Interest based ads

Do they work for you?

[mixart]

Regarding this feature in your account setup on adsense...

Interest-based ads:Do not show ads based on user interest categories. Visitation information from my sites will not be used to help create interest categories.

Has anyone done testing and noticed whether this feature on or off has helped increase/decrease your CTR?

[Lame_Wolf]

There is no way you could test such a thing. Far too many variables.

[mixart]

Perhaps the only thing that can be tested is if users like it if you have the chance to communicate with your users. I know I have turned it on for a week and noticed (myself only) that all the ads are based on websites I have visited but not necessarily things I am interested in (like care insurance, banking, etc.).

I had then turned them off a week later and see more even spread of different types of ads. Statistically I didn't notice a difference in CTRs, etc.

Was just curious if anyone else had done similar tests.

[Lame_Wolf]

Perhaps the only thing that can be tested is if users like it if you have the chance to communicate with your users.

How can you do that without breaking Adsense TOS ?

[maximillianos]

We disabled them using whatever settings G provided... beyond that I'm not sure if they are still showing up on our site.

We do well with contextual, we don't want to creep folks out with ads from their browsing patterns.

[mixart]

How can you do that without breaking Adsense TOS ?

One idea perhaps... AFAIK it's not against any terms to communicate with your users and ask vague questions like "are you seeing more or less interesting ads than you were a week ago?". You're not asking them to interact with them in any way, not encouraging them to click, etc.

[Lame_Wolf]

AFAIK it's not against any terms to communicate with your users and ask vague questions like "are you seeing more or less interesting ads than you were a week ago?".

But by mentioning that you have adverts can be seen as bringing attention to them.