Google have driven them away by allowing them to be the victims of non-converting MFA's, and now QS has simply made things a lot worse

allowing themselves to be victims? Google? " victims "?! haha i don't think so, they know exactly what they are doing and don't give a damn what we think as long as bucks keep rolling in.

Sorry - should have been clearer here. I didn't mean to imply Google are a victim. That 'aint gonna happen of course! What I meant was that the advertisers have been victims of non-converting MFA clicks, so have left. Advertisers very much are the victims of the arbitrage game.

As regards waiting until October, unfortunately whatever changes Google make are irrelevant - the advertisers have left the building. They first have to persuade the advertisers that it's safe to dip a toe in the water again. Once there are advetisers it might make a difference, but right now all the api change will do is kill of the MFA's AS WELL. Then we are down to PSA's. To be honest I'd rather show psa's than some of the junk!

I don't blame you a bit. There's no adequate compensation for losing the integrity of our sites.

[edited by: netmeg at 4:36 pm (utc) on Aug. 24, 2006]

I find that most of the crappy MFA ads are during the summer months. That is why my eCPM is also lower.

We all need to wait until the fall or October starts to see if things improve.

David-uk;

You're over-generalizing.

Adsense may suck for you at the moment, but that doesn't mean it sucks for all, or even most, publishers or advertizers. Or that the advertizers in general

As EFV alluded to, some publishers are doing fine. That's really nothing nothing new, for many of us Adsense has been pretty consistent.

I wonder what makes the difference?

You're over-generalizing. Adsense may suck for you at the moment, but that doesn't mean it sucks for all, or even most, publishers or advertizers. Or that the advertizers in general

I'm talking about my specific niche - not Google in general. I am aware that others are doing fine, and I'm not suggesting that my experience is universal - I'm sure it isn't.

As EFV alluded to, some publishers are doing fine. That's really nothing nothing new, for many of us Adsense has been pretty consistent. I wonder what makes the difference?

In my niche, it was believed certain keywords were good payers. I'm pretty certain that was never the case, but I understand that the Overture tool said that it was anyway. So lo and behold, every man and his dog made an MFA to target those keywords, and other similar or related ones. Clearly the advertisers of genuine products and services pay for the clicks made on MFA's, and clearly they no longer want to.

Hence the keywords relative to my site have very few ads, hence me removing adsense, but hopefully not forever.

I can only say that if your keywords have suffered a huge number of MFA's trying to chase the ever receding pot of gold, then you will know the story only too well. If this hasn't happened to your keywords, then Adsense is probably still a good way of making money for you.

I'm just curious, because some of us continue to do well with AdSense aren't swamped with MFA ads. It would be interesting to know what content areas are most affected by the problems you've been having.

Ditto

Sorry to hear about your troubles David. Take a deep breath...well maybe take a break, and see if you can develop some all new stategies to come out of that bad patch. Like europeforvisitors, I am in a travel niche and don't experience that kind of problem.

Martini:

Why not clear out your MFA list and leave it like that for a significant time. Not just a weekend or five days during a holiday weekend. Clear out that filter and leave it clear for a month.

I am wondering, really, why should this approach work?

When I remove my filter list, it takes just a few hours for the garbage ads to re-appear. And these unblocked ads are "Total Garbage" (good movie title BTW). Why would these go away after a few days or weeks?

You see, I bet you came across an advertiser who runs 39,000+ domains with nothing but ads on each single domain (perfectly targeted to the keywords, I admit, but not fulfilling the ad promise). Even on niche topics they easily fill up to twenty slots in your filter list, because their domains cover the same topics with different ads and domains.

Putting on my "user hat" now - I would refrain from clicking any Adsense ad right after the second or third useless click. Users learn fast. Very fast.

So, yes, I would be interested to hear what makes you think that leaving the fliter list clean for "a month" improves overall turnover?

David:

This is a very sad thread, especially as this can happen to any (legit) publisher. Just getting sick of the way things work (or rather, not work).

I have always tried to keep a positive feeling towards Adsense, even if it is difficult at times. Even though the summer was far from great, I have not experienced the effects you saw (fortunately), mainly because my niche has still plenty of (legit) advertisers seeing good ROI on their campaigns.

But from your posts I realize that your tiredness could happen to me too.

In my niche, it was believed certain keywords were good payers. I'm pretty certain that was never the case, but I understand that the Overture tool said that it was anyway. So lo and behold, every man and his dog made an MFA to target those keywords, and other similar or related ones.

