Competitive Ad Filter

Are there any secondary targetting effects by the Competitive Ad Filter

[glitterball]

In an attempt to get Adsense to start displaying relevant Ads again, I've been adding more and more of the badly targeted Ad URLs to the Competitive Ad Filter.

Could I be a creating a negative feedback loop where Google uses the information in this list to determine the subject of my website?
i.e. Does Google believe that these sites are genuine competitors of mine and therefore I am making things worse?

[londrum]

i think that competitive ad filter is a complete waste of time now they've introduced interested-based ads.
what you're seeing might be totally different to what your users are seeing.
even if you've installed that plugin on your browser to stop google tracking your stuff, and are now getting non-interest based ads, the chances are that your visitors haven't, so they'll still be getting lots of interest-based stuff.
and it's obviously a waste of time adding interest-based ads to your filter, because they will be constantly changing from moment to moment.

[purplecape]

glitterball, londrum may be right and so your efforts are pointless, but I'm not convinced that interest-based ads are as prevalent or as destructive across the entire AdSense program as some assume.

To answer your question, I haven't seen anyone posting here over the past few years that adding stuff to the filter had that kind of effect. If it did, someone would have noticed, and said something. WebmasterWorld members are great believers in "If you see something, say something!"