Forum Moderators: martinibuster
So I started looking around at the root cause of this problem, which is often hard to spot when you have 100K+ pages, but it didn't take long to see something scary emerging, wickedly off topic graphic ads running amok, often utilizing multiple ad spaces at the same time.
What I found was a ton of credit card ads and other mainstream commercial crap that had absolutely nothing to do with my topic.
Graphic ads now disabled sitewide and CTR shot up instantly.
I've always allowed graphic ads because my niche is a graphical niche and many of the advertisers for my niche use appropriately targeted graphical ads.
Those on topic AdSense advertisers have now been needlessly punished thanks to DoubleCrap, er Click, and no longer are able to access my sizable visitor base unless they bypass AdSense.
Bad for the site, bad for the visitor, bad for my old AdSense graphics advertisers.
It's not my fault Google bought a dog so ugly that you can't get the kids to play with it even if you hang a candy necklace around it's neck. Shoving it down our throats sure doesn't make it taste any better.
Can we just opt-out of DoubleClick ads?
More about junk ads in this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]
More places to put junk ads in this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]
The handwriting is on the wall, what little quality that was left in the AdSense network has simply flown out the window.
Can we just opt-out of DoubleClick ads?
Doubleclick is used by 48% high volume and high money spending advertisers world wild.
Doubleclick reaches to most popular website on the net. Adsense ads only reaches to small publisher so payouts are low.
They purchased Doubleclick so that large website can use both image ad (double digit CMP ads) as well text ad.
I think those big web sites (1 million + unique) started to eat Google adwords inventory. Now, will get all sort of junk. It may get worst.
Just look at following presentation (look for slide # 15: why google acquired doubleclick?)
[slideshare.net...]
I disable graphics and do text only and it greatly helps my CTR.
I have a small niche for which there seem to be enough text ads that fit in and are appropriate, but I have never seen a graphic ad that I thought was related to my topic.
Display ads aren't always supposed to be related to a topic. In many cases, they're targeted demographically. That's why you'll see ads for super-expensive wristwatches, designer perfumes, luxury cars, etc. in upscale travel and food magazines, or ads for beer in sports magazines or on televised football and baseball games.
If the specific "graphic ads" that Google is serving are likely to annoy your audience, it makes sense to disable them, but don't opt out of graphic ads simply because they aren't the display-ad equivalent of contextual text ads.
So I believe Google has migrated Adsense to DoubleClick servers. I would assume Google Adsense's entire inventory is now served by Double Click.
So I'm not sure we can say the bad ads are DoubleClick ads. All the ads are Double Click ads!
Only Adsense images and a couple other javascripts are coming from the old:
[pagead2.googlesyndication.com...]
"GoogleSyndication" servers.
Only the new stuff that was way off target came from the DoubleClick servers.
Maybe it's because I still use the old AdSense code and not the stuff you maintain in the AdSense control panel.
I don't particularly like the click-through rate, but on the other hand, I think these advertisers are paying a minimum floor CPM to show the ads, which is nice. It's pennies CPM, but still..
If the specific "graphic ads" that Google is serving are likely to annoy your audience, it makes sense to disable them, but don't opt out of graphic ads simply because they aren't the display-ad equivalent of contextual text ads.
I have an ill defined demographic which is mostly male. So I get ads for things like cars or mail order brides. The reason I opt out of them is because they get me near zero click through, whereas the text ads do so much better.
I use Firefox and Firebug to see all the requests to various javascripts and then the invocations to "GET" the ad content.
Partial list of scripts invoked:
[pagead2.googlesyndication.com...]
[googleads.g.doubleclick.net...]
[googleads.g.doubleclick.net...]
Since Google controls the content of show_ads.js file Google can really change what happens whenever they want regardless of the "new" or "old" code we put into our webpages.
The "show_ads.js" script is causing the "test_domain" script to execute which appears to be just a way to check if the googleads.g.doubleclick.net domain is online. If it is online the Google script is fetching the ad content using the:
http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?
page invocation, just like it used to call the:
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads?
page to fetch the ad content.
If you click on the "show_ads.js" link above and search the code you will see the call to doubleclick built into the latest version of the show_ads.js script.
My initial tests would indicate this is an across the board change.
YES, first googlesyndication.com is called, but then all the work falls to doubleclick.
Perhaps there should be a new thread, or perhaps ASA could chime in and tell us what's going on technically?
I have an ill defined demographic which is mostly male. So I get ads for things like cars or mail order brides. The reason I opt out of them is because they get me near zero click through, whereas the text ads do so much better.
Aren't they placement-targeted CPM ads? That would be my guess. And if they're CPM ads, the clickthrough rate doesn't matter, because they're being bought by the impression instead of by the click.
Also, according to Google, placement-targeted CPM ads are displayed only when the AdSense software thinks they'll produce more revenue than the currently available CPC ads for that page.
(Disclosure statement: I've disabled "graphic ads" in my own AdSense control panel--not because I'm suspicious, but because I already have a separate source of display ads. I do get placement-targeted CPM text ads now and then, and I regard them as "filler ads" that come in handy when better-paying contextual ads aren't being served. They're usually revelant to my site's topic, probably because it's more practical for advertisers to buy relatively small quantities of targeted text ads than to go through the hassle of designing and placing "graphic ads" in small quantities on a handful of sites.)
I have another publisher similar to doubleclick now that is covering my site with annoying flash ads which I've had no success in blocking so far. I would turn off image ads, but in many tests image ads turned on yield a higher revenue for my site.
I don't think a broad ban of graphical ads is a solution for all.
Oh yes: I detest doubleclick tracking for many years (and don't actually allow javascript nor flash from them to run at all).
Regards...jmcc
Graphic ads now disabled sitewide and CTR shot up instantly.
Those on topic AdSense advertisers have now been needlessly punished thanks to DoubleCrap, er Click, and no longer are able to access my sizable visitor base unless they bypass AdSense. Bad for the site, bad for the visitor, bad for my old AdSense graphics advertisers.
You may have to contact them directly and explain why you had to disable their ads; then offer direct advertising.
Incidentally, one of the best kinds of advertising online is a hybrid of visual and text. Usually it's graphical or text, not both.
I don't use Adsense graphic ads myself and haven't for a long time for the exact reasons you left them. Many people always had the problems you just now started experiencing.
p/g
On December 22, MediaPost's Online Publishing Insider ran an article by Pam Horan titled "Flying Towards Quality When the Economy Is Grounded." The article stated:
there is good reason to believe that the economic downturn will cause marketers to seek a flight to accountability and quality. Trusted, professionally developed online media sites, offering premium audiences, quality content and a history of delivering results, have the potential to become even more valuable as marketing budgets come under pressure.
The article goes on to suggest that, in good times, advertisers are often willing to place bets on "the broad reach delivered by less trusted and less reliable environments," but they need to consider whether it's worth gambling on ad networks when they have fewer dollars to spend.
On the brighter side, CPC (contextual) ads shouldn't be affected by a "flight to quality" as long as the advertisers are seeing positive ROI.
I have the impression that since doubleclick and other third party advertisers appeared the relevance and quality of ads is worse and earnings are lower. In the same time there are also new bugs, especially in ad review center, that nobody wants to fix.
We didn't use adsense one year ago, but as I can understand, before it was a better service (with better eCPM)
