Taking Control In Adsense

[JoePublisher]

Taking Control In Adsense - the Publisher at the helm:

Options I have enabled to good success, your milage may vary (YMMV) ... oh, and this is in the new interface design.
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Allow & Block Ads: Advanced Settings:

1. Interest Based Ads Preference: Do not show ads based on user categories.

2. Third Party Ads Preference: Do not allow advertisers to use their audience information

Reasoning: Retargetting is a friend to the Advertiser; in Adwords I would certainly use this option to my advantage, but it is not always a friend to the Publisher (YMMV) - unless you are in a very small niche, with few advertisers competing, it is better to have onsite contextual ads. Enabling the options for 6 months brought in an instability in earnings, with a wide variance of clicks, some of a much higher than average, some of a lower than average value (depending on the visitor profile obviously) opting out brought in more stability - and, gradually over time, a much higher average earning potential and a better CTR (last 6 months).

Also, with IBA, it is the People (Joe Public) and not the Publisher who become the gatekeeper to what is displayed on a site, and that's fundementaly not right; the Publisher should be control as far as possible: I also came to the conclusion that I did not want certain ads being displayed on my site, ads essentially 'brought in' by the audience, (you have to ask, 'did they wipe their feet before entering?'). Yet regardless, bottom line, economically it worked out for the best too, (I think with better contextual ads served there is also less chance of smart pricing, but that is just a theory, and is probably at odds with the whole reason behind IBA ...)

Caveat 1: You cannot completely opt out of Interest Based Advertising, only limit it to hopefully manageable levels; levels which suit the Publisher and levels which are optimised to individual cases of a high likelihood of sucess, i.e. proper (re)targeting by the Google Algo and not just a scatter gun approach. Caveat 2: Google firmly advise Publishers looking to maximise revenue and achieve a higher earning potential to enable both these and increase ads competing on your site, they might be right on your site, test, test, test (but test for longer than a week is my advice).

<question> If you have had great success with IBA is it because your site is in a small niche and it needs the extra inventory? Or is it because even on large sites (like the NYTimes) Google does indeed know best, i.e. pure maths beats out old school publishing 'gut feeling' and you should leave it be? My results say IBA is not as succesful as it is made out to be ... </question>

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Allow & Block Ads: Ad Networks:

Preferences: Automatically Block all new Google Certified Networks

Ad Networks Blocked: 176 out or 197 Ad Networks are blocked. I run a 'white-list' of ad networks. They are all blocked until I check them out and then if they 'pass' they are allowed to serve ads on my site. Just like having a whitelist in my .htaccess file for crawlers. So far only 20 or so ad networks have made the grade (YMMV).

Reasoning: I am grateful fo Adsense, they made advertising on my site so much easier and professional, but that is just it, I initially signed up for Adsense, with a brand I could trust, not a third party network, I knew nothing about. Therefore as a Publisher I make it my business to find out who these people are.

Google have helped in this, they do make it reasonably difficult to get on their certified network list, whittling it down from the thousands of dross and scam outfits down to just 200 or so 'reputable' companies who have to pass certification, but I would be remiss not to take a look and judge them individually myself.

My Whitelist: made up from research, looking at how professional they are as a company, how old a company they are, what clients they have (if they list them) do they have brand recognition, do they serve my geo-targetted audience, 'gut feeling' etc. etc. This list is not finished and I am probably going to add in another ten or so networks, but only if I find them compatible with what I am looking for, so far I have been disappointed in the quality of the majority:-

AOL Advertising
AOL Inc
AOL: Advertising.com Japan KK
Ad Pepper
Ad Pepper Germany
Adchemy
BrightRoll
Google Display Network: Reserve
Google: Invite Media
Google: Teracent Corporation
Invite Media - Self Managed
LeadClick
Omnicom Media Group NL
OpenX Technologies
Rocket Fuel Inc.
Specific Media
Specific Media France SAS
Specific Media Germany GmbH
Specific Media UK Limited
Tribal Fusion UK

Caveat1: You may notice a few 'big' companies missing from my whitelist, they are reputable, but they do not generally serve ads which fit my site audience, (but they may fit your audience) which is why it essential that you make up your own minds and include or block those who best fit your site. Also if you have any ideas about companies I may have missed which should be part of this whitelist I would love to know about them. Caveat2: Remember, be selctive, Google Adsense is serving the ads for you, (you signed up with them) they have the largest number of ads in their inventory, therefore the other networks need to have something to offer, and not just offering to serve ads by advertisers banned in adwords circumventing the system etc.

Advice from others on including other networks for the above white-list is warmly welcomed ...

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Allow & Block Ads: General Categories:

All categories allowed, none blocked.

