Making sense of the Ad Review Center

[MrSavage]

I've been wanting to post something about this because I'm baffled. I'm wondering if anyone wants to share what they know or experienced with the ad review center.

The issue I've had lately has been some incredibly poor earning days. As a result, I started to look into the ad review center. This is when I realized this doesn't make sense to me. Almost embarrassed to say so.

First I noticed multiple ad, same advertiser that show a blank. So clicking to expand the ad for more information, the page was blank. I'm talking about on page 1 of the review center, the most impressions. So what conclusion should I draw from seeing this ad unit sprinkled in my review center?

Next, on page 1 of the review center, I see 7 out of 12 spots occupied by the same ad. Another 3 with the same ad. There are 2 other ads. Some times when I've checked, there have been what appear to be 10 ads all the same and just 2 other ads. I'm talking page 1 and the most impressions.

I may be sounding like a complete newb, and that's fine. I'm hoping for some help because I'm getting frustrated. Further, I try to kill off the ads via clicking (blocked) and also blocking that adwords account, yet I keep seeing same ads showing up. It's like they can't be eliminated as I requested. It seems to me that the same junk keeps coming back again and again. Is there day delay or what? Non responsive is what I think.

It does seem what I'm trying to do is troubleshoot my poor earning. Thinking that it's from these ads may be a stretch, not sure. When I don't see more than 4 ads out of 12, that seems spammy to me if those are the ads with the highest impression count.

[netmeg]

I can't speak to the blank ads. Maybe it's a video or something that has to load.

The ads that are the same - there could be lots of reasons for those. Some advertisers (like the belly fat people) just toss up a pantload of the same ads with the same landing pages because they know publishers will block an ad, but most publishers won't go in and find every single one and block it (although *I* do)

But there are also legitimate reasons to run what appear to be multiple copies of the same ad, the main one being testing. There could be subtle differences in the ads that you don't notice on first view. Or they could have different landing pages - I will do that myself as an advertiser - run the same ad with three different landing pages, and see what the behavior is for each.

[MrSavage]

Thank you. What I'm beginning to wake up to is the fact that Adsense is going to require more hands-on. I can be a slow learner it seems.

There are more dials also which I will need to deal with. Allow this type of ad, disallow this type of ad, etc.

I'm just wondering if seeing 10 out of 12 spaces on page 1 of the review center being from the same advertiser/text ad is a cause for alarm. Would most people try to block out this ad/advertiser to maintain balance? Again I'm trying to see if this type of situation can explain some very poor earning days. Most like an oversimplification on my end, but it's better I know than not know based on what others might say about it. Thank you.

[netmeg]

You can drive yourself nuts trying to fiddle with the dials. I did it for years, and couldn't keep up and finally decided to let Google do its thing and I do mine. Much easier on my sanity.

The exception are fugly ads (like the belly fat ones, and similar ads that use gross pictures or "one weird trick") which I just plain don't want on my site - every time I notice one, I go in and squash all the ones I can find.

But seriously, you'll go crazy trying to improve earnings by blocking ads, because you'll just never know what works and what doesn't.

Of more use is all the other reports in the Performance area. Look at the sizes, the networks, the behavior, the platforms, the bid types. Run some experiments. That's going to probably be a better use of your time than swatting flies.

[londrum]

blocking ads in that review centre is like a game of whack-a-mole. i stuck with it a few times, but as soon as you knock one out it just pops back up a day later, or a few days later — exactly the same ad, in exactly the same format.

i'm guessing that if it's got a slightly different URL, then google sees it as a brand new ad (maybe it's got a different query string, or something).