Improved AdSense Filter - Block Advertisers Within 1 Hour

Plus Ability to Block Entire Categories of Ads

[martinibuster]

As part of Google's response to the Political Ad dustup [adsense.blogspot.com], Google has promised to give publishers more control over the ads shown on their sites, plus faster effectiveness of filtered sites. Instead of six to ten hours for the filter to take effect, they're promising blocked ads will disappear within an hour.

We've heard your feedback about how quickly filters take effect and the ability to block specific categories of ads... we're working towards filters in the future that will take effect in less than an hour. We'll also continue improving the Ad Review Center, giving you ways to block entire categories of ads in addition to individual ads. We are also working on ways for you to establish guidelines for the type of ads that will be acceptable to your users, so you can "set it and forget it," while feeling comfortable that users will have a good ad experience.

Is this something publishers will find useful?

[piatkow]

I agree with Zett on that, I am running sites for a couple of local voluntary organisations, I give my time and cover expenses from Adsense (barely!). I am accutely concious of the possibilities of offence if dating, gambling or political ads are displayed.

[DilipShaw]

Nobody is talking the disadvantages. Here are some:

1. Some freaks looking for “only high paying ads” may block so many categories that ultimately there may be no or few ads that would match the site content to show.

2. Another problem is, some sites fall in two/more categories. You might wonder which one to block? You might even end up blocking both.

For example: Online casino sites offering real money if you win.

Does it belong to 1) Sports (Online Games) or 2) Home Business (Make Money)

A home-business site owner may not want to show ads for online casinos. What option he has?

3. The internet is now so big that you cannot divide it into just 6-7 categories. Do we have something like this
Cat1 – SubCat11 - SubCat12 - SubCat13….
Cat2 – SubCat21 – SubCat22 – SubCat23…
(Eg…. Dmoz)

4. Who decides the category? Google or Publishers? Will there be a guideline?

5. Technical Question - Who decides the category – Software or People working at Google? Obviously the software and I am sure at run-time. This may lead to some good relevant ads NOT being shown.

6. There may be too many blocking <–> de-blocking of categories (especially after seeing dismal results after blocking.)

One thing is for sure – Google will be loser. But I am not very sure if publishers will be winners.

Dilip Shaw

[edited by: DilipShaw at 1:17 pm (utc) on Nov. 10, 2008]

[amznVibe]

Have they raised how many sites you can block yet?

[Shaddows]

DilipShaw, not sure about the categorisation arguement. My corporate firewall does a decent job of keeping the staff off of non-work related sites, blocked by category. Your example would fall under "Gambling" BTW, but for the sake of answering in principle, you get a tick by every category you straddle, and get blocked if any of those categories are disallowed

I would be very surprised if it went ahead with too much control. If you allow a mechanism to block all the low-value ads, allowing only the Ambulance Chaser and Give-me-Money-to-Solve-Your-Debt ads, well thats a bit rubbish for the advertisers. And probably will not attract clicks from you users now I think about it.

Large-scale granular ad-blocking gives TOO MUCH control to publishers, and as MB oberves, is counter-productive long-term. What you need is a pattern-matching filter, and a happy medium to block politics, religion, sex and the like.

[signor_john]

Defending Adsense is not very helpful in this discussion.

Please don't misrepresent my comment. How does pointing out the fact that AdSense is a poor match for some sites constitute "defending AdSense"?" That's a dishonest portrayal of what I said. Also, I wasn't responding to the original post; I was responding to a specific post in this thread.

It's nice that Google plans to introduce a faster-responding ad filter, but again, publishers who need to play Whack-a-Mole with ads they don't like (for whatever reason, including legitimate reasons) are subjecting themselves to a whole lot of unpaid or poorly-paid labor--and they're likely to find themselves on a wild-goose chase in the bargain.

