Now seeing Arabic Ads

[glitterball]

A new low in relevancy to report today.
I'm now seeing Arabic script ads on my English-language website. I am in Spain, my browser and OS are in English and I don't read Arabic nor do I ever visit Arabic sites.

I realise that I have been harping on about this for years but... The browser language is a better indicator than IP location. Secondly, the ex-pat/traveler is a great demographic to target for mail-order and local services and Goog is doing a really bad job by showing Ads in the wrong languages and forcing them to use Google localised services.

[IanCP]

Relevance has gone right out the window. For the past week every international newspaper I see carries Ads for an Australian Private Health Cover company.

Nothing to with site content I visit and NO I haven't researched health cover.

Just targeting me as an Australian I assume.

[Leosghost]

Doing the same with me..irrelevant image ads ( groupon, anti-virus for windows, more groupon, even more groupon, and did I mention groupon,? and even some groupon, interspersed with groupon, fortune tellers, groupon ) ..but always in French..My browser and OS are set to English ..pure geo-targeting ..relevance to what is on the websites is zero ..

Text ads however they are getting right, on the rare occasions that they show me some, ( less than 10% of the time )..IME ..your mileage on the latter obviously does vary..

I'm making a collection of screenshots of the irrelevant image ads on just one of the sites that I visit daily..

[MsHuggys]

I have no idea why I'm seeing Adsense ads in Arabic. No logicl reason for it, at all. Though, it hints why 7 years of Adsense CTR running at 7-10% for my main website has hit the sewer, running 1-5% in recent months.

[Leosghost]

I am seeing a lot of image ads also from the Abudhabi tourist board..serving via adsense and also doubleclick ..could be they are running text ads too ..and that Google has given them a very widespread deal on the content network in CPM ads ..

Given the Abudhabi government's purchasing power it is very likely that they could be running a very significant percentage of all adsense ads showing at certain times..

[HuskyPup]

Just seen a 468 x 60 on one of my sites with two text ads, one in English the other in Indian, admitedly it is a page referencing India however it is all in English.

[Leosghost]

Perhaps I should point out that the Groupon etc and Abudhabi ads I see are not on any of my sites..

The groupons ( to the exclusion of almost all other ads ) etc are on "el reg"..

The Abudhabi ads are on the BBC ( I only ever get served "travel ads" or ads for "expat tax services" on the BBC ) been seeing them ( almost to the exclusion of all others ) for the last 15 days on the BBC..

[netmeg]

Ok, I'm seeing Arabic ads on my site that's completely focused on WISCONSIN. Something be wrong up in here.

[netmeg]

I posted it over on the AdSense help forum to see if they could flag a Google person.

[MrSavage]

I did post about this a month ago here. I've seen it on my other sites now on adsense for content ad units, not just link units. At least I know it's not just me, my sites, or some error I've made on my site, or a case of being hacked. All's well by the sounds of it.

[zarathustra2011]

I blocked Groupon a long time ago now - their ads just took over my site. I had some Arabic ads the other, day. Normally the title is in bold and URL in an undecorated font, but because Arabic reads right to left, the URL was bold and the title undecorated - sort of stood out when its placed along another three text ads in the same unit.