Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I've been a bad, bad adsense publisher. Up until now, I hadn't been making full use of the Competitive Ad Filter.
So last night I finally got around to checking out more than one or two of the landing pages from the adsense ads on my sites, and I was horrified at what I found. I'll get to that in a minute, but first I'll tell you about the sneakiest and most blatent example of drawing attention to adsense ads I've ever seen.
I found one landing page through an ad on my site that had 3 adsense leaderboards with images above each one and animated arrows pointing at the ads. On a 19" monitor with 1280X1024 res, the entire screen was filled with adsense and flashing arrows. Upon opening the source code, I found framesets stuffed with keywords that didn't show up on the page.
Needless to say, they've been reported to the adsense team.
Anyway, on to my experiences.
On a 600+ page tech blog, I methodically checked about 2/3 of the pages, copying, cutting the landing page urls and visiting the sites.
Here's the criteria I used for which URLs to place in my competitive ad filter:
1. Obvious MFAs - sites with little or no content, 2 large rectangle ads at the top, very few if any navigation or links other than the ads, etc.
2. Domain parking sites - the landing page is nothing more than a list of ads, like overture or searchfeed ads, whatever.
3. Pseudo search engines results pages, similar to #2 above but posing as a search results page.
4. eBay ads or shopping portal sites that are essentially glorified affiliate sites. You've seen them - 50,000 products listed from a few hundred different online retailers.
5. Ads with phone numbers - don't try and blindside me by thinking you're getting free leads off my site visitors. I get paid when someone CLICKS on an ad, not when someone calls you!
6. Ads keyworded and targeting my sites demographic, but leading to sites that are waaaay off topic.
7. Other tech blogs trying to pick up my traffic - competitive sites in the most pure definition.
8. Marketing, MLM, affiliate promoters, survey sites, free reports used to build email lists, forums, blah blah...
9. People site targetting me with a single big bold ad in a 2 or 4 ad unit - I nuked any I found.
I DID leave a couple ringtome ads and sites out, because a percentage of my pages talk about cellphones and accessories, so the ads are related.
All in all, I put just over 100 urls into the competitive ads filter. My guess is that about 1/3 of the ads displayed on my site were crap.
Results after about 24 hrs?
EPC doubled + a little more, and CTR is up by around 25-30% for similar traffic as yesterday, and as far as I can see by spot checking random pages - there's still lots of ad inventory to cover all my pages.
All in all, compared to yesterday, I have an approximate 160% increase in revenue from that one site so far and the day isn't even over - again, with about the same traffic numbers and quality of traffic.
I'm tired now, and babbling, so the numbers are approximate but NOT exaggerated.
Obviously, I'd need to give the changes some time and fine-tune the filter, but I've never seen such an instant and dramatic boost in numbers across the board after any other changes I've made before.
It's simply mindblowing how much crap is out there and how many people are littering legit publishers sites with this stuff.
If this new adwords landing pages quality control thing I've been reading about makes it less profitable for MFAs, I'm all for it.
Now I'm going to bed, after 30+ hours babysitting adsense ads and blogging. Good night, and I hope this post inspires a few people to use those filters.
-P-
I guess I am one of the lucky ones. I have only had to place 3 ads in my filter. I have competitors ads on my site who sell the same types of products I do, so I am thankful to say that I don't have to waste time babysitting those ads.
Great post!
But other than that, an impressive list of things to look for when blocking sites!
However...
5. Ads with phone numbers - don't try and blindside me by thinking you're getting free leads off my site visitors.
While I fully understand your view, I just wanted to point out that there have been some arguments here at WW whether or not to block ads with phone numbers. The main reason to not block them is that they provide credibility to the ad (like "if you can call the advertiser, it must be a valid business from real people and not a fake search engine or MFA").
And I agree here. I don't buy the idea that anyone sees a three line text ad on a web page, runs for the telephone and starts dialing the number mentioned - without clicking the ad first to see any details of the offer.
As the visitors are online at your site, they will click the ad to see more of the offer. Later perhaps, yes, they might call - if the offer is right.
Of course, I can not comment on the ads you have seen on your site; it's just my opinion to not block such advertisers.
EPC doubled + a little more, and CTR is up by around 25-30% for similar traffic as yesterday
I sincerly hope this trend continues for you. I have been very lazy recently, so some dreaded eBay and MFA ads could slip into my sites again. I noticed a decrease in EPC over the past few days, and I went to look into the site. But I did not have to look for very long to see them. Well, have fun while enjoying my filter. :-)
Ah, and one more recommendation for those who follow the path of exseo when it comes to filtering: I suggest to keep an Excel sheet of your filter list, complete with Alexa rank, domain owner, date of blocking and reason for it. This may help you determining which advertisers to release when your filter list nears its dreaded "200 slots" limit. (Will we ever get more space or better tools?)
You also have to consider the long term effect of smart pricing on your revenue. I know I can't prove this in any way, but I think that given a recent history of good conversions, smart pricing gives you a more stable epc. Yes, it still varies but it varies a lot less wildly these days than before I started blocking.
And I'd agree with the others re the phone numbers in ads. I personally wouldn't block them when there are so many more deserving causes to put in the paltry 200 limit filter :).
And Google, in case you are listening in, just a reminder that we do need effective tools to kick MFA's off. Now you have at last accepted the negative effect of their presence on user experience and revenue how about implementing some?
At the risk of sounding a bit negative, my income climbed up approx 30 to 50% beginning about 2 days ago, so it might be just pure coincidence that yours has gone up after tweaking your filter list. If your eCPM continues to remain high in the days and weeks to come (and I wish they do for you!), then it can be concluded that the filter list was effective.
That ad was VERY relevant to my widget site without being a direct competitor that it almost blew me away, soooo, I let it live :)
Moral to this story? Don't throw the baby away with the bath water.
Ann
The end result? Over a period of weeks my revenue started to fall. Over a two month period revenue fell about 35%.
I was sure it must be some other reason, so I did a test.
I saved my block list as a txt file, so I could put it back if need be and then removed all the blocks.
Revenue slowly started to climb and within 30 days or so was almost back to normal. Now after 3 months overall revenue is up 10%. So, I'm not putting those blocks back in.
It pains me some to see those lousy ads on the site and I wish Google would get rid of them or pay me more for them, but I'm not going to block them if Google doesn't.
