Self-deprecating Ads

Allow or not?

[keyplyr]

Do you allow these ads on your site?

• Ad Blocker ads
• Turn this page into PDF
• Download this page
• How to report to GDPR
• Image scraper ads
• Download (green button) ads
• Download (text) ads

What other ads to you block?

Note: this discussion is *not* about the merits of the GDPR. It is about allowing certain ads.

[Leosghost]

Those aren't "self depreciating"..that would be ads that say "this ad is crap" etc

[NickMNS]

All these then some.
"1 Trick to get 4 hour hardons" or "Your girlfriend will love it" or a whole slew of variations on the theme.
"The irish are doomed" or "Germans are doomed" or select any country and often in the countries language
"Lisa leaves the Today show" or "Bobby leaves the today show" or any personality is leaving any tv show, also applies to sports personalities leaving their respective team.
"1 Urgent Message Pendings" or some variation on the theme. But I haven't seen many of these recently. These also appear in a variety of languages.
The one thing that is common among all these ads is that the ads are text ads (AdWords) each ad that appears is from a unique AdWords account, and points to a different domain. The target domains are generally unrelated to the content of the ads and I suspect are hacked sites, or scraped copies of legitimate sites.

I personally find it very troubling that these types of ads persist, this has been going on for years and it appears that AdSense/AdWords is not really motivated to stop it. Note that the ads all fit a very specific pattern so they should be easily flaggable by an automated system (using ML or not).

Honorable mentions are dating, horoscope, gambling and other blocked sensitive category ads that seem to get through the filters.

Finally I also block ads related to firearm, firearm accessories and weapons in general, but these tend to be far and few between.

[keyplyr]

Those aren't "self depreciating"..that would be ads that say "this ad is crap" etc

Deprecating to your [self] owned site and business interests.

Just by their nature, some ads drag down a site's branding, reputation, authority. The ads may even be high-earners, but IMO they cause damage to how the audience my think of your site as a whole.

[Leosghost]

Agree , all of those sorts of ads should never be allowed to by adwords, why disallow sites from running adsense due to the site's subject, and yet send those very same subjects as ads to sites which are running adsense..?

Ahh...must be for the money..

Just noticed..I read depreciating for deprecating..either way that would mean ads that said that they were themselves "crap"..

I just ( back in the distant past when I ran adsense ) and now when I see them..refer to them as "scummy ads"..or "saloperie ads"..

[lucy24]

either way that would mean ads that said that they were themselves "crap"

I would include ads that say, in effect, “this site is crap”, since you can hardly expect the average visitor to distinguish between the two. It honestly isn’t as easy as distinguishing between advertising and editorial content in other media.

Anyway, I don't think OP meant deprecating--or, for that matter, depreciating. I think he meant detrimental. (I recently had occasion to send a text message, which I never ever do. Even when I explicitly select a suggested word from the list, it still fills in some entirely different word.)

There's something not-quite-right about advertising an ad blocker.

[Leosghost]

Ah ..yes..I forgot..keplyr suffers from "predictive text"..android's "I'll send what I think you meant, instead of what you wanted or actually typed"...disastrous when it decides to substitute a word from a different language to the one you are actually typing in.. my phone does it constantly..

Back in the halcyon days of adsense actually sending contextual as opposed to personalised ads..these "scummy / saloperie ads" mainly showed up on sites that used the "bottom feeder" ad networks..

Whether that meant that G did not allow them to target the content network previously?
Or, maybe they did not allow them as adwords and thus not as adsense..?
I've never seen them as adwords ads on SERPs..

Problem with 3rd party ad networks of any kind , including adsense on any site..

"You never know when they are going to walk dog crap into your house, on their shoes"

[NickMNS]

A few things to add...

There's something not-quite-right about advertising an ad blocker.

In the same vain, ads promoting AdSense as a means of monetizing one's website. Why on earth would I as an AdSense publisher want to encourage others to compete against me.

Or, maybe they did not allow them as adwords and thus not as adsense..?

As I pointed out above, the ads in questions are all coming from AdWords accounts not third party ad networks. This makes it all the more frustrating.

"You never know when they are going to walk dog crap into your house, on their shoes"

You need to be standing at the door to try and stop them and kick them out before they get past front entrance, ie: Ad-Review on a daily basis. But to put this in perspective I only get maybe a dozen impressions or so a day out of many thousands. So the damage done is somewhat limited, but even one "saloperie-ad" impression is one too many.

@leosghost for someone that doesn't advertise you sure do spend a lot of time discussing it.

[RedBar]

Do you allow these ads on your site?

