Forum Moderators: martinibuster
We think we can make online advertising even more relevant and useful by using additional information about the websites people visit. Today we are launching "interest-based" advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube. These ads will associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view. We may then use those interest categories to show you more relevant text and display ads.
and if you get a page in your stats with a low CTR, how are you supposed to know now whether its because of the content on the page, or the browsing habits of your visitors?
Competitive ad filters? They would appear to have lost all relevance.
It seems that while publishers keep masking for more control G keeps providing less.
I will have to consider carefully whether our main site will continue in the program at this point :(
<added>
OK, went and read the post. For now appears somewhat limited, but above still applies when/if it is rolled out across the system.
I think G is loosing the roots that made them what they are. I remember when reports were that the Cluetrain Manifesto hung in offices at the g-plex as a guide to doing business...
Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and...- Cluetrain Manifesto
By making ads more relevant, and improving the connection between advertisers and our users, we can create more value for everyone...- Googleblog
I don't think its there anymore...
[edited by: willybfriendly at 5:24 pm (utc) on Mar. 11, 2009]
Truste released a report that says
- Consumer discomfort with behavioral advertising declined year over year (from 57 percent in 2008 to 51 percent in 2009)
- Although consumers worry about protecting their private information online, they are growing more accustomed to behavioral targeting
- 63.9% prefer to be served targeted advertisements from brands they know and trust over irrelevant, intrusive advertisements.
- 72 percent of those surveyed said they found online advertising intrusive and annoying when the products and services being advertised were not relevant to their wants and needs.
I'm around to answer questions, but if you're looking for more information, you should first check out the resources we've put out to educate folks from all angles. In addition to the AdSense Blog post, there are posts on the Official Google Blog, the AdWords Blog, and the Google Public Policy Blog.
The Google-wide team working on this has put a lot of hard work into this launch, and I personally think it's great news for publishers, advertisers, and users.
ASA
The Google-wide team working on this has put a lot of hard work into this launch
but are they going to take priority over the targeted ones? not sure about that.
ASA, we don't want expanding ads and behavioral-targeted ads -- we want on-topic contextually relevant ads and better filtering to keep out the crap.
Ad serving algorithms should not go and change to this kind of advertising, but injected in very small portions (like 4%) into the current ad algorithms.
And, where ever this kind of advertising exists, users should always have the option of turning it off.
[edited by: Seb7 at 8:12 pm (utc) on Mar. 11, 2009]
This is the way the advertising world is going, people, and not just Google by a long shot. Get used to it.
the way i understand it is this: if your whole site is targetted around selling widgets, and they click on an ad about widgets which then produces a sale, then you're potentially looking at a higher ecpm. because your site has more value to the advertiser.
but if they are presented with an ad selling tomatos instead, then the chances of it actually producing a sale at the end is lower, because you haven't done all the pre-selling for it first.
And, where ever this kind of advertising exists, users should always have the option of turning it off.
They do: [networkadvertising.org...]
Adsense publishers should already know that, because it's supposed to be in your privacy policy.
Don't tinker with something that works...
Don't tinker with something that works...
What if tinkering with it makes you more money?
My adsense was working fine for a long time. Then I tried tinkering with it, and by changing placement and format was able to double my earnings. I sure wish I had started tinkering with it earlier!
I have mixed feelings about this. I expect it will make me more money, because my site doesn't monitize very well. My content isn't directly related to anything that makes a lot of money. For a site like that, this kind of advertising could perform very well.
On the other hand, this sort of technology is so deeply evil it's hard to contemplate it with equanimity. I try to soothe my conscience with the fact that visitors can opt out, but it still doesn't sit well to even be collecting this sort of data on people in the first place.
so I'm very open to it, the only thing I read was "more earnings for publishers" :)
This year we will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google's ad serving.
Choice - We have built a tool called Ads Preferences Manager, which lets you view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you.
Think this through guys, if ads are targeted to the user, then the ultimate conclusion will be the same ads whatever site you visit -can't think of anything more likely to create ad-blindness.
I'm guessing that I still need to make additions to my privacy policy in any case.
But this has been long in coming, just through mining search queries, G can know what interests user have. Add to that all sites that serve AdSense, all sites that use Analyser, the toolbar, Gmail, and BANG, you have tons of valuable surfing info to mine from.
As long as there is adequate level of control available to users, then I am OK with it. Today unfortunately, there isn't.
The Google Account should include a privacy level setting. Until then, we're threading on dangerous grounds.
But at least G is sharing with webmasters, not like telecom companies that try to hijack our ads. That's even worse. Soon they'll hijack our whole online behaviours to mine. They have access to ALL data (almost, except for encryption), way more than G will ever have.
[edited by: Hugene at 9:58 pm (utc) on Mar. 11, 2009]
I just opted out but
I want to enhance visitor experience -that is why the Adsense offering has been so strong.
Can you do that as publisher, or you did as a visitor, icedowl?
On the "My Account" tab in Adsense, toward the bottom, there is a section called Interest-based Ads Preference which allows you to opt out. Opting out also means that data collected from your site will not be used in determining interest categories.