[netmeg]

That's true, and generally I don't need to play whack-a-mole with any of my web properties. But occasionally a situation comes up that requires attention. This was one. If a particular set of ads is taking up three out of five spots in a single ad block, that's a problem. I went around to a number of related sites yesterday and found hundreds if not thousands of these ads on other sites as well. Most of these domains were created within a three or four day period end of Oct to beginning of November. They have different owners and are hosted on different ISPs, yet the sites look virtually identical, and there are some other coding/affiliate similarities that give them away. I've no doubt that eventually they'd be hit by the AdWords QS, but in the meantime, they are flooding out everything else. It's quite possible to do that for a week or two, make your money, and then disappear.

It does not mean that my sites or pages are a poor match for AdSense; it means that I happen to have a few pages in a niche that has been suddenly hit by this 'network'

I've been told by customers that their AdWords competitors in some cases have computers or networks devoted to churning out fake affiliate sites so they can effectively dominate all the available ad spots for a particular niche.

The opportunities to game the system are pretty much endless. And I reported it to AdWords, because I have contacts there and they tend to be more responsive (and it's also as much an AdWords issue as an AdSense one)

[signor_john]

The opportunities to game the system are pretty much endless. And I reported it to AdWords, because I have contacts there and they tend to be more responsive (and it's also as much an AdWords issue as an AdSense one)

Sounds like the right strategy to me: Use the competitive ad filter for the purpose that it was designed to serve, and let Google deal with the scam artists. That sure beats being an unpaid contract worker for Google.

BTW, any number of ad-industry experts have written about spending reductions in certain sectors (most notably automotive, financial services, and retail). At the same time, it's pretty obvious that the numbers of sites and pages on the Web are continuing to expand. If the number of AdSense impressions grows faster than the number of available clicks (especially better-paying clicks), it's inevitable that publishers who need to play Whack-a-Mole will spend more time whacking. A more responsive ad filter may make their whacking more efficient, but it won't keep the moles from reproducing faster than they can be whacked.

[farmboy]

I've been told by customers that their AdWords competitors in some cases have computers or networks devoted to churning out fake affiliate sites so they can effectively dominate all the available ad spots for a particular niche.

Are we talking about contextual ads?

FarmBoy

[netmeg]

Both.

[amznVibe]

Every once in a blue moon I try taking out all the blocked sites (except the crazy stuff like ebay.com and amazon.com) and see how it does. In the end it always does worse despite what Google claims.

[Sally Stitts]

martinibuster's original post addressed the SPEED of getting rid of unwanted ads, and the ability to block specific categories of ads.
Although the filter is referred to as the "Competitive Ad Filter", it has more uses than that.
1. Bar competition - but I don't think that anyone has 200 competitors
2. Bar low-quality ads - poor spelling and grammar - embarrassing to your site
3. Bar ads that the publisher finds offensive for other reasons
4. Bar the controversial low-paying ads that somehow get injected above higher-paying ads
5. Bar ads that are OFF TOPIC
I entered this thread because of #5, NOT #4 as has been suggested. The ads were on a different subject than the page. They paid fairly well, but the CTR suffered substantially, because the ads are off topic. And, as pointed out, the ads were all of the same ilk, "commandeering" the entire ad block.

I don't know why #4 is true, but my personal experience has substantiated that it does occur, just as others have reported. Removing certain ads can result in higher EPC. That is a fact. I have no idea why. Anybody? Only a conspiracy theory, or a broken ad selection algo can explain it.

Referring to the original post, YES! Getting rid of the long delay will be very useful in optimizing ad selection, ad earnings, and publisher control and satisfaction.
.

[edited by: Sally_Stitts at 8:38 pm (utc) on Nov. 13, 2008]

[snowfore]

This is good news. I particularly would like to get rid of the "Fight Belly Fat" ads which seem to be plagueing my sites.

I wonder if there is a list of all the various URLs that these high impact and unwanted ads point to that people like me can paste into the adsense ad filter?

[potentialgeek]

> There are advertisers tossing up hundreds (or thousands) of sites that are almost exactly the same...

Yeah, we've been asking for years to get Account Blocking. Advertisers can only get one account. Blocking the one account will block every ad and every site by that advertiser.

