Ad balance is under maintenance

Seeing a message that Ad Balance has been reset

[glitterball]

Getting the following message when I go to Ad Balance:

"Ad balance is under maintenance

Your Ad balance settings have been reset and your revenue isn't affected.
Our engineers are working on it. Please check back again soon."

[MayankParmar]

Great news! Is this have something to do with drop in my today's earning?

[trebuchet]

No.

[pubpolicycomms]

Hi everyone. This feature should be back up now, or at some point today. Sorry that I did not give you advance notice as I found out myself this morning. Hope this is useful to you all. I'll pass along any feedback to that particular team that you provide on this forum.

[engine]

Thanks pubpolicycomms, we appreciate your time.

[Peter_S]

Thank you hindifun for reporting first, and thank you pubpolicycomms for the follow up.

[Dolphi]

Tweet about adbalancer - deleted. Post on FB about adbalancer - deleted. Something is broken?

[engine]

That's very odd for the tweet and FB post to go.

[NickMNS]

It must be because I mad the joke here about Google not disclosing their time-line and taking their time on this!

[MayankParmar]

A lot of users replied to that tweet stating ad balance is not available. May be this is why Google pulled as they realised it hasn't been enabled on all accounts yet?

[CommandDork]

Yah - I'm still not seeing it live. Hope officially dashed.

[Sally Stitts]

Boo hoo hoo, Boo hoo hoo. Waaaahhhhh. I'm so sad. Such torture. WE NEED IT BACK. NOW!

One page was getting such crappy ads, I had to remove them. Mediadotnet is WAY better, keyword in ALL 5 choices.
This is an authoritative page that has paid very well in the past,
for a specific medical condition - there is NO WAY that it lacks inventory.
What was I getting? "Clean out your refrigerator." Paid 2 cents. Too bad we can't swear here. But you KNOW what I am thinking.
Think hyphenated words.

Good thing I don't need the money. I won't tolerate being screwed with, to this extent. I ain't agunna take it.
.

[Sally Stitts]

My latest strategy -
I rotate between Mediadotnet and AdCents, solely based upon performance.
Top ad in prime position, and bottom ad down near the bottom.

Mediadotnet is winning, hands down. They go at the top, AdCents goes to the bottom.
This is not hard to figure out - Media now pays me twice what AdCents does.

As poor as Media targeting can be, they are consistently better than AdCents, ON MOST PAGES.
Media claims to target by page, but only if they go in and TARGET BY HAND.
The last two times I asked, they were unresponsive.
STILL, they win. Because AdCents keeps serving cheapo ads from outer space, unrelated to the page topic.

The BIGGEST factor for me is - I hate looking stupid. AdCents assures that, so screw the money.
My gig is quality, not money. Hard enough getting EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)
without an anchor around your neck, dragging you down..
.

[keyplyr]

If by Mediadotnet or Media, you mean Medianet
If by AdCents , you mean Adsense

Mediadotnet is WAY better

Hope it stays that way for you. Many report Medianet does well at first, then drops significantly.

[Sally Stitts]

THE BIGGEST QUESTION -
WHAT DETERMINES which list you get on?
I am certain THERE ARE TWO, algo determined. The good ads list, and the cr@p ads list.
This has GOT TO BE TRUE.

Do I try hard? I do this 9 hours a day, 6 days a week.
I even went HTTPS. Yet, I am still dog meat.
.

[edited by: Sally_Stitts at 11:21 pm (utc) on Sep 19, 2017]

[Sally Stitts]

keyplyr -
You are absolutely correct.
I made thousands / month at first with Mediadotnet years ago, now it is low 3 digits.
I believe that it is a primary strategy with them. Bring 'em in, hype 'em up, get more placements, then slowly begin to reduce their payout.
When 100's of people have said it, you have to start believing it.

The thing is - I don't really give a hoot. There is a certain genius to not caring.
I'm retired, thanks to the Google of 2013 ($800,000 plus), but the d@mn switch has been flipped.
Now I am just playing for fun. I have got to do something, right?
.

[NickMNS]

@Sally Stitts there are many point that you raise that I definitely agree with like:

My gig is quality, not money. Hard enough getting EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)

AdSense is not helping this when they allow all those download ads and other spam like the zloan crap. This is why Ad-Balancer is so important. It has been, thus far, the only tool that can reliably reduce or completely eliminate the spam. My limited indirect experience with MediaNet is that the ads are equally bad but there is not means of filtering the spam.

