Political ads

[swa66]

As I write this, I'm looking at a flashy moving ad on my site promoting some sort of EU political thing (call to sign a petition in favor of whatever they want).
I guess it's due to there soon being EU elections.

Since when is this appropriate for a travel in the US related website?
(even if I live inside the EU ?) And even then, it's targeting the wrong person as I'm not a native speaker of the language used (nor is the site, nor am I living among the French speaking populations).

And even if it is behavioral matched advertising: I'm not interested in EU politics, so that too went wrong.

Unfortunately it doesn't have the report link so I can't even complain about it properly.

We really and urgently need far more control: both on language used in the ads, and both on content of the ads. Political messages, dating, #*$!, immaterial stuff being supposedly sold on ebay, MFAs, what more junk ads will we have to endure before somebody starts to act towards something we want?

One more drop in an already rather full bucket.

[tlspiegel]

I just checked my travel pages and the ads are extremely relevant to the subject matter. Sorry your experience sux. Of course, mine might sux later today, so nothing is guaranteed, eh?

[swa66]

Looked at the source code of the iframe: the "ad URL" is utterly different for the URL prominently displayed in the image. The one in the source code is hidden from the user with onFocus JavaScript as well.

So knowing what to block requires right clicking on an ad to get source code, feels really safe ...

The ad URL is one of the competitors of tinyurl, aiming at users of twitter, just great that Google allows those to start with ...

[fredw]

swa66: It was so bad before the last California election which included the vote about same-sex marriage that I had to remove Adsense from all my sites for a few days.

It's unfortunate that the only way to be sure you're filtering the correct url on any ad is to right-click and get the info. There should be an easier, safer way...

[Lame_Wolf]

There should be an easier, safer way.

There is... don't have image adverts. ;)

[swa66]

Problem with removing image ads is that it would also remove some of the most relevant ads I get. A publisher of travel books advertises that way on my travel site every so often. I notice it in revenue when they run it vs. when they don't.

[Lame_Wolf]

I hear what you are saying swa66, but i'd rather have text adverts than no adverts at all.

In the old code you had google_ad_type = "text_image";

What they should have done is ...
google_ad_type = "text_image_flash";

[fredw]

No, no, Lame_Wolf. You cannot reliably filter an Adsense ad, even a text ad, by looking at the url displayed in the ad. It is frequently different than the real destination url of the ad. You must right-click on the ad and examine its properties to find out an Adsense ad's real ad url.

[Lame_Wolf]

I know what you are saying fredw. I think we have our wires crossed. I do exactly what you do, but with flash adverts, it seems almost impossible to block certain ones.

What google should have done in the past is to separate flash adverts from being included with image adverts.

What google should do now is to ban *any* advertiser who redirects, masks or other devious ways of the hiding the true address.

[eeek]

You cannot reliably filter an Adsense ad, even a text ad, by looking at the url displayed in the ad.

Last time I look they said you could use either the display URL or the link URL in the filter entry.