Would you block an advertiser like this?

This ad leads to a giant generic site

[beggers]

One again, this is a totally fictional example:

Let's say that you have a site about "clothes pins" and AdSense delivers an add that essentially says "we carry lots of clothes pins" but when you check the link it turns out it's just some huge company like a Target or K-Mart. Yes, they have clothes pins but also a billion other items. And the ad link just goes to their home page (no mention of clothes pins -- you have to search their catalog to find them).

A big company could buy thousands of matching keywords. True, you get paid for the click-through, but I think this is very misleading to the user. I decided to block the company. What are your thoughts?

[chiyo]

I thought Adwords specifies that an ad has to go to a page that is "relevant" to the ad? I know this can be very subjective but if an ad like that is approved leading to a very general page where the only way you can find out more info about <keyword> is to browse of search, then something is wrong in the state of Adwords, and they approving far too general landing pages. In the end that's no good for Adwords, - even before considering problems with Adsense...

If i was a blocking type i would probably block them, but I gave up blocking systematically to anye xtent 6 weeks ago, realising that in the end you can never catch even 10% of them...

[PolishGuy]

A big company could buy thousands of matching keywords. True, you get paid for the click-through, but I think this is very misleading to the user. I decided to block the company. What are your thoughts?

Don't block them, pal.

It is up to google to ensure that Advertiser will provide web page about "submarines" on the web site about submarines, and not that the banner about submarines will lead to the page which sells mostly hand guns, machine guns and tanks... if Google's targetting will be bad then it will suffer , because users will not click on such misleading banners again. Just concentrate on content creation and don't block anything - that's my motto, said Otto.

[bether2]

I block ads like this because I feel a responsibility to my visitors to not mislead them - either in my content or in the ads I display on my site.

Just my take on it.

Beth

[John_Shaw]

If Big Box Stores Inc. wants to pay for clicks to their site for clothes pins, that's their decision. Unless the site's lack of relevancy is offensive (absolutely off the subject) or the text in the message is misleading, I would leave them alone. If the advertiser is paying for hits that will not result in sales, its due to his own choice of keywords.

I did block one when an acronym used in my industry happened to be the same as one used in an unrelated field, and attracted a non-relevent ad. (not Google's or the advertiser's fault).