Are you comparing apples to apples:

I rotate between Mediadotnet and AdCents, solely based upon performance.
Top ad in prime position, and bottom ad down near the bottom.

Mediadotnet is winning, hands down. They go at the top, AdCents goes to the bottom.
This is not hard to figure out - Media now pays me twice what AdCents does.

Ad position plays a huge role in price. You can't simply compare ads appearing BTF with those that are ATF. The ATF ads will always win regardless of who is serving them.

I question whether simply placing ad code from two networks on a page is optimal. I know that AdSense has an algo that adjusts bid prices based on ad position, thus having all Adsense ads can have synergy which two separate auctions will not provide. Would it not be preferable to employ something like DFP. In the past, the big argument for implementing two networks was that it allowed you to overcome Adsense's 3 ad per page limit. But now that is no longer in a effect so is it still a good idea? I'm digressing off topic. Maybe this issue should be its own thread.

[Sally Stitts]

My decisions are based upon EACH being at the top for a non-short period.
In other words, each gets its chance.

Its not hard to see -
AdSense gives outer space ads, consistently, and
Mediadotnet gives ALL keyword ads ( I don't even know what comes after the first click, I leave that to them.)

My chance of getting the FIRST click is 10x with Mediadotnet rather than with AdSense (I think ... halfway there).


EDIT: Sorry, I lied before. ("solely based upon performance")
Repugnant AdSense ads go DIRECTLY to the bottom, to stay, no matter what (if not removed outright).
.

[Peter_S]

(to delete)

[Sally Stitts]

TODAY --->
"Ad balance is under maintenance
Your Ad balance settings have been reset and your revenue isn't affected.
Our engineers are working on it. Please check back again soon."
"Reset" to WHAT?
"... revenue isn't affected" - NOBODY on the planet believes that.
"... soon", as in every 5 months?

Weren't we virtually guaranteed that it would kick in yesterday?

The forces for good vs. the forces for evil.
Reasonable user experience vs. money-grubbing. That's how I see it.
EXTREME INTERNAL CONFLICT at Google.
The good guys vs. the bad guys.
Can't find the balance between acceptable and extremely poor.
The tyranny of the profit motive.

Don't let greed make you dumber than dirt.
You will NEVER be able to extract every last penny from everyone you touch.
Trying to, will simply result in failure, by piffing off EVERYBODY, in the extreme.
You are well on your way.

Just turn the d@mned thing on.
.

[edited by: Sally_Stitts at 3:41 pm (utc) on Sep 20, 2017]

[NickMNS]

There were reports (see Barry's comment on SER) that the ad-balancer worked for some yesterday for what I assume was a very short time period.

One must assume that it was rolled-back because they found some sort of bug in the implementation. If it were a "good guys vs bad guys" kind of thing then they would have simply done away with it altogether. How does botching a roll-out help anybody?

If I may be critical towards Google, the least they could have done was communicate and let us know what is going on. As project management professional in a past life, I can only say that the way this project is being run goes against every accepted practice.

_{Edit: Edited reference to reports. Barry said explicitly that it was working and not anymore}

[Sally Stitts]

I noted that. I read Barry daily. Anyone know exactly? 2 hours? 45 minutes?
Not too sure of themselves, are they.
.

[EditorialGuy]

[Trying to convince myself that a watched pot never boils]

[keyplyr]

I think there's one more box on the hoist...

[Sal Collaziano]

No new news around here, huh? Sadly, I think the latest "come back" was an accident. I really liked this ad balance idea. I really wish it WOULD come back. But, I think it's passed the point of holding our breath for it...

[pubpolicycomms]

Hi everyone. Sorry for the late reply (travel...a lot of travel).

I did receive feedback from that team, and this feature is indeed coming back, and "hopefully" within days/week from today. Official communications will be sent from that team once it is 100% back up and running.

Thank you all for the interest, and I hope that my communications on this have been helpful in some way.

[darthtoon]

That's good to hear - never actually got around to testing this properly last time, looking forward to giving it a good trial.

[neurropatic]

I just checked and I already have access to ad balancer. Do you guys have access to it too?

[NickMNS]

Yeah! It is working on my end!

[Sal Collaziano]

...still under maintenance for me...

Sal C.

[CommandDork]

Mine keeps throwing the generic Adsense error : /