AdSense Suggestions

Am I the only person who thinks this is dumb?

[IanCP]

When I looked at my reports this morning I saw two almost identical messages:

Up to 55% ($X) predicted increase in weekly earnings.

You're currently blocking the following sensitive category of ads: "Dating"/"Religion". Maximise your revenue by allowing these ads to appear on all of your sites.

Yes one message was for "dating", and the other for "religion".

Perhaps it's just me, but I would have thought the reason those class of ads were blocked should have been blindingly obvious to anyone - even to a computer properly programmed.

[ember]

I'm being told that I can increase earnings by enabling Reference to Sexuality category, which I have blocked because my audience is fairly staid. Anyone know how suggestive these ads are?

[Leosghost]

I'd look at what is accepted in adwords..in those categories..that should give you a pretty good idea of what might get shown on your pages..

Of course given how personalise ads are now..anyone seeing ads for say sex toys, or lingerie<= worn by models,or BDSM, must have been browsing related material..so should not be offended..But their spouse or minister or grandchildren who may be "shoulder surfing" when the personalised ( to them ) ads show up on your site may be convinced ( "nothing to do with me dear".." it must be this terrible website" ) that it is "your fault"..and may tell others to avoid your "den of iniquity"..

Question is ..if you let those categories run..would you be happy if your spouse, minister, grandchildren saw them on your site, while "shoulder surfing" with you, knowing it was your site ?..It could happen..

[londrum]

I received exactly the same message as the OP — same categories and same percentage as well. That probably tells you how dubious it is

[trebuchet]

I've received it too. I have all dating, sexual health, pharmaceuticals, etc. blocked and they'll be staying blocked. Those ads may be appropriate and acceptable on some sites but not mine.

[Edge]

Mine was Politics and Religion.. A few days ago I also got an email stating that I averaged two ad unit per per and that i should increase that to three.

What do I think? I'll contribute to the following challenges.... see WebmasterWorld thread ---> [webmasterworld.com...]

[tangor]

Golly geeze, kiddies! Open the spigot! Get all the ads that can be served...

And tank your site for your users.

kidding a bit, but these are ADVERTISMENTS to YOU the publisher to paste more ad content!

No brainer. Also a no brainer that you pick and choose what displays.

What you are seeing is a sales pitch. Only you can decide if you will opt for it.

Tangor aside: In most cases you should say no.

Think about it.

[netmeg]

Hunh. I'm blocking some categories but I didn't see any messages as yet.

[trebuchet]

I've never seen this kind of pushing in several years with Adsense, so I'm wondering why we're seeing it now.

Could it be that Adwords is being swamped with certain types of ads and doesn't have the real estate to serve them?

Or are advertisers for those categories voicing frustrations about their ads not appearing on 'serious' sites?

Or something else?

[tangor]

The something else is publishers. Some ads are not desired. :)

[trebuchet]

That's certainly true. But surely publishers blocking girly/dating ads and political/religious propaganda isn't a new thing? I've been doing it for years. Which makes me wonder if the silo full of 'bad ads nobody wants' is a lot fuller than the one holding the 'good ads everyone wants'.

[ken_b]

We're coming into the full bloom of the silly season for politics in the USA, so I turned on political ads.

I'm not sure I quite understand how that will affect interest based ads, if at all.

If a visitor has just come from a political site to my unrelated site might they see political ads even if I had left them turned off? I think so, but not sure.

Anyhow I'm going to give them a few days run to see what happens and then make a choice.

[jpch]

If only they would create the "#*$!" category...then we could all make record earnings.

[londrum]

they tried another message today... if I turn on the 'drugs' category then i'm projected to earn an extra 80% -- that's thousands of pounds a month. that's on top of the 55% i'll get for switching on dating, and the 55% i'll get for switching on religion.

i'm rich!
i'll see you guys later... i'm off to book myself a six month holiday in the bahamas

[explorador]

Same here, same suggestions and same predictions.
Just unblocked those categories and earned some impressive numb... nope.

[Leosghost]

if I turn on the 'drugs' category

I saw what you did there ;)
Seriously, they surely don't think that most people turn off those categories accidentally..

If only they would create the If only they would create the "#*$!" category

For adwords advertisers they have some niches which are definitely in the "#*$!" category..
I have seen ads..one of our "niche" apparel manufacturing areas gets you a lot of those ads when looking to see who has ripped off our / my latest designs..the ads show up on a wide variety of sites, I presume related to my cookies, but also because the site owners have turned the "reference to sexuality" category on, but they never talk about their mega yachts ( moored just off the beach from where londrum is sipping his rhum ) ..must be because G says we must not talk about the ads..;)

I would run them* if they had such a category..because I could make all the content totally original..But if I used our own product images on an informational site..under present G TOS, G wouldn't serve adsense to it...not very logical there Google..

*the only "shoulder surfers" around me know what that particular one of our businesses makes, the minister is never likely to be invited in, and grannies are no more, and there are as yet, no grandchildren..so no one to be offended ;)

[nomis5]

Same here. On my account I thought it was done quite well.

