Adsense video players to target each state and/or country in order to be relevant for my pages.)

[potentialgeek]

> How about a desktop gadget that shows "todays earnings, clicks etc."

Google won't offer one but I use one I found online and it's free (syssense). Saves so much time wasted checking, not to mention the boredom of it! I used another one before which cost about $29.95, but it's been discontinued.

p/g

[Scurramunga]

If you pay 5 cents a click you DO get on my site

Five cents?

[edited by: Scurramunga at 7:35 am (utc) on Dec. 12, 2007]

[ArtistMike]

5 cents as an example. Don't have a cow.

":^)

Mike

[naitsirhc26]

Potentialgeek, are you positive that SysSense program is safe? I mean, I just don't like how you have to enter in your password and username; would it be possible that this information would be sent to their website? Maybe I am just being paranoid, but just wondering.

Anyways, it's a good little program!

[malexandrou]

Bring back the eCPM I had before October 2007.

All was great this year until October and there has been a significant trend down that is unlike the usual fluctuations with AdSense. Traffic is up, CTR is steady, but my eCPM is way down.

And this eCPM drop preceded the November change in click area.

[mdurrant]

The best suggestion on this thread IMO is being able to set our own pricing. After about 2 years without touching Adwords I went in recently and was amazed at all of the options advertisers have and the royal treatment they get when compared to publishers. That's to be expected though.

I would very much like to see an option where we can set a minimum CPC and block all ads bidding under that - if there's no inventory for our site then Google would use a custom snippet of code we specify in our control panel (be it a blank 1x1 transparent gif or a different ad network's code snippet, it shouldn't matter). AdBrite offers this option to their publishers, and it's successful.

It pains me to see the once great AdSense program slowly falling behind the pack because the only changes they ever make to the publishing program are negative for us and good for their advertisers. Manage Ads tool you say? I'll take the convenience of the old code thank you.