It's not impossible nor even difficult to set up the code to make this happen. It's an instant solution to a chronic problem. It will also make an honest woman out of advertisers faced with the threat of an instant ban by publishers.

While we're at it, besides the Advertiser Account Filter I also want a Fraud Filter. You put false or misleading ads on my site, you're terminated. Google can package the entire suite of filters as part of a new system called Site Reputation Management.

p/g

[farmboy]

This is good news. I particularly would like to get rid of the "Fight Belly Fat" ads which seem to be plagueing my sites.

You might want to read the entire thread. There may not be as much news as it appears from reading the title and sub-title of this thread.

FarmBoy

[farmboy]

1. Bar competition - but I don't think that anyone has 200 competitors

I think a number of people have 200 competitors. The 200 is per account. If someone with an AdSense account has X sites and Y competitors per site, it doesn't take long for X times Y to be larger than 200.

2. Bar low-quality ads - poor spelling and grammar - embarrassing to your site
3. Bar ads that the publisher finds offensive for other reasons
4. Bar the controversial low-paying ads that somehow get injected above higher-paying ads
5. Bar ads that are OFF TOPIC

All of the above require the publisher to spend a lot of time observing ads on pages with AdSense. If someone has a large site or a number of sites, this becomes a practical impossibility.

Then there is the issue of visitors not seeing the same ads as the publisher.

FarmBoy

[scot184]

I don't think people are wanting to block off-topic ads so much as outright spam results like MFA sites and the like. Perhaps cracking down on those advertisers instead of speeding up and expanding the filter would be advisable.

[piatkow]

I block grossly off topic ads, particularly if the subject could give offence to my more delicate visitors if I spot them but I don't go looking for them. If I spot an MFA I will block it but again I don't go looking for them.

I would like a topic based filter that simply says I don't want gambling, dating, lap dancing clubs or politics advertised on my site.

[fredw]

A topic based filter would be great, piatkow, but who would be responsible for assigning the topics to the ads? Google? It's already proven they don't have the resources to monitor every ad added to the system. The advertiser? They don't want their ads blocked, they won't assign their ads to categories that will be blocked the most. Based on the words in the ad content? Advertisers will just find new, unblocked words. A topic based filter just isn't practical.

[ArtistMike]

How about key word blocking or allowed key words on a channel?

If you don't want ads about: -dating, -club, -dancing, -gambling, -"get rich", -"easy money"

If you do want ads on a channel you put: +"logo design", +logos, +graphics, +clipart

Now you may say that someone could just plug in any high paying keywords and get those ads on that page or channel, I say to that: If the keywords are totally out of bounds for the allowed topics for the channel the algorithm will not show the totally out of bounds ads.

Also, if you only want ads that pay .10 per. click then you plug in the minimum price for any ad on that channel. If there are ads that meet all the requirements then the ads are shown. If there are no ads that meet the requirements then the ad block is blank or shrinks, or alternative ads are shown from some other system.

This is not difficult stuff here people. Come on.

[edited by: ArtistMike at 7:53 am (utc) on Nov. 19, 2008]

[ArtistMike]

A topic based filter would be great, piatkow, but who would be responsible for assigning the topics to the ads?
=====================================

All ads are assigned by the advertiser a set of keywords that pertain to that ad. That is what advertisers do on the ADWORDS side of the system. The work is already done by the advertiser. Each ad has a set of keywords that are hooked to that ad. All the software has to do is see if that ad and the keywords can be shown on someone's web page ... if the publisher does not want that type of ad, with those types of keywords, then the ad will not be shown.

[netmeg]

First of all, a lot of advertisers don't have a clue.

Second of all, some advertisers will happily game that system till the cows come home.

Third of all, you are probably not aware of how broad match does and doesn't work. Particularly for ambiguous words that have many meanings - for example "mold"

[ArtistMike]

Some advertisers "game the system" now. This gives the ability of publishers to stop some of that "gaming".