Suggestions for improving AdSense

What's bad and what's good with AdSense from publisher perspective...

[av613]

Hello,

I wanted to start a little discussion about what is bad and what is good with the way AdSense currently works from publisher perspective.

Examples:

1) For certain websites AdSense cannot accurately determine the context and displays irrelevant ads. This often happens to pages with not too much content. For instance, if a webpage is a list of categories (Arts, Technology, Sports...) AdSense could use the names of those categories to derive the ads. However, the pages main purpose could be a discussion forum for exchanging links for websites in those categories.

Any suggestions on how to improve this?

2) If a page is password or "graphical image" protected (not accessible to crawlers), AdSense cannot display any ads.

How can this be improved?

3) AdSense often pulls up competitor ads. It is possible to filter them out using URLs, but it requires constant work. Anyone has any suggestions in this area?

Let's keep in mind that all suggestions from the affiliate perspective need to still hold true from the advertiser perspective. Otherwise, the advertisers will not get quality traffic and will not want to participate in AdSense.

Are there other similar programs out there that do not have these issues?

Thanks,
AV

[Clark]

Number one issue, those PSAs have got to go. It's just PR for Google with their "Do no evil" talk. (As an aside, have you seen "The persuaders" special on Frontline? Google is PR-driven and has big VC money behind it. I wonder if that slogan was "test-driven" by PR people to see how it would resonate with the public.)

Anyhow, they can do PR on their own time. If they want to donate to charity, send them a check. They don't need to display a big old charity ad on my site. (Yes, they addressed it with the annoying alternate ads and colors and the adsense script. Very kludgy.) Turning PSAs etc into a default ad would be a wonderful solution. Contextual ads when available and free-for-all bidding on Run-Of-Site which would be defined as a standard ad when no contextuals were free. Or they could categorize domains and call it Run-Of-Site on a category defined by keywords the advertiser bids on when no context ad is available. Heck, let the advertiser bid on keywords in a url. But don't throw out all that valuable space w/ PSAs/Kludgey alt crap.

If Yahoo!s new program offers ROS on those pages, Adsense will fall behind or have to change.

[europeforvisitors]

If Yahoo!s new program offers ROS on those pages, Adsense will fall behind or have to change.

Not necessarily. Publishers who see few, if any, PSAs on their sites aren't likely to regard PSAs as a problem.

[Reflection]

How about a more active mediabot?

[turtle1776]

More channels would be nice, and channel data updated without a 2 day delay would also be helpful.

As for PSAs, you can have Google run alternative ads instead. I run Kanoodle ads as the default back up.

[ignatz]

I would like to access my account by typing adsense.google.com

Now there's a simple one!

[johnwhitesmith]

Ignaz, there is so much wrong with that idea, I don't know where I could begin.

I wish google would have phone service, or less stringent policies. You look at an ad wrong, and they will ban you it seems.

[totter]

Less secrecy, would it hurt them so much to just tell us what exactly is going on with the payment calculated this month?

[ignatz]

Ignaz, there is so much wrong with that idea, I don't know where I could begin.

What are you talking about? If you don't know where to begin than why post? Honestly, I'd love to know what problems you have with adsense.google.com. It's the way the adwords url works..

[Roomy]

3) AdSense often pulls up competitor ads. It is possible to filter them out using URLs, but it requires constant work. Anyone has any suggestions in this area?

I'm currently in the G beta test program for keyword filtering. The problem of competitive ads is handled very well using this feature.

G won't tell me when they intend to roll it out.

[brandboerge]

What are you talking about?

I think he thought that you meant "by typing adsense.google.com - without having to log in/write username and password". Which you clearly didn't.

:)

[swa66]

I'm missing:

- an (optional) MINIMUM click fee for ads, if they can't find but next to free ads I'd rather not display them and get my alternates running. Google now is acting as a marketplace for the advertisers, not for the publishers.

- a rating system, e.g. I'd like to get only "G" rated ads,
and can miss certain clear scams they have in their inventory

- an easy way to change simple things like your name in your account away from the "terminite account"; "ask for a new one"; can't be same email address procedure they have now.

[Even_Steven]

I'd like a special meta tag that I can put into the HEAD portion of a page that will contain keywords specifically for driving AdSense ads. If this meta tag is present, then AdSense works off of that instead of the page content.

[av613]

"If this meta tag is present, then AdSense works off of that instead of the page content"

This is not going to work for advertisers of AdWords since it allows publishers to abuse the system by picking the most high cost ads even if they are not relevant. What do you think?

[Powdork]

As an advertiser I don't use the content option because I was spending hundreds of dollars for click from domainparks. I felt robbed. As a publisher I feel more advertisers would sign up for content if they didn't feel as though Google, oops, I mean oingo was stealing from them.

[europeforvisitors]

This is not going to work for advertisers of AdWords since it allows publishers to abuse the system by picking the most high cost ads even if they are not relevant. What do you think?

1) Irrelevant ads are less likely to be clicked, so such "abuse" is a waste of time.

