New Sensitive Categories in AdSense

[NickMNS]

I just noticed that there are two new "Sensitive Categories" in AdSense:
"Sensationalisme"
"Significant Skin Exposure"
These categories appear at the bottom of the page under a new heading:
"Categories under development"
See screen cap:
[imgur.com...]

These categories appear by name, to cover most of the ads I spend my time blocking in the Ad-Review Center. I assume that the folks at AdSense must have realized that many people were blocking these so created these categories. I blocked both, so we will see how this goes. Hopefully this reduce the ads to be blocked. The only category still missing is the "Green Action Button" category, previously "green download button" but in recent month they have expanded "start here", "watch now", etc...

[keyplyr]

After blocking those green button ads for all this time, I've developed an aversive reaction to anything that shade of green now.

My SFTP client uses that shade of green on a couple of events & I cringe when I see it.

I have allowed those 2 new categories and will keep watch to see what comes through.

Thanks for the heads-up.

[Runfun]

Thanks for sharing but I never watch ads in my review centre because there are more than 20,000 ads to be reviewed.

[keyplyr]

@Runfun - if you don't review ads, you give up the only control you have of what gets displayed on your pages.

If you don't block the spammy ads & low bidders, you won't make much income.

Just review a few hundred a day and in a couple weeks you'll be caught up. Then its pretty easy to manage daily.

[NickMNS]

If you don't block the spammy ads & low bidders, you won't make much income.

I fully agree and encourage using the ad-review feature and I block the low-quality/spammy ads every day. But, this statement is theoretically false, and practically unmeasurable. AdSense is auction based, by blocking ads you remove a bidder from the auction. Not just any bidder you are blocking a winning bidder(a winner in a previous auction). This bidder is then replaced by the next highest bidder, who's bid is necessarily lower. So blocking ads comes at a cost, albeit a very small cost. Now in practice I have never been able to evaluate the actual cost.

That said not blocking ads comes at a cost too. A cost that is equally difficult to measure. The cost is the negative impact on your brand and reputation. When ads with text such as
--see link to screen cap below-- or other similarly spammy ads appear on your website it reflects very badly and negatively impacts you E-A-T. I have always felt that the cost to my brands reputation was far greater than any cost incurred from blocking ads.
[imgur.com...]

To avoid or minimize the need to block ads, one can use the Ad-Balancer feature. This will block the lowest paying ads (generally spammy and low-quality ads), but the blocked are not replaced. This limits supply at the same time as limiting demand so it should not affect revenues. In my experience the ad-balancer helps to reduce the number of spammy but does not eliminate it completely (the screen capped ad is perfect example) . It also reduces the number of ads to review making the review process a little easier and faster.

[Runfun]

Maybe it's a good idea to block spammy ads but it seems a lot to review more than 20,000 ads. Loading of pages at the review centre is also slow. But maybe when I try it costs few weeks and if CTR raises it's a benefit. I've about 150,000 ad impressions a day so an increase of 10% more clicks is a nice amount of money each month. I'll give an update within weeks.

[NickMNS]

As Keyplyr explained above you are seeing 20k ads because you have not reviewed any ads yet. So that number represents all the ads that have appeared on your site for the last 30 days. Note that if you click on the ad in the review center it will open a new window and provided added information about the ad and destination url. Among other things it shows the number impression that the ad has had thus far. Some ads will have tens of thousands of impression while other will have one or two.

Your best advertisers generally run the same ads for very many impressions. These ads tend to pay the most. The ads that tend to pay the least will only appear for a few impressions 2 to 10 or somewhere in that order of magnitude. The low paying ads will make up the bulk of the ads to review. Remember this, because you will be seeing a biased view of your ad inventory. You will mostly see low paying ads. Just to be clear, this is because once an ad is reviewed, it will continue to show on your site but you will not see the ad for review again, so the good should show up less often.

To minimize the number of low paying ads you can use the ad-balancer which will simply block them and thus reduce the total number of ads to review.

[Runfun]

I've literally spend hours and hours to accept and block ads but there's no end coming to it. First it was 20K and now it shows even 30K ads to be reviewed.

Problem is that I believe there are also personalised ads between them. If it was contextual I could easily review them but now... they should show the most showed banners first but I believe they don't.

[keyplyr]

they should show the most showed banners first but I believe they don't.

No, they don't.

You let it get like this... sorry. The same thing happened to me. But the alternative is to let all those awful looking & spammy adds devalue your site. The ad review center is the only way to control which ads get displayed on your pages.

[keyplyr]

The ads in the review center represent the ads *already* being shown on your pages. To get them off your page, you need to block them The review center is one way to do that.

Another way to remove ads from your pages is to install the (free) Google Publisher Toolbar to the Chrome Browser. Then you browse around your pages with the toolbar enabled and zap the ads you don't like. Since you are finding the Adsense review center a bit overwhelming, the toolbar may be a better alternative.

[Runfun]

Lol... I just started again with reviewing but when looking at ads placed since yesterday it showed me 4K. It's impossible to review 4K of ads a day, there are about 150K ad impressions a day so I'll block only those ads I see by coincidence.

[CommandDork]

I've gotten into the habit of manually running through 1,000 ads a day, no more, no less - that's my self-imposed goal. It's helped to keep the ad review center mostly clean after about just five days of this work. Sure I don't like spending the time doing this but if it weeds out junk ads, it will be worth it down the road.

[buckworks]

>> Google Publisher Toolbar
Yes.
>> self-imposed goal
Yes.

Another way to make the job a bit easier is to set up a repeating reminder in your to-do list program. Include the URL of the ad review center so you can start the task in a single click.

When you spot an ad you don't want, be sure to check for related ads. That often turns up ads to block from further on in your list.

[Dimitri]

they should show the most showed banners first but I believe they don't.

When I use the "old" Ad review center, the one which appears under "all sites" section, it looks like ads are shown by frequency of display.

[NickMNS]

After almost two weeks of blocking these categories I can report that it has made no difference. I still see the same volume spammy ads. Placebo?