PLACEHOLDER Creative for CORE

[csdude55]

This is the first ad that shows up in my Ad Review Center. It shows the destination URL as google.com:

PLACEHOLDER Creative for CORE
Do not touch this creative
Contact core-owners @
>
google.com

On July 18 it had 458,502 impressions, July 19 had 440,936, and July 20 had 417,304. After that, 0.

The advertiser ID is adv-1843360214473295.

Is this banner acceptable, or something that should be blocked? I guess, either way, it's like closing the door after the burglar escaped since the impact was in July, but still...

[not2easy]

I recalled having seen that somewhere before - found it with a search, but it was in the Oct. 2015 AdSense thread [webmasterworld.com]and did not have more than a question. That post also mentioned having very high impressions.

It seems to me that there was an actual discussion though. I'll see if I can dig it up.

[csdude55]

I googled it and couldn't find anything, just a few others asking on the Google support forum a long time ago with no real response.

When I click on it from the Ad Review Center, it takes me to:

This is an intermediate preview page that confirms your click can be successfully recorded by Google. This preview page will not be seen when served live on publisher sites. Instead, a click will be recorded by our servers and then immediately redirected to the destination page.

Destination URL: http www.google.com gen_204?reason=EmptyAdURL

(I removed the :// and / so that it wouldn't link)

Following that "Destination URL" link doesn't seem to go anywhere.

[hindifun]

I also have this ad in review center with 91k impressions per day.

[csdude55]

I couldn't find anything clear one way or the other, so I blocked the entire account to see if anything happened. I figured that, worst case scenario, I could unblock it later.

So far, I don't see anything different in my revenue or anything, so I guess that was OK. I didn't expect to see much of a change, anyway, since all of the impressions were 3 weeks ago.

Hindifun, does yours have the same advertiser ID as mine?

[hindifun]

Yes, same advertiser ID.