2) Keywords would be used not as a substitute for the ad-matching algorithm, but as hints or helper words to prevent mismatches. If Google's mediapartnerbot didn't see the keywords in the body text, the algorithm could simply ignore the keywords.

3) Anyone who wants a page to display ads for a high-cost keyword can already do so by making that keyword the subject of the page.

[av613]

Actually google already has two parameters that serve the same purpose as the content meta tags that you suggested.

1) google_kw
2) google_hints

To see "google_kw" in action try topix.net search. You will see google ads on the right side. View source and you will see that the keyword you searched for appears in the google_kw parameter. However, it looks like your publisher id needs to be enabled to use this. I am assuming this is because people would abuse it if it was open to all.

The google_hints parameter also does not work for every publisher id. You need to have it specifically enabled by google.

Does anyone know what criteria google uses to determine who can use the google_kw and google_hints parameters?

[europeforvisitors]

Does anyone know what criteria google uses to determine who can use the google_kw and google_hints parameters?

In a previous thread, someone mentioned seeing the hints on premium partner sites, and in another thread (maybe higher up in this one?) a WW member mentioned a beta test of keywords.

[androidtech]

Way too many clicks needed to pull up channel reports. Date entry is clunky and should automatically compensate for the 2 day lag.

There should be a quick click "channels" report button that shows you that last available day of data for all your channels: broken apart by channel.

Thanks.

[Powdork]

There should be a quick click "channels" report button that shows you that last available day of data for all your channels: broken apart by channel.

I like that. Since others would probably want different time options and such, why not saved reports like CJ?

[Even_Steven]

Another suggestion, is for AdSense to create a transparent background and border color so that the creative allows my background images (such as a watermark or wallpaper image) to show through.

Is there already a way to do this?

[MikeNoLastName]

First and foremost! I would DEFINITELY vote for the keyword suggestions/meta-tags/google_hint, in whatever FORM it takes to make the results more applicable and raise the CTR. As I've complained to everyone who will listen, from G to this forum, not only is it a problem for small, low content pages as previously mentioned (which we haven't personally experienced), but also very large pages which may have more than one major topic, or a single topic which G doesn't seem to be able to grasp or summarize. Consider a list of country names, for instance, I'll bet G doesn't realize they are simply countries at all and pops up Swiss cheese and French Vanilla Ice Cream ads. I'm sorry, but the simple mention of a "scotch and soda" on a cocktails recipe page should NOT pop up ads for Scotch Tape! In these cases they appear to pick a random, uncommon word and lock on to it, FOR EVER, as your major topic. I would very much like to see it on a per-ad-unit basis (such as implemented by the google_hint), since if you have multiple units on the same page you'd want to show green widget ads next to the green widgets section and blue doohickey ads next to it's section.
It currently doesn't even seem to be context sensitive to the PART of the page you place it in. That might be a partial solution. I've tried packing the area around the call with the proper keywords and it still doesn't help. So many times lately I feel that I am writing for GAdsense rather than for my readers (hmm, maybe I shouldn't use the phrase "praise the lord" for fear it will trigger 12 "lord of the rings video" ads).
BTW, according to the Conditions, currently adding google_hint is against the rules if it is NOT IN THE CODE THEY PROVIDE YOU on your setup.
Also much FOR speeding up the reporting on channels, it would sure speed up optimization. Gads, by 48 hours later I've forgotten what pages I've modified and may have lost a lot of $ if I did something bad to a popular page. Even partial or inaccurate results in real time or hourly would be a huge improvement! In fact in our biz, a large portion of our original content only has a peak lifetime of 2-7 days. By time we get a channel report, it's can already be too late.
Would also love to see a report of number of unique visitors to a page (unique IP's would be fine) next to the impressions.
How about a test mode where you can track a test-click through the system to make sure you copied the code properly and everything is being credited to YOUR account? Or conversely a way to see what domains your credited impressions are coming from to make sure noone has hijacked your page and code.
Would also like a way to block ads from a domain on a single channel at a time. Sometimes ads for an otherwise very good advertiser that we want to keep on most of the site, pop up on an inappropriate page (like where we already have a privately placed paid banner ad for them) where someone else would be much more appropriate.
Finally, guess it's way too much to ask for a log of each click by time, keyword, bid price, payment price, referrer page, which ad-unit... to help us truly optimize ad placement, instead of shooting in the dark and hoping to hit something that says ouch! Not like G doesn't track and save it all themselves.
Ahh, that feels better, now. Hope G is reading.

[chikung]

I think I should get stats report through mail so that if I am not at home I don't have to check it out from out side and keep myself at risk of fraud clicks.

May be once in a day mail is sufficient.

[a1call]

Hi swa66,

You wrote:

- an (optional) MINIMUM click fee for ads, if they can't find but next to free ads I'd rather not display them and get my alternates running. Google now is acting as a marketplace for the advertisers, not for the publishers.

Best idea so far. It should make business sense to google. It is fair to give some say to publishers to value their links worth. Right now a very valuable site (not mine) could deliver a link for minimum bid. That does't seem right.