How to influence the type of Ads that are displayed

and stop my competitors from showing up

[glitterball]

This is going to be hard to explain without going into specifics...

I have a site which offers a new take on a very popular type of internet service.
My site offers this service in conjunction with a new technology.

I would like Adsense to display Ads that are related to this new technology, however at present it is only displaying my competitor's Ads (that offer this internet service minus the new technology bit). Since I am offering for free, what they are charging for, the click through rate isn't going to be great!

Now, I know that I can login to Adsense and block the competitors URL's, but believe me that is totally impractical in this case - there are 1000's.

Is there any way that I can influence the type of Ad's without ruining the text on my site?

[petra]

It seems to me that if you have this new technology to offer, you should be charging for it and not serving adsense ads which will have surfers clicking away from your site ;)

[glitterball]

Charging is not an option and the description is vague so as not to mention specifics.

Is there no way to influence the type of Ads displayed?

[HughMungus]

I've seen people put a word or phrase immediately before their adsense ads. e.g.

Widgets:

[Adsense Ads]

Can't hurt to try it.

[glitterball]

Thanks HughMungus, that was the king of suggestion I wanted.

I have added 2 keywords just before the Ads, I will let you know if it works.

Hopefully I don't get penalised for hidden text (the 2 keywords are the same color as the background);-)

[jomaxx]

Not a good idea. In fact a terrible idea. I'm certain you can come up with an equally good way to put some helper text in close proximity to the AdSense block without resorting to hidden text.

P.S. Don't make the text about the ads, which HughMungus' example kind of suggests. That's another good way to get in trouble with Google. It should just be a word or phrase that is seamlessly part of your overall web page, but happens to be adjacent to the AdSense code in the HTML. That's not trickery; it's just careful design.

[Tropical Island]

it is only displaying my competitor's Ads

You can also block the URL's of your competitors.

[somerset]

personally, I have found the title makes a huge difference to adverts displayed, especially when that title is reflected also in a <h1> tag.

[Jenstar]

Hopefully I don't get penalised for hidden text (the 2 keywords are the same color as the background);-)

Well, it is against the AdSense terms AND the regular search webmaster guidelines. So keep in mind you could lose both your account and your rankings if you use hidden text ;)

[glitterball]

You can also block the URL's of your competitors.

As I stated before there are 1000's and since they are different in every territory it is not an option.

I will get rid of the hidden text then, but quite frankly it will ruin the design of my pages if I put text in this place.

The titles of my pages describe accurately the content of the pages, so I am reluctant to change this.

As stated in a other threads, a few stop words would sort this out.

[glitterball]

Another way of describing what we doing is to say that we are a 'Widget Activity' site.
I would like the Ads to be about 'Widgets' and not about the 'Activity'.

At the moment all of the Ads are related to the activity, but none related to 'Widgets'.

If I remove the word 'Activity' from the title, it won't make any sense.

There are plenty of advertisers related to this type of widget (but more related to 'Activity').

Do any of the other Ad brokers have stop words?

[winglian]

I had meant to post a reply here... but i posted a new topic instead... here's the thread... [webmasterworld.com...]