Google is launching support for programmatic bidding on Limited ads

Email received

[guarriman3]

Hi,

I've just received an email from Google AdSense team, announcing that, in the first quarter of 2024, Google will begin to support programmatic auctions on inventory that meets the requirements to display limited ads (https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/14210870).

I've read it twice, but no idea about the consequences of this. Could anybody help me to understand it?

[not2easy]

It came up earlier today in a discussion about the change from CPC to CPM: [webmasterworld.com...]

I'll let them know you've started a discussion here.

[dolcevita]

@allhearts

Since I'm using CF, I'll probably opt out of that option. If Adsense reduces the amount of payment, by say more than 5% compared to the average earnings, then I will experiment. But we will see how it will work in 2024.

[allhearts]

@dolcevita

CF? Sorry, I don't know what that is.

[allhearts]

If anyone knows/understands what the email from Google means and how it will/or not benefit publishers, can you explain it in simple terms?

Thank you.

[dolcevita]

Allhearts

CF = Cloudflare

It has a very good mechanism against bots and fake traffic. With a little fine tuning, it can block 80% - 85% of malicious bots and fake traffic.

[allhearts]

@dolcevita,

thank you for that, I also use cloudflare, so that feature google is talking about on the email is regarding fake traffic for the most part?

[dolcevita]

Here is a bit more explained with Limited ads -
"the ability to serve ads in a limited way. Only when Programmatic limited ads are turned on, invalid traffic detection-only cookies & local storage will be used to help defend against fraud and abuse. Google does not require publishers to obtain consent for this use case."

However, I'm not entirely sure what that means and how it will look in practice

[support.google.com...]

[allhearts]

@dolcevita,

Thank you for the explanation, really appreciated.

[Conro]

I don't have understand. If the user not accept the cookie, the banner adsense appear but limited (no personalized ecc)?

[Senechal]

From what I understand this is what's going on here: (Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of these points. This is just my executive summary after taking a deep-dive through all the docs)

1) Google will be introducing realtime bidding on inventory eligible for Limited ads starting in Q1 2024

2) We need to know about this because of the changes in third-party tracking laws which Chrome is also implementing in Q1 2024

3) Because of differing legal requirements in different jurisdictions, this needs to be a feature we can opt-out of — and publishers need to decide for themselves if they want to opt-out.

4) It will be ENABLED BY DEFAULT. In other words, if you want to take advantage of the new realtime bidding, you don't need to do anything.

5) If you want to DISABLE it, navigate to Brand Safety > Content > Blocking controls > Ad serving. (NOTE: THIS OPTION IS NOT YET AVAILABLE) This is where it will appear when it becomes available to opt-out.


Aside from legal reasons, why should any of us care about this?

Earnings: It may or may not result in more ad revenue. There's really no way to know this in advance. (IMHO, the loss of third-party tracking is almost certainly going to result in a loss in revenue for most publishers — and a decrease in industry-wide ad-spend. So ultimately this new RTB option is not likely to be the biggest factor influencing our 2024 revenues.)

Ad Quality: Ultimately this type of RTB is going to result in ads which are less related to our sites AND less related to user interests. So we might start seeing a whole bunch of really crappy "payday loans" and other highly unrelated ads appearing all over our sites ... We're going to have to wait and see...


Whether or not any of us care is obviously up to each of us. Whether or not this results in a revenue increase also remains to be seen.

2024 is going to be a year of very big changes. Buckle up everyone, and good luck.

[Conro]

Read this is explain all [searchenginejournal.com...]

[netmeg]

All my sites are run through CloudFlare but I intend to test this to see if there's a noticeable difference.