DMNews has an article today that reports that Google’s Adsense team is testing a new system with a small number of it’s publishers that allows them to signal to Google what type of site that they are running in order to help Adsense target better ads:
‘Though AdSense already uses signals based on the content of Web sites, such as headlines and font sizes, to generate ads, this would let advertisers tailor ads based on their users’ demographics and other signals, which are yet to be determined.
“We realized there is benefit in allowing publishers to tell us more about the page, [information that is] not directly on the page,” Rajaram said. “This will give publishers potentially more control over what ads are being shown.”
The type of signal would depend on the type of Web site. A music site may send Google information that its users are mainly young males, for example, and Google would use that information to target ads.
“They could send us a list of topics that users of this site are interested in,” Rajaram said.
Eventually, Google will roll out the program to more publishers, Rajaram said.’
This is a great idea and if implemented will be good news for many bloggers who constantly complain about getting ads for ‘Blogging Products’ on their blogs. Of course it could also be open to abuse with publishers telling Adsense there site is about some a topic that is high paying and unrelated to their blog. Definitely a story to watch.
I think I’ve had some experience of that. For some weeks now the front page of my small business related site has been displaying ads for spiritual development and help in times of divorce – hardly the sort of thing that’s going to sell well on a small business site.
I tweaked and fiddled – changed the title in the metas – changed the title on the page – reworded some of the text on the page – changed words in the Meta description and ended up with … ads about growing flowers.
Finally I wrote to them over the weekend and they replied last late yesterday and told me they had fixed it at their end.
Sure enough it’s now displaying appropriate Adsense ads.
Their customer service was great but I would love to know what was on my page was triggering those inappropriate ads.
I’m quite the opposite when it comes to adsense – the ads seems very well targeted and relevant. That isn’t to say I wouldn’t like to have further control over specific aspects of the ads, but I can see a potential for sites taking advantage and getting inappropriate ads served up.
It would be nice however to diversify slightly on the ads – perhaps serve up adverts that would be of benefit to your readers that would not normally get served up – ie your site talks a bout a specific make of car, yet your readers might be interested in a similar model from another manufacturer, or be interested in a bank loan because they want to buy one etc. The only way to get either of those served up currently would be to start manipulating the content, which is akin to spamming to get the result you want.
I suppose if google were to introduce some sort of webmaster targeting, they would put check and balances in place to ensure that no one was manipulating the system. High paying keywords totally unrelated to your site probably won’t pay anyway – why would person A interested in widgets click on an advert for (insert high paying ad here) when its nothing to do with widgets?
I should say that we have Adsense ads spread across over a hundred pages in everything from women’s issue sites, hobby sites, alternate lifestyle sites right down to all the pages on my small business blog and that index page on the small business blog was the only one that had inappropriate ads.
That’s why I was so baffled.
Try removing the “b” word from everywhere on your page and try not to mention the “b” word too often in your posts. It helps keep “b” related advertising to a minimum.
[…] about your site According to a post over on […]
One simple thing that would solve 90% of adsense problems is if Google would let us say what a page is NOT about..
But I’m glad they are doing this and hope that it is on a page basis and integrated with sitemaps.. but I bet it won’t be :-)
“Adsense Feed”
“Adsense Feed”
There is a new option in Blogger – to “Insert your adsense feed script” or something.
http://www.theblahbrain.com