Minimum ad CPC or Pre-approval for all ads

Which would you prefer?

[farmboy]

Suppose Google gave you the choice of 2 options.

1. You can establish a minimum ad CPC for your account or your sites individually.

OR

2. You can see all ads intended for your sites individually (CPC or otherwise) and accept or reject before the ads are shown on those sites. You can only see the ads and the destination page but not the amount the advertiser has bid for the ads.

Which would you choose and why?

-------------------

I'd go for number 2 because I'd choose only appropriate ads for my visitors. I believe I can make more money with appropriate ads, even if they are lower paying ads, than with higher paying ads that are less or not at all appropriate.

FarmBoy

[signor_john]

I'm not interested in micromanaging AdSense, but I think (2) is the better of the two proposals because it's about ad standards.

[zett]

#1, because price has always been a very good filter (see my NYT example in that other thread). A price tag actively limits the sell-out of certain (limited) goods. Ad real estate on web sites is limited, regardless of what people think.

(Without price tags, we would all drive Ferrari's, we would all place full-page ads in the NYT, we would all live in villas, we would all have 100" flat screens. This is not how the real world works, unfortunately.)

I'd set the minimum CPC initially to 35% of my current long-term average CPC and see what happens. This would block out the worst offenders while still allowing the medium bids in. If absolute revenue goes down significantly, I'd slowly reduce minimum CPC. If absolute revenue remains the same, I'd consider my goal as reached (as the eCPM would certainly go up). If total revenue increases, even better!

[purplecape]

Neither one. My site gets a fairly high average CPC, from what I've gathered, but my objection to # 1 is that I expect that my earnings would go down, no matter what the setting was, due to variations in different geographic areas. I'd lose some money in low-CPC markets and gain nothing in the high-CPC markets.

Also don't want #2. I don't have time. I like AdSense because I DON'T want to take time to deal with ads. If this had a setting that approved ads automatically until such time as I vetoed them, fine, but if I had to approve them before they appeared I'd lose money, because there would be times I would be too busy to do it.

[StoutFiles]

Neither, I wouldn't want to have to play with the system to keep succeeding. Fine the way it is.

[netmeg]

Neither. I'm an advertiser even more than I'm a publisher. Do not want.

[ken_b]

Neither.

Managing this thing is Googles job.

[jimbeetle]

2. You can see all ads intended for your sites individually (CPC or otherwise) and accept or reject before the ads are shown on those sites.

As which ads are to run are determined when a page is served, exactly how is this to work?

Managing this thing is Googles job.

Yeah, that's why many of us choose to use it.

[farmboy]

Interesting responses so far.

Several threads full of requests for more control over which ads are shown, more sophisticated and larger filters, establishing minimum CPC amounts, etc.

Now a thread which seems to say, "I don't want to spend time managing features Google, you steer this ship."

I wonder what ASA is to make of this?

FarmBoy

[zett]

Again, this would be an option. If publishers do not believe that this tool might help them, they just do not use the minimum CPC feature. If they don't want to review the ads or use more sophisticated filters, they don't have to. This whole discussion is about adding options to Adsense so that individual webmasters can finetune Adsense on their pages.

[jimbeetle]

Again, this would be an option.

Yeah, and so far five folks have said they don't need the options. I think that's why farmboy started this thread, to get people's reaction.

What I haven't seen is anybody addressing my question on how option 2 is supposed to work, especially publishers reviewing CPC ads.

[purplecape]

Exactly. I'm much rather Google put their energy into developing other options.

Just my opinion, based on just my experience, of course.

[AdSenseAdvisor]

Ideally, we would want each publisher to have the level of control he or she wants over ads. Some publishers might want to spend a bunch of time hand-picking, others would have a "set it and forget it" attitude.

But creating features takes time and resources. While we are definitely committing resources to better filtering, it seems like a lot of publishers on this thread would rather see additional resources put toward other things.

In other words, I will pass along the feedback that these options are appealing to some publishers, but I would really challenge you all to think about how you would prioritize your feature requests given that the AdSense team doesn't have infinite bandwidth.

I'll make you a deal: if you all, the members of the AdSense WebmasterWorld forum, can agree on your top 5 asks in order of priority, I will personally email the Director of Product Management for all AdSense products with your list.

This is a one-time offer, though. Consider it a goodwill gesture from your new ASA. :)

ASA

[himalayaswater]

#1 should be custom fonts, size and css for each and every publisher.

This feature is currently limited to so called premium users and domain parking service (without any content). Why not provide a good ad customization to real content creators?

[Bddmed]

Thanks for the offer ASA. Speaking from experience it's not possible at all to come up with a priority list we all would vouch for at all in an open forum. So actually this is no offer at all IMHO.

Furthermore I'd suggest to create a new thread where this can be discussed. Otherwise half the WebmasterWorld members won't even notice because this is within another topic.

[edited by: Bddmed at 10:44 pm (utc) on Nov. 19, 2008]

[sailorjwd]

I vote for min CPC.

Reasons:

1) I don't have time to micro manage Adsense.

