Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Who decides in what category an ad belongs - is it the advertiser or Google?
FarmBoy
[edited by: martinibuster at 5:19 pm (utc) on April 23, 2009]
[edit reason] Added URL to blog [/edit]
You can stop 'top five*your_niche* sites' with any form of category advertising
Anyone can subscribe:
From the latest [adsense.blogspot.com] [in part]
Category filtering will give publishers the ability to block ads that fall into specific categories such as dating, religion, and politics. Regardless of how ads are targeted, they'll be filtered if they're within one of the selected categories. We'll also show the percentage of recent revenue that ads in each category generate, so publishers can predict how filtering selections will impact their revenue.We'll be launching category filtering as a beta to a small group of publishers to collect initial feedback about the feature. Here's a preview of what the feature currently looks like, but please keep in mind that the layout and categories may change based on feedback from beta test participants.
The accompanying graphic shows "AdSense Setup/Ad Review Center" with 11 excluded categories of which apparently you can select up to five. Not a very clear picture!
[edited by: martinibuster at 5:20 pm (utc) on April 23, 2009]
[edit reason] Fixed URL to Blog. [/edit]
both the questioner and the answerer were not too clear, but this is what i gathered from the exchange.
my worry is that the unseemly advertisers will just categorize their stuff in innocuous categories (unless google has some plan to penalize those that miscategorize)
Like thats going to work....
But the criteria ARE working at present, and this is without any adowrds notifications that I have heard of.
my worry is that the unseemly advertisers will just categorize their stuff in innocuous categories
Yep. That's exactly why I started this thread.
FarmBoy
Hopefully ASA will read this thread and pass this information on to the proper people.
FarmBoy
...i heard the answer is that the _advertiser_ sets the category
Well that would render this feature useless
my worry is that the unseemly advertisers will just categorize their stuff in innocuous categories
That certainly seemed like what some (many?) advertisers did with the Referral (CPA) program. No reason to think the sleazeball advertisers will do any different now if it's up to them.
I'd like to filter all the categories shown in the screen shot.
As an advertiser in a whole bunch of niches, I haven't seen any new fields or notices for me to note what categories my sites fall into. I would think even for a beta to work, they'd have to have some information in the system already - so I wouldn't be sure yet that it's coming from the advertisers.
No reason to think the sleazeball advertisers will do any different now if it's up to them.
and the way i heard the answer is that the _advertiser_ sets the category.
That gets even more interesting when you consider that Google is going to take ads from categories for the Interest Based Ads.
FarmBoy
It's like letting Bankers and CEO's decide on govt regulatory policy. Ooop's,,,somone's going to say that this what has already happened;-)
No, I'm not going to say that, I'm going to come to the defense of Google and the advertisers. :)
Politicians and bureaucrats told banks and financial institutions how to run certain parts of their business and politicians accepted personal favorable financial deals and campaign contributions from those financials/banks.
Then, when it fell apart, politicians successfully convinced about half the American public that they (politicians) were just innocent bystanders who had nothing to do with it, but that they were going to implement regulations to "fix" the problem and please remember me and vote for me again next time.
I don't think it's fair to compare advertisers to that level of sleaze.
FarmBoy
[edited by: farmboy at 2:40 pm (utc) on April 25, 2009]
For me personally, unless this was available by site, the usefulness would be limited.
I thought the same thing as I was reading this thread. I have the same problem with ad blocking. I have sites where dating ads would be great and other sites where they would be inappropriate.
Keyword exclusion by page is what I want.
Here's what happens to me: a certain band released a single that, when misspelt, is a little like one of my domain names. So I can get Adsense ads showing up about this band, when the site's topic is completely unrelated. Unfortunately the domain name isn't something you can slap a weight=ignore block around. Category filtering won't address this issue.
This shotgun approach simply doesn't work because disabling religion as an example would also disable religious jewelry which would be appropriate for a jewelry site whereas all over religious material might be unwanted.
Just give us keyword filtering and quit dancing around the problem.
Well yesterday I was seeing dating site graphics [flash?] ads on a page of mine I was checking. These ads had nothing whatsoever to do with the page topic.
When I right clicked the ad and put it into a text file guess what? Two things stood out.
a) The destination page had nothing to do with the ad, it wasn't even a dating site. Something about how to make millions on the internet.
b) Keyword used? My page title! That was something nobody on the planet using AdWords would enter for keywords except the manufacturer of that specific product.
Highly specialised esoteric terms used in electronics. How could I filter out those keywords?
I put the domain name into my filter, waited awhile and reloaded the page. Same ad, right click again and the only difference this time was a whole new destination URL! Maybe they have thousand of different URL's?
I didn't bother pursuing it any further because I am utterly convinced the AdWords programme is so full of holes that no matter what tools we have, we'll never beat these people who can apparently so easily game the system.
I thought of doing screen shots, saving the text file and complaining to AdSense.
Complain to whom, where and how? Then even if I could, with what result?
We'll be launching category filtering as a beta to a small group of publishers
What I would really like to see is for Google to let us set our site for only ads appropriate for children. AdSense adviser any chance of that? It couldn't be by the category that advertisers give but a filter for key words and phrases.
Who decides in what category an ad belongs - is it the advertiser or Google?
Google’s adserving technology determines the category to which an ad belongs.
someone asked this question at the google panel at adspace today, and the way i heard the answer is that the _advertiser_ sets the category.
I’m sorry if this was unclear. The way Google contextually targets ads to your page is not just by identifying keywords in the ads and on your page, but by extracting themes and concepts from the ad creative and the advertiser's landing page. (The backend technology is pretty mind-blowing, IMHO.) We can use that information to group ads into larger categories like the ones we’re using for category filtering.
Hopefully ASA will read this thread and pass this information on to the proper people.
I’m happy to pass this feedback (as well as your requests for keyword and other types of filtering) along to the right people.
ASA
For me personally, unless this was available by site, the usefulness would be limited. For example, on my site 1 I may welcome ads about gardening but not want them to appear on site 2.
If you look at the image, there is a "Select Client-ID" dropdown. I hope this is a new feature that allows us to set up sub-IDs to help handle this problem.
The two categories I really wish were on there (other than weight loss) would be wrinkles and white teeth. Those three categories are almost all the ads I block.
I’m happy to pass this feedback (as well as your requests for keyword and other types of filtering) along to the right people.
Thanks ASA. I hope they will consider developing a child safe filter.