Reasoning: this is getting down to the micromanagment level, which, depending on your view point, is where the pennies are made, or where the pennies are lost. I am not unhappy with most of these categories, and I am reasonably confident that if one ad is served from here by google it is probably for the best (overall) - the reason why I am confident is that my site is easy to read and work out exactly what niche or topic it is in, i.e. there is no doubt it is about BlueWidgets as opposed to RedWidgets, so after limiting Interest Based Advertising (as far as I am allowed) this is something I am happy to leave alone.

Caveat1: if the site was difficult for the google algo to work out what its main 'topic' was then I would probably see myself helping google out by 'sculpting' what general categories were least appropriate for my site. Caveat2: I can see from the numbers that google is serving the bulk of the ads from the 'right' general categories, and therefore if it serves from a few 'off topic' categories so be it, it was worth a shot, perhaps they might have been interested in the ad shown? you never know, advertising is a funny old science. At this level as I say I am happy to let things be (YMMV).

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Allow & Block Ads: Sensitive Categories:

All categories are blocked, none allowed.

Reasoning: it speeks for itself, I have a family orientated site where I am not interested in serving 'sensitive' categories. You of course may actually be in a niche where these are good earners.

should I allow 'dating ads'? I think these would perhaps be the only category here I might test, any thoughts? I could see 'classy' dating sites no problem but .... what else is in the can of worms once opened?

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Allow & Block Ads: Advertiser URL's:

I actually have very few urls blocked, approximately ten:

They are added for a few months then removed if annoying, the worst offenders just change their advertising url anyway until the go too far and google crack down on them (Evony anyone?). But usually the bigger fish you get in your niche the more these low paying advertisers are squeezed out of the competition to be on your site. You just have to block more url's the younger the site. Or put up with them in the last few days of the month when the advertiser spend is spent.

But for the recored I block Google and I block Groupon. Google and Groupon targetted my site (and every other site on the planet) meaning after a while they captured all the market share they were going to from my site, and CTR dropped off drastically, as people saw the adverts EVERYWHERE! on every site. In this case you as a Publisher have to ACT block them until they calm down and stop spending the VC money like it was water on advertising.

Once they stop blanketing the entire internet I will be happy to take them off the blocked list and run their ads, they are good earners on the right 'up cycle' before ad blindness sets in because of their tactic. Now a groupon or google blanket style attack on advertising happens once or twice a year; later on in the year it will be someone else doing it; the trick is to now a s a Publisher WHEN to get off that particular ride, with Groupon (for me) it was certainly the start of November (YMMV).

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Allow & Block Ads: Ad Review Centre:

Auto-approval: Hold ads for 24 hours so that they can be reviewed.

My advice, use it. This ability should be used, you may not have time to check it every day, but at least you might catch a few people you don't want targeting your site, although I find this rare. This is the section where you also get a 'pat on the back' when you see some new 'clients' lining up to align their brand with yours ... then you know you are doing things right.

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so how do you take control?

[nick28]

Very interesting Post, Thanks.
But, what do you think about Groupon Ads, Google self Advertising ads, like Chrome and MFA sites?
Should these be blocked too?

[JoePublisher]

When Groupon and Google (self Advertising) goes 'viral' accross the web, and your site is affected, look at the CTR, when it starts to drop, and you know it is because these ads are starting to dominate your ad space, effectivly removing competition, (even though they are the highest bidders, no one is clicking anymore) add them to the blocked url list.

When they have finally gone through their cycle of ad spend for the weeks (or months in the case of these two giants) remove them from the list.

When to allow and when to block? Watch carefully as their campaign shifts from getting new customer, to just increasing brand awareness to improve the share offer/deal/price (because this is what it becomes in the latter stages of really *big* campaigns covering/blanketing the internet) CTR drops as saturation and ad blindness sets in. You should have jumped out at this stage if not before, let other less savvy webmasters carry the flag for them until the campaign finally runs out of steam/money. They won't take it personally, not on a campaign of this size, i.e. as a person of business you 'tip your cap' to them for what they are doing (and can do) but give a wink as you pull the plug so your little empire is not buffeted by the storms they generate.

That said, blocking the url for these kinds of campaigns/blue chip companies should not be a permanent state of affairs, I fully intend to take google and groupon off my competitive ad filter list at some stage in the near future ... until their behaviour warrents another stay on the 'naughty step'. We have the tools so use them.

Permanent blocking is for true competitors and 'vile' advertisers, but even then your list should not be massive, (only if/when the website is very young) try to get good competition on your site by improving content and traffic, better ads will be served, trust me, then you can clean/prune your list accordingly.