• Ad Blocker ads - Never seen them
• Turn this page into PDF - Never seen them
• Download this page - Never seen them
• How to report to GDPR - Really? Never seen them
• Image scraper ads - Never seen them
• Download (green button) ads - Hmmm, only seen them a couple of times
• Download (text) ads - Never seen them

Then again, I'm persona non grata with G these days therefore my experiences probably do not count!

[RedBar]

Yay, I've just noticed that it was my current monicker's 3,000th post ... a longgggggggg way to go to catch-up my others !

Any chance of a melding of them all? :-)

[keyplyr]

@RedBar - do you publish Adsense?

The topic is "Do you allow these ads on your site? "

[NickMNS]

@Redbar congrat's on the 3000 I've only just passed 2000 but you have been around 18 month more.

@Keyplyr, based on all the post that RedBar makes about this month being worst than the last, I get the feeling that he pays AdSense to show their ads (i.e.: negative earnings) :)

[keyplyr]

So if a publisher says "Never seen them" then either they aren't paying attention or the ads are targeting a different metric than that publisher. Site visitors are surely seeing these ads (and other awful ads) since they keep coming.

If they weren't making money for someone they wouldn't be in the inventory again and again. I block these ads daily either at the Ad Review Center or with the Google Publisher Toolbar browser extension for Chrome.

[Leosghost]

@leosghost for someone that doesn't advertise you sure do spend a lot of time discussing it.

I was a freelancer in the ad industry for many years when Google's founders were at school ( not college or high school ), so, professional interest..Plus the number of "online" things which "shape the internet" is small..
pron
streaming
youtube,
social media
ecom

The first two are partially ad funded / supported, the 3rd and 4th are entirely ad funded / supported..

ecom ( B2B and B2C ) are what buys the ads that drive the 3rd and 4th, and to a degree the 1st and 2nd..

Sites with no ads ( like some of mine ) are a very small part of what the web has become , particularly since the advent of adsense as a "copy and paste the code and then earn while you sleep"..Adsense also was responsible for the explosion in copyright abuse and scraping in order to run adsense or ads around the scraped stolen content..ads are why Pinterest was launched..every webmaster is touched by the use of ads on the internet, even if they do not run ads..

Google is not an ad agency ( ad agencies , and their "creatives", of which I was one, create ads ) Google are an adbroker, the biggest..

[Leosghost]

As I pointed out above, the ads in questions are all coming from AdWords accounts not third party ad networks. This makes it all the more frustrating.

Yes, I understood perfectly what you wrote previously re the adwords accounts that are behind these "saloperie ads" nowadays..

But as I said..I have never seen any such ads as adwords in SERPs, neither previously, nor now..only as adsense..and I don't remember them back when I ran adsense ( when it was "contextual" ) as being "adsense"..they were , or ads like them, only in the kind of taboola and similar "saloperie ad" slinging networks..When they became much more prevalent ( when sites started becoming saturated with ads ) is when I began using adblockers..later I added script blockers etc when sites decided that allowing others to track me was more important than their content..

ps.. RedBar has been around here longer than most of us , including myself, this is probably his 4th or 5th "nick" at least ( post count would be in 5 figures easily ) ..running adsense all of that time, since adsense began..

[Leosghost]

I perhaps should add, even though that makes it 3 posts in a row..

That, were I still running adsense, I would be blocking every one of them, for the same reasons as both keyplyr and NickMNS..
The having to spend the time blocking them daily ( no matter how short a time that might be ) would be immensely annoying, and , indeed Google themselves could very easily filter them out , so that they never became a problem..

Have any of you been in contact with Google about them ? What was their reply, if any reply was made..?

The review centre was supposed to be so that publishers could choose which categories to display or not display, it was not supposed to be where you had to sort "saloperie ads" from ads..

[RedBar]

Site visitors are surely seeing these ads (and other awful ads) since they keep coming.

That's quite possible, just because I am not seeing them does not mean everyone else is not as well. FWIW the ad targeting on my sites generally seem to be spot on and from the preview centre most of the ads are widget related.

Is it the widget niche maybe? I have no idea however I also have to say that I rarely see these type of ads on other sites.

Do these ads appear on sites with a minimum PVs threshold?

Is it a USA thing?

I get the feeling that he pays AdSense to show their ads (i.e.: negative earnings) :)

Not quite yet, it now takes me 2 months to earn less than I used to in half a day, it's a good job that ad revenue is not my source of income!

[justpassing]

What other ads to you block?

- All ads mentioning : PDF, Windows Drivers, Audio/Video conversion
- Facebook ads
- "Download Free" ads (which do not even mention what is proposed for download)
- Mindspark ads (this is often them the "green download" button)
- Ads which are excessively sexist