2) I have a VERY wide range of CPCs on my site and would prefer to not lose a visitor for pennies when I could lose them for 300 times more.

[FattyB]

Min CPC, some sort of control over ad categories, don't have time to micro-manage individual ads.

[jetteroheller]

I have written around 3000 pages in German and 2500 in English

There are many different themes.

All the pages are found in all the years by nearly 1 million different search terms.

Add to this also the geo targeting feature of AdWords.

I assume there are more than 10.000 different ads shown on my sites.

It's simple impossible to pre approval. Pre approval would be a full time job or more.

And there is the first time problem.

There is a local professional who just books and AdWords campaign related to his business 25km around his small shop.

Than it happens the first time, that a person 10km away from his shop visits a web page from me related to his business.

Pre approval is so something impossible

[dibbern2]

if you all, the members of the AdSense WebmasterWorld forum, can agree

A very nice offer, but does anyone think its really possible? Thanks still the same, ASA.

As for Farmboy's choices, put me in "not interested, don't want to micromanage" column.

[ArtistMike]

CPC on each CHANNEL. It would be an option to the publishers, not a requirement that they use such an option.

[farmboy]

As which ads are to run are determined when a page is served, exactly how is this to work?

Maybe similar to the Ad Review feature that now exists - except it would apply to contextual and placement targeted ads.

The publisher would pre-approve an inventory of ads acceptable for his/her site. When the page is served, the ads would be drawn from that inventory. You wouldn't know exactly which ads would be served on each page, but you would know that any ads that appeared there are acceptable to you because you already approved them.

FarmBoy

[farmboy]

I'll make you a deal: if you all, the members of the AdSense WebmasterWorld forum, can agree on your top 5 asks in order of priority, I will personally email the Director of Product Management for all AdSense products with your list.

Wow. It's great we have an ASA who seems to be getting involved.

But at the risk of sounding like I'm looking the gift horse in the mouth, I have to ask if this means this Director isn't aware of regularly discussed hot topics here? What happened to all those prior feature requests threads started by a previous ASA - did they end up in the garbage?

FarmBoy

[nrep]

I think setting a minimum CPC for all ads is a terrible idea in the long run for most people, I really do. Of course I'd like to earn more in adsense, but the best way to do this is to have a bidding process for advertisers. I can't see a fairer way than that.

If people want to have minimum eCPM filtering then that makes sense. Just use ad manager and redirect to another ad network (or blank ads as someone in another thread wanted).

If we did get minimum CPC, would it be global? CPCs will differ depending on which country a visitor is from, and I doubt we will be micromanaging things on this sort of level.

I'd be amazed if we do get minimum CPC settings as I can see this working against both publishers and advertisers (minimum eCPM is fair and is already available though).

[ArtistMike]

If it is a "terrible" idea for "most people", then "most people" will be able to opt out of it, or never turn it on, or never use it. The ones that do wish to use it can plug in some keyword filters in their channels and the option will turn on, and you will not be bothered.

[edited by: ArtistMike at 7:42 pm (utc) on Nov. 20, 2008]

[true_INFP]

I'll make you a deal: if you all, the members of the AdSense WebmasterWorld forum, can agree on your top 5 asks in order of priority, I will personally email the Director of Product Management for all AdSense products with your list.

I'm beginning to see some pattern at:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[signor_john]

I think setting a minimum CPC for all ads is a terrible idea in the long run for most people, I really do.

Not to worry. It's unlikely to happen, because it flies in the face of two core AdSense concepts: automation and scalability. Why would Google want to let Joe Publisher override algorithms that were designed with specific parameters and objectives in mind?

[dauction]

Ditto ..

#1 should be custom fonts, size and css for each and every publisher.
This feature is currently limited to so called premium users and domain parking service (without any content). Why not provide a good ad customization to real content creators?

Also a tool that allows Publishers to "Invite" advertisers to bid for placement on the publishers site..

[Marcia]

The whole beauty of Adsense is that it's "set it and forget it." Compared to dealing with affiliate issues, it's a cakewalk.

I'd dearly love to see better filtering of ads on Google's end, to eliminate junk (I don't care if my IQ is higher than Joe Biden's, don't have yellow teeth and don't have any belly fat.)

What would work MUCH better for me is to be able to filter out by keywords on sites to eliminate irrelevant, very specific ads that don't apply at all.

As an example (not a real one) - if a site is about womens shoes, how many visitors would be looking for high-heeled snowshoes or custom emboidered orthopedic shoes? If those pay more they'll show, no one will click or care - and nobody wins.

[dauction]

Interesting you should mention this Marcia

I'd dearly love to see better filtering of ads on Google's end, to eliminate junk (I don't care if my IQ is higher than Joe Biden's, don't have yellow teeth and don't have any belly fat.)

I know I am smarter than Biden, I'm always afraid my teeth are too yellow and I am self conscious about this mid life desk job belly fat ..

My resistance is low and I am afraid that one day I'd discover that Biden really is smarter than me as I actually click that ad.. ;)