[JoePublisher]

In terms of opting out of Interest Based Ads my theory is this:

Point 1. I don't mind advertising which is targeted based on being a sub-category of the human race, i.e. by all means show 'some' related ads on each vist to a person who is 24 to 34, female, ABC1. Show 'some' different type of ads on each visit to a person who is 45 to 54, male, C1. I can see that these off topic Ads, served to these broad gender/age/economic categories will (perhaps) be of 'interest' to them because of stereo-typical behaviour/lifestyle...

Point 2. Do not show ads to a person using (re)targeting information because they once visited a particular site four days ago. It just does not work, no matter what is said about it (or stats* given to prove it) to hype it up in the interestes and benifits of claiming internet online advertisement is better than traditional media.

Caveat: an Adwords user* may say (re)targeting works, but will it in the long run? Is it just contributing to the increasing ad blindness which is also accelerating the use of ad blockers? And why are advertisers reporting success with re(targeting) but publishers are not, surely they should be hand-in-glove?

From a Publisher stand point: Any advertising content provider (adsense etc.) please follow point one (see above) for 25% of the visited pages, then please show mostly ads which are complimentary (contextual) to the topic on my website, please do not follow your strategy for point two (see above) it does not work.

*Remember: there are lies, damn lies and statistics - YMMV of course, and I might be taking about a small section of publishing, in that case you want to ignore me and encourage more (re)targeting through IBA.

[gmb21]

Thank you for a very interesting post. My sites are family sites too, and I do worry about inappropriate ads being shown.

[indyank]

Google was the first to perfect their tech. in showing contextual ads but it is a pity that they have taken the opposite route now in the name of interest based ads...But does interest based tech. help their "interests" while it doesn't seem to help the "interests" of the publishers or the "interests" of the visitors?!

[Leonard0]

Welcome to Webmaster World, JoePublisher
Good first post.
One factor to consider when blocking General Categories and Sensitive Categories is the Impressions to Earnings ratio.
If a category has % Earnings that are much lower than % Impressions it should probably be blocked.
For instance, I noticed last week that Real Estate was taking about 8% of impressions but only earning 6.4% so I blocked it. I was hoping that the impressions would be shifted to a more relevant category that paid higher earnings but so far it hasn't happened. I'll check again in three weeks, since the reports are based on the previous 30 days.

[netmeg]

After many years of spending too much time and stress trying to adjust the knobs, I gave up on most tweaking and twiddling last year. It's a zero sum game; I'll never know if something I did made a difference or it's a difference phase of the moon, and there are better uses for my time and stress. Interestingly, once I decided that, I had my best year ever by more than double. Still overstressed, but not about AdSense.

That's not to say that you don't have some good ideas, but beware of falling into the trap of "taking control." There are a zillion things that come in to play at each instance someone presses the mouse key and clicks on the ad, and like snowflakes, no two combinations of circumstances are exactly alike. And most happen way outside our realm of influence.

[AndyA]

Hi JoePublisher,

You have some good observations, thanks for taking the time to post. Everyone's site is different, so what works well for some may not for others.

I agree with interest based advertising, after having an ad stalk me around the Internet for 3 weeks because I visited a site just to see what the company did, as I had heard a former acquaintance was working there. That was the limit of my interest.

Of course, during this time I was shopping for a new monitor, as well as a few other things, so all those ad impressions were wasted on me. That convinced me that if interest based ads were effective, they were also very annoying to some people, and totally irrelevant to others.

Thanks again for your post.

[ken_b]

Hi JoePublisher;

Welcome to the forum and thanks for the detailed and well stated posts.

I only block with the competitive filter in the most glaring cases. After 6+ years I think I have maybe 35 in the list.

IBAs I turned off as much as possible just because I don't like the concept. If that costs me a few dollars, fine.

Blocking via the "Sensitive Categories" are all blocked. None of them are remotely relevant to my site.

Third party ad networks are all blocked. The ones I'm familiar with have contacted me directly and I've declined the "opportunity" to use them. No point in letting them in the back door via Google. I'm not interested in spending the time to check out the rest, so they are all blocked automatically.

Blocking the "General categories" is more interesting, mostly because of the info provided by Google. I looked at this option when it was first available to me and only blocked a few sub-categories, Gambling and a couple in Health.

I don't see big differences between the % of impressions and the % of earnings in any of the General categories, a little here and there, but nothing big enough to bother blocking anything.

Over the years I've clearly come to think our time is better spent on content etc rather than trying to micro-manage AdSense. I just don't think we have the tools to make spending the time trying to manage micro AdSense pay off. I like the post it and forget it idea better. That's worked well for me, others have apparently had more success with micro-managing things.

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