RJM62
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2007
- Messages
- 13,157
- Location
- Upstate New York
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Geek on the Hill
Google is really starting to annoy me.
Most of the sites that I personally own have Adsense ads on them. I've been an Adsense publisher for... I don't even remember how long. Probably 10 years or so.
But in the past few months, my revenue from Adsense ads has gone down about 50 percent -- despite rather dramatic increases in traffic on some of the sites.
At the same time, my income from Amazon and from privately-placed ads have skyrocketed, and my income from Commission Junction has gone up somewhat, as well. So overall, I'm in better shape; but Adsense revenue is becoming an increasingly trivial part of my income. When you consider that my visitors actually have to buy something (rather than simply click an ad) for me to get paid by Amazon or CJ, that's pretty remarkable.
I was wondering why this was and giving myself headaches trying to figure it out from a publisher's point of view. But the answer came to me while simply surfing the Web as a user: Adsense is weighting user history and geolocation more heavily than context relevancy when deciding which ads to display.
I noticed this a few days ago, actually. When I visit other sites that use Adsense, the ads I'm seeing are increasingly based on my recent browsing and search history, rather than the content of the sites on which they appear. This happened over and over again: The ads seem almost never to have anything to do with site context any more.
So then I visited one of my own technology-related sites and saw an image ad for a party planner in a nearby town right over the Pennsylvania line. The only problem is that the page is about anti-static procedures. I'm not sure why Google thinks I'm planning a party, but I do vaguely recall searching for something having to do with someone's birthday a few days ago.
I also keep getting ads for arc welders on pages whose subject matter ranges from installing a motherboard to trapping nuisance animals. The only reason I can think of is that I searched for information on how to weld a fuel tank last week.
And just a few minutes ago, a Google image ad for Carbonite came up on a page about pest bird control on the same site as the previous example. Why? Because I was searching for information about online backup providers a few days ago.
Google may think that weighting user history heavily in selecting ads will increase revenue, but it won't. It's a very stupid idea, in fact, for three reasons.
Firstly, it's bad enough (for publishers) when Adsense misinterprets content on a page and puts up the wrong ads: for example, filling the ad space with ads for process servers (the kind who serve papers on you) when the page is about good processors for web servers (the kind that serve files to you). You lose one page of potential revenue then. But when Google misinterprets a user's searching and browsing habits in the same way, the error is more persistent and results in irrelevant ads popping up on multiple pages.
Secondly, what I was interested in last week, yesterday, or this morning may have nothing to do with what interests me right now. If I'm on a site about trapping squirrels in my attic, then probably I'm actually interested in trapping a squirrel that's in my attic -- not buying an arc welder or planning a birthday party.
Finally, many computers (especially in homes) are used by multiple users who share the same user account. No, that's not a good way to do things, but many people do it anyway. So now in addition to all the other ways that user tracking reduces ad relevancy, we also have to deal with the added confusion of multiple users and their varied browsing and search histories being weighted into the ad selection process.
I'm going to have to delve into my Adsense settings tomorrow to see if there's any way to disable ad selection based on user tracking, and make the process entirely dependent on page content. If not, I'm seriously considering pulling the code off the pages.
-Rich
Most of the sites that I personally own have Adsense ads on them. I've been an Adsense publisher for... I don't even remember how long. Probably 10 years or so.
But in the past few months, my revenue from Adsense ads has gone down about 50 percent -- despite rather dramatic increases in traffic on some of the sites.
At the same time, my income from Amazon and from privately-placed ads have skyrocketed, and my income from Commission Junction has gone up somewhat, as well. So overall, I'm in better shape; but Adsense revenue is becoming an increasingly trivial part of my income. When you consider that my visitors actually have to buy something (rather than simply click an ad) for me to get paid by Amazon or CJ, that's pretty remarkable.
I was wondering why this was and giving myself headaches trying to figure it out from a publisher's point of view. But the answer came to me while simply surfing the Web as a user: Adsense is weighting user history and geolocation more heavily than context relevancy when deciding which ads to display.
I noticed this a few days ago, actually. When I visit other sites that use Adsense, the ads I'm seeing are increasingly based on my recent browsing and search history, rather than the content of the sites on which they appear. This happened over and over again: The ads seem almost never to have anything to do with site context any more.
So then I visited one of my own technology-related sites and saw an image ad for a party planner in a nearby town right over the Pennsylvania line. The only problem is that the page is about anti-static procedures. I'm not sure why Google thinks I'm planning a party, but I do vaguely recall searching for something having to do with someone's birthday a few days ago.
I also keep getting ads for arc welders on pages whose subject matter ranges from installing a motherboard to trapping nuisance animals. The only reason I can think of is that I searched for information on how to weld a fuel tank last week.
And just a few minutes ago, a Google image ad for Carbonite came up on a page about pest bird control on the same site as the previous example. Why? Because I was searching for information about online backup providers a few days ago.
Google may think that weighting user history heavily in selecting ads will increase revenue, but it won't. It's a very stupid idea, in fact, for three reasons.
Firstly, it's bad enough (for publishers) when Adsense misinterprets content on a page and puts up the wrong ads: for example, filling the ad space with ads for process servers (the kind who serve papers on you) when the page is about good processors for web servers (the kind that serve files to you). You lose one page of potential revenue then. But when Google misinterprets a user's searching and browsing habits in the same way, the error is more persistent and results in irrelevant ads popping up on multiple pages.
Secondly, what I was interested in last week, yesterday, or this morning may have nothing to do with what interests me right now. If I'm on a site about trapping squirrels in my attic, then probably I'm actually interested in trapping a squirrel that's in my attic -- not buying an arc welder or planning a birthday party.
Finally, many computers (especially in homes) are used by multiple users who share the same user account. No, that's not a good way to do things, but many people do it anyway. So now in addition to all the other ways that user tracking reduces ad relevancy, we also have to deal with the added confusion of multiple users and their varied browsing and search histories being weighted into the ad selection process.
I'm going to have to delve into my Adsense settings tomorrow to see if there's any way to disable ad selection based on user tracking, and make the process entirely dependent on page content. If not, I'm seriously considering pulling the code off the pages.
-Rich
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