AdSense Targetting Issues

[Atomic]

For the last day or so I've noticed that ad targeting isn't as good as it was. I also noticed some Christmas-related ads suddenly popping up on several sites. At first I didn't think anything of it. However, once it was clear that it's more than one ad or advertiser I have to wonder if something's gone wrong with AdSense or if it's been hacked or worse. Has anyone else noticed ads that don't make sense? It's a month after the holidays. Why would these ads start showing up all of a sudden?

[europeforvisitors]

That does sound weird, but how do you know somebody isn't advertising for next Christmas? :-)

For what it's worth, I just got an e-mail from Netflix telling me about a movie that was about to shipped. The e-mail arrived several days after I'd watched the movie and sent it back. Maybe AdSense and Netflix are living in the same parallel universe.

[Atomic]

That does sound weird, but how do you know somebody isn't advertising for next Christmas? :-)

That thought did occur to me. But wouldn't the ad look something like this:

Only 334 Shopping Days
Until Next Christmas
Click here for details!

[freelistfool]

I've notice the same thing. The ads aren't quite as targeted and as a result my click through rate has plummeted.

[Atomic]

My clickthrough rate is pretty good but eCPM is down a good amount and the ads are .info sites and/or kind of scammy. But other things seem to be going on so I am hopeful things will improve.

[andrewshim]

would explain why my numbers are 6 feet underground today.

[Atomic]

Wow, I just looked and see more clicks than I have EVER had, with no income. I mean a crazy number of clicks. Something just ain't right in AdSenseLand.

[icedowl]

Wow, I just looked and see more clicks than I have EVER had, with no income. I mean a crazy number of clicks. Something just ain't right in AdSenseLand.

I had that happen yesterday 1/24. The extras only appeared on the overview and monthly reports. They were nowhere to be found on reports by channels or by URLs. High Strangeness.

[Hobbs]

The bad news is that Google is unable to keep up with the growth of publisher inventory with enough new advertisers. What you're seeing is very normal.
(Proof and point the scale down of AdSense Referrals)
Also expect stricter measures in the future in the acceptance if new publishers.

The good news is that you're not alone.

One more thing, sometimes the contextual algo forgets what your pages are about, which corrects itself over time as the bot gobbles up more of your pages.

[Atomic]

The bad news is that Google is unable to keep up with the growth of publisher inventory with enough new advertisers. What you're seeing is very normal.

I don't know about all that. I do think that today there's something a little strange going on with my stats. Beyond that there isn't much to report.

I have faith targeting will return to normal. Issues with targeting are nothing new to me. I just thought that they were missing more targeting juice than when this has happened in the past.

[edited by: Atomic at 7:31 am (utc) on Jan. 26, 2008]

[andrewshim]

Wow, I just looked and see more clicks than I have EVER had, with no income. I mean a crazy number of clicks.

so that's where my clicks went.

[Atomic]

They added no earnings at all. You're welcome to them.

[OutdoorWebcams]

AdSense is down for about 40 minutes now - maybe they are trying to fix this strangeness right now.

[HuskyPup]

Wow, I just looked and see more clicks than I have EVER had, with no income. I mean a crazy number of clicks.

I posted the same two days ago, a 65% increase, and no one else commented however Friday's clicks have come in with a 159% increase with absolutely nothing showing anywhere.

It started rising Friday morning and I wrote to the support team but have heard nothing yet and with it being a weekend...err...will I ever?

Otherwise earnings etc look completely 2008 new "normal".

[Atomic]

My earnings are far from normal. With nearly a week to go in January I am in record territory for monthly earnings. It certainly helps me ignore some reporting glitches.

[Atomic]

There's one other thing I just noticed although it's not really all that strange. If you click the "Advertisiing ProgramsL link on Google's main page the copyright still shows 2007. Their other pages show 2008. What's up with that?

[HuskyPup]

Today's clicks are going berserk again!

Hundreds of clicks, up 152% so far, a supposed 27% CTR and USD 2.37 in earnings!

Huh...?

Something is seriously broken.

[HuskyPup]

Just remembered...there was a maintenance last weekend was there not?

Nuff said:-)

[andrewshim]

Hundreds of clicks, up 152% so far, a supposed 27% CTR and USD 2.37 in earnings!

I was wondering if in my case it was because I modified my htaccess file (a week ago) to block anyone with the FunWebProducts user agent. However, yesterday's earnings was probably the worst ever - less than x (*edited) clicks for $2.89?

* edited - think it's against TOS to give specifics.

[HuskyPup]

I've just received a response from the AdSense team verifying supposed invalid clicks.

That's one heck of a lot of clicking someone/thing has done on at least 3 different days.

Guess what? I don't buy it!

There have been too many anomalies recently to dismiss it this easily and today, Monday, I can see 143% more clicks that have not been allocated!

[Erku]

I just started another topic about a similar issue, but I did not see this one. For that my apology, but the ad targeting is very bad today we keep seeing these UFO related ads.

[Atomic]

Out of curiosity I started looking at the ads on major news sites this morning and noticed that their ads are also poorly targeted. Poorly targeted isn't strong enough a word. They're showing ads for miracle weight loss drugs, Forex investments and home typing job opportunities. In other words, there is an infestation of scammy ads unrelated to the content on the pages. This is on some of the world's biggest news sites which tells me that something is seriously messed up. Go take a look for yourself!

[Hobbs]

"world's biggest news sites" should have general nonspecific targeting anyway.

[Atomic]

Even on an older news items that had previously shown well targeted ads? I don't see why they should be any different.

[MikeNoLastName]

We saw the same thing, I think there was just a clickthru reporting delay. Our CTR trends VERY slowly and is nearly always within 1% daily. On Jan 25 our CTR was down around mid-day by over 15% resulting in a corresponding 15% lower CPM. Then it entirely caught up on Jan 26 with a 15% higher than normal CTR and correspondingly higher CPM. Normal ever since. Our ads have been unusually off-center targeted as well, but it seems G tries out "fresh-ads" every now and then just to test what sticks. Maybe they changed the match-up algo to be a little broader due to lagging advertisers.

[tim222]

AdSense shows some pretty weird ads once in awhile. This morning I saw an ad for a podiatrist advertising treatment for ingrown toenails. YUCK! That has nothing at all to do with my content. While the podiatrist is certainly not a my competitor, I added their URL to the Competitive Ad Filter right away!

[iwannano1]

One of my site had the same problem - the site was about red widgets and I was getting ads about home loans, day loans and what not.. after a few email exchange I was pointed out to the following url and I was also suggested to fix my valid xhtml ( doh ... )

<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
 Your connect 
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

[google.com...]

As suggested by their help pages it took them at least 2-3 weeks to fix the issue, now I get correct ads.

Hope this helps!