Targeting is off

how to improve?

[Play_Bach]

For awhile now I've been seeing more ads that are poorly targeted for my site. Not sure why that is as Google historically has been very good at matching. Any ideas?

[HuskyPup]

Any ideas?

Is this generally site wide or specific pages?

My pages are usually extremely well-targeted however I updated my b2b index page a week ago with new trade exhibitions and I've been quite surprised at how many other ads I've been having...some understandably associated, some seemingly off-target.

There seems to be a very thin line at times plus I'm fairly sure that some totally unrelated advertisers are asking Google to try previously unrelated sites.

[GlobalMax]

You probably were careful of this, but just in case, be sure you're not signed-in (and not participating in [google.com...] such that your browsing history is affecting the ads you're personally seeing on your site.

[jmccormac]

It might be that peabrained Behaviour based advertising that the people in Google think is a good idea.

Regards...jmcc

[Play_Bach]

Thanks everybody. No, I'm not logged in to Google when I check and I realize that the ads I see are not necessarily what others do. However, it's as if an entire group of widgets has somehow been lumped in with my niche. Been with AdSense for seven years and never seen targeting so off for so many days in a row (except when I tried Yahoo's YPN way back when! ;-)

[Play_Bach]

General categories? I currently don't block any but am beginning to wonder if this might be a partial explanation for the range of off-target ads I'm seeing. Anybody have experience with this?

[AdSenseAdvisor]

There's a few reasons that you might be seeing ads that don't appear relevant to your site's content. Here's a couple of reasons:

1- Placement targeted ads (if you are opted in). Many ads in placement targeting don't appear relevant to a publisher, but advertisers have targeted your website as relevant to their user base.

2- Interest based advertising (IBA). In these ads, advertisers target users based on past interaction with their site by targeting them on your site.

Both of these types of targeting are not necessarily contextual targeting, but if these ads are showing, they are outbidding the contextual ads in the same auction. You can see the report breakdown by earnings in the new interface on the Performance Reports tab under Targeting Type on the left hand navigation to see how each type is performing.

Aside from these two explanations, if you have made recent changes to your site content, then I'd check out this help center article on site content and ad relevancy to do a deeper diagnosis:

[google.com...]


Thanks!
ASA.

[Play_Bach]

Thanks ASA - very much appreciate your involvement here on the board (as I'm sure many others do too!). The last few hours I'm seeing a better batch of ads and not surprisingly better earnings as well. Hope it continues!

Thanks again