RJM62
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2007
- Messages
- 13,157
- Location
- Upstate New York
- Display Name
Display name:
Geek on the Hill
Okay, so maybe I'm beating a dead horse. But I was updating one of my own sites and couldn't help noticing something about the ongoing irrelevancy of some of the Adsense ad selections.
Look at the first screenshot. The page is about rat extermination using rodenticides, as it appeared in Firefox in normal mode. (Here's a direct link to the image that's a little clearer.) Look at the ads on the left. None of them are in any way relevant to the page content. (The rectangular ad on the right is generated by a script that I wrote myself, so you can blame me for that one.)
I usually don't use Google search other than when checking rankings for clients, which I was doing yesterday, and I forgot to switch back to Duck Duck Go after I was done. So I did my searches on Google since then. I searched for health insurance options, which explains the first ad (for long-term care). I also made a comment on a Google forum about my suspicion that a particular company (not Google) was a criminal enterprise, which may explain the second ad (about public arrest records).
As for the remaining three ads, I have no idea where they came from. All I know is that they're totally irrelevant to both the site content and my recent search activity.
Now look at the second screenshot, which I took while logged in via a proxy server (to change my IP address) and while using Firefox in Private Mode (to hide my history). Without any information about my identity or user history, Google chose a fairly relevant image ad for mousetraps. (Okay, the page is about chemical rat control and the ad is for mousetraps; but at least mice and rats are both rodents, and trapping is a way of controlling them; so I'll call it relevant.)
But how many ordinary users view the Web using a proxy server and Private Mode? Most of them are seeing ads based on user history, which are more likely to look like the first screenshot with the irrelevant ads.
This is, in my opinion, the real reason for Google's recent decline in profits and the steady migration of Adsense publishers to other platforms. Their ad selection algorithm weights user history too much -- and doesn't even do it well -- resulting in highly irrelevant ads that visitors no longer click.
I've been preaching this ad nauseum (pun intended) on the Google forums for at least a year, but no one listens.
I really don't get it.
-Rich
Look at the first screenshot. The page is about rat extermination using rodenticides, as it appeared in Firefox in normal mode. (Here's a direct link to the image that's a little clearer.) Look at the ads on the left. None of them are in any way relevant to the page content. (The rectangular ad on the right is generated by a script that I wrote myself, so you can blame me for that one.)
I usually don't use Google search other than when checking rankings for clients, which I was doing yesterday, and I forgot to switch back to Duck Duck Go after I was done. So I did my searches on Google since then. I searched for health insurance options, which explains the first ad (for long-term care). I also made a comment on a Google forum about my suspicion that a particular company (not Google) was a criminal enterprise, which may explain the second ad (about public arrest records).
As for the remaining three ads, I have no idea where they came from. All I know is that they're totally irrelevant to both the site content and my recent search activity.
Now look at the second screenshot, which I took while logged in via a proxy server (to change my IP address) and while using Firefox in Private Mode (to hide my history). Without any information about my identity or user history, Google chose a fairly relevant image ad for mousetraps. (Okay, the page is about chemical rat control and the ad is for mousetraps; but at least mice and rats are both rodents, and trapping is a way of controlling them; so I'll call it relevant.)
But how many ordinary users view the Web using a proxy server and Private Mode? Most of them are seeing ads based on user history, which are more likely to look like the first screenshot with the irrelevant ads.
This is, in my opinion, the real reason for Google's recent decline in profits and the steady migration of Adsense publishers to other platforms. Their ad selection algorithm weights user history too much -- and doesn't even do it well -- resulting in highly irrelevant ads that visitors no longer click.
I've been preaching this ad nauseum (pun intended) on the Google forums for at least a year, but no one listens.
I really don't get it.
-Rich