Sex ads at 15% increase - no, already had complaints about those before.

Drugs ads (couldn't believe they have a category simply called "drugs") at 80% increase - now that's a serious increase but my dad said never to get involved with drugs so sadly a no to that.

The came along "religion" at a promising 40% increase - how can a nice subject like religion ever offend anyone, so a definite yes from me!

So far I haven't seen a religious ad yet, so I'm going clicking on some religious sites over the next few days to see if that triggers any. And see if my 40% increase materialises.

I'm fascinated to know what type of religion ad will appear. And if so, maybe they will start an affiliate scheme along the lines of £25 to me for every one of my readers who joins a religious sect?

[vordmeister]

65% increase suggested for me! Oddly revenue didn't fall by 65% when I blocked them following complaints.

[toidi]

I've never seen this kind of pushing in several years with Adsense, so I'm wondering why we're seeing it now. 

Imho, it is because there is a shortage of ads. Advertiseres are coming to the realization that adwords ROI is not there. I just recently gave it another try after a very long hiatus, and it was more disappointing than i could have imagined. I had noticed that my competitors had stopped and the new competitors who gave
it a try did not last for long.

There was a time when we competitors would bid against each
other for placement, now i was bidding against goog's fake
minimums just for ad acceptance.

Advertisers are business people who expect and need a return ontheir investment. The return is not there.

[netmeg]

I don't see a shortage of advertisers in total. Lots of AdWords ROI is there; it might not be there in the Display Network, however. All but one of my current clients I don't put in the Display Network, because there's too many invalid clicks and too few conversions.

[Rasputin]

Three days after unblocking religion ads and the promised riches are yet to arrive, and I still can't imagine what religious bodies are going to outbid travel companies on our sites...
...but even if it was correct, I think any rise would disappear soon after because religion advertisers will now have lots more places to advertise, which will force down the ad price.

[ember]

Advertiseres are coming to the realization that adwords ROI is not there.

I'm an Adwords advertiser and still get a good ROI.

I don't put in the Display Network, because there's too many invalid clicks and too few conversions

I think that has always been the case, at least in my experience. Display has never done as well as search for conversions.

[netmeg]

I've had a few clients over the years that did better in Display, but usually my clients are B2B and that doesn't just doesn't perform (except for Remarketing)

[nomis5]

The Adsense advertisers are definitely there in my sector. I have clear evidence of that.

Re the quote below, excuse my ignorance, I know the phrase "Display Network" is common but its meaning has escaped my brain. Asking for a quick education!

it might not be there in the Display Network

[Leosghost]

= adsense publishers..us :)

[ember]

Display is the Adwords option that places ads on publisher sites like ours. The search option is what places ads on google.com and its search partner sites (aol.com - I believe - and others).

[londrum]

It would be interesting to see if anyone has ever accepted google's suggestions and seen the promised increase in earnings.

How do they come up with the figures? Do you think they run tests on a few of our pages, showing an occasional ad to see how it performs?

[Leosghost]

Do you think they run tests on a few of our pages, showing an occasional ad to see how it performs?

You mean like with the ugly arrows..I'm sure they do..and look at how well that worked out for us publishers..

They throw stuff at the wall..( our sites ) and then try to scale up ( and push it to all of us ) the crap, that stuck, on one tiny part of it..

[IanCP]

Well they're back at it again with messages. A new category today

Up to 85% ($X) predicted increase in weekly earnings.
You're currently blocking the following sensitive category of Ads: "Drugs"

Drugs? Drugs? Far out. Then another note with a panic tone as to why the 26th was way below the 19th - investigate, investigate...

Simple, traffic was ordinary - not up, not down - CTR was total rubbish. Why? Probably totally irrelevant/rubbish ads for my genre, particularly on a Saturday. It actually happens, we have those days. Then when I have a good day? I wonder how much will be clawed back at the end of the month.

Will someone please cease allowing their robotic computer from making wild assumptions which no informed human would?

[MikeNoLastName]

The day after we took their advice and added the first two blocked categories (Saturday) was DOWN significantly compared to average Sats. However Sunday and Monday have been up less than 1/10th of what they promised... and now my ads look like #$%^ (there was literally one which to all opinions looked like someone's full bare butt crack under the "drugs" category which I had to block manually!) and most of the ads are way off-topic compared to previously. I noticed a lot of the companies which used to show up in ads on our site are now showing up on others via dclick. Time to switch?

Also when you talk about "plenty of ads" to show, are you looking at the number of ads listed at the bottom of the review ads page? Ours has consistently been well over 10K but only about 100 show up as high or medium impression scores which only account for about 25% of our total impressions. I've maintained a theory about major ad spam methods sucking free impressions and driving CPC down, just haven't figured out a new way to avoid them since they got rid of the ad-preview ability (or did they just hide it somewhere like everything else useful?) short of blocking entire inapplicable categories.