Nessie Arrow Penalty - Course of Action?

[chrizzo]

Beginning September our CTR and revenues plummetted like crazy. Now 6 weeks later Adsense confirmed that it was in fact a penalty and we lost the nessie arrows. They asked us to remove a 300x600 Banner (3 years no problem on same design) which was close to Arrows, which we did. CTR is not coming back though, and the Adsense team is unresponsive.

My question is, what would you do now ? We are not a small website, last month we had around 10 Million Impressions, mostly from Asia. We always only monetized with adsense, but with the CTR gone this is not a profitable option anymore.

I am thinking of implementing DFP with ADX and maybe Header Bidding and other ad networks.

Do you have any ideas on what do in my situation? Im getting a bit desperate...

[robzilla]

3 years no problem on same design

This doesn't really matter. It could be the system only caught wind of it just now, but it may always have been a "problem". With growing pressure from advertisers and the number of publishers ever increasing, they certainly seem to be policing more strictly these days.

You're at their mercy, essentially, so go out of your way to make sure your site and all ads on it comply with the program policies, and to describe the changes you've made to the AdSense team. Don't just say, "OK, I fixed it, let me have my arrows back". Don't go overboard, but make clear that you take it seriously.

[NickMNS]

Adsense confirmed that it was in fact a penalty

and

CTR is not coming back though,

You were penalized for an action that resulted in an inflated CTR. Now you have corrected the situation, which is great. The CTR your are getting now is most likely the "natural" or expected CTR. Why would you expect to get back to the level of the inflated CTR. What would be the point of the penalty?

That said, with 10M impressions you probably have many options open to you. Implementing DFP (now Google Ad Manager) and header bidding will likely result in an improvement.

[chrizzo]

Hi Nick,

The 300x600 banner we took off was not our money maker. The money maker is another ad.

And we corrected the situation but the nessie arrows are not coming back....

[justpassing]

nessie arrows

Adsense no longer really uses "nessie arrows", on nearly all sites I visits (not mine), they use the new format, like reported here : [webmasterworld.com...]

[NickMNS]

but the nessie arrows are not coming back....

I don't think the disappearance of the nessie arrows is related to the penalty. I think these arrows may be gone or on their way out for everybody.

[chrizzo]

Hey,

I think you might be right - thats what their team said though. You were penalized and "lost the nessie" arrows...

[justpassing]

I never contacted the Adsense team myself, so I can't tell for sure,but, I often read about people complaining that their answers are often inaccurate. So may be they didn't really know, and someone manually checked your site, and assumed the issue could be because this ad block was not compliant.

[chrizzo]

Maybe. Actually I see the same ads on my competitor pages on mobile and they do have the arrows. I dont have them on the exact same ads...