I think that's the root of your problem. The get-rich-quick folks aren't very imaginative and tend to follow what they think is the obvious money--whether it's Viagra, debt consolidation, mesothelioma, or something else that they've read about in a "What keywords pay best?" forum thread. It's just your bad luck to have a legitimate site on a topic that attracts MFAs.

[edited by: europeforvisitors at 6:14 pm (utc) on Aug. 24, 2006]

Man, I feel ya, I being in this mfa ads hole for the last 3 months no end inside. I completly switch to yahoo, Thank god I am on the usa, I hope you guys get yahoo soon.

One thing yahoo ads may not be as relevant as google's, but they pay 4x times as much and they for the most part, the ones I have check, offer that service that the ads actually advertise unlike googles mfa crap.

mfa's need cheap keywords in order to survive... adwords has lowered the minimum bid to $.01, but overture raised it's minimum bid from $.01 in 2003 to $.10 now? as you might expect, there aren't very many mfa complaints on ypn forums.

i ran adsense in several sectors, and one of 'em was swamped with mfa's, so i agree that the niche you are in is a factor.

but even in my best adsense niche, it might have been the lack of new advertisers that was also hurting my epc... for that niche, ypn has been pulling in more new advertisers than adsense publishers are getting.

since i had priced most of the mfa's out of that niche, where were the new adwords advertisers? i can certainly see 'em in the google search results, but not on my content pages... what i don't see on google search results are things like junk ringtone ads, and completely irrelevant ads that should have never been mixed in with the targeted ads... that mix of untargeted/targeted garbage is s.o.p. for adsense publishers these days.

so the lack of decent adsense advertisers is more than just an mfa issue... it's a sea change in the way that google is serving up the ads to the content side of the fence.

I think that's the root of your problem. The get-rich-quick folks aren't very imaginative and tend to follow what they think is the obvious money--whether it's Viagra, debt consolidation, mesothelioma, or something else that they've read about in a "What keywords pay best?" forum thread. It's just your bad luck to have a legitimate site on a topic that attracts MFAs.

Yup - that's my general feeling and why I've shared this here. My site existed before adsense, will continue to exist, and at some point I'm hoping to go back to having google ads on it, but not until I can see relevant ads. I'll keep seeing who is advertising as I check my position on serps for my keywords, and when / if the advertisers re-appear I'll try again.

I sincerely hope that whatever niches everybody here is in don't get attacked by the gt rich quick brigade. Unfortunately, I don't think my niche is unique - many of you too are under threat. Maybe not now, but at some point.

[...You're over-generalizing.

Adsense may suck for you at the moment, but that doesn't mean it sucks for all, or even most, publishers or advertizers. Or that the advertizers in general ....]

That is probably a GENERAL issue, because it could just affect any other sector on the AS network not necessary the specific sector david in.

It is a matter of time for spreading to other sectors when there is not sufficient, proper and timely measures.

You're no doubt right about fewer advertisers. On the flip side of the coin, for the dozen or so AdWords accounts I manage for clients (all normal business or educational sites with either info, products or services, and none of them have AdSense on them), I only have two still in the Content Network at all, and only on a very limited basis. The conversions weren't there, the ad matching was abysmal, and I kept seeing my ads showing up on websites like Best10Sites.mfa - and I couldn't in good conscience waste my client's money that way. We're all over Search still - and I have pretty much unlimited budgets for at least four of the clients - but until Google does something about cleaning up the mfa/arbitrage mess, our budget isn't going into Content. And the whole situation hurts me on a personal level too, because I have half a dozen sites with AS on them for myself. But there it is.

You're no doubt right about fewer advertisers

That could be true. It's hard to tell for us because we keep adblocks to a minimum, and they are always filled with good quality ads and sites that are paying well. So, we aren't seeing "fewer advertisers".

I think the CAUSE of less advertisers and less adsense money is harder to figure. At the beginning of the year, we decided to begin the move "out of adsense", and towards sales generation to balance off the income. Changes to our site layouts, reduction of ads, etc.

We did this because I anticipated that we were moving into a shakeout period (this has happened before on the net), where advertisers get smarter and realize that their initial expectations aren't being met, start tracking things more carefully, look at ROI data, AND realize that if they are bidding $7.00 per click, it's not sustainable.

So, I think part of this is advertisers getting smarter and more sophisticated.

This is all independent of anything google has done or not done.

I expect the trend to continue, but I also expect google to address advertiser concerns about quality, AND I also expect them to do something about the junk sites in adsense.

I'm guessing we'll see continued difficulties for the rest of this year and partway into the next for publisher revenue (generally, of course - some people will drop a bit, some will get killed, some will increase).

Hopefully the issue of junk ads on sites will also be addressed. I share David's concerns about what is being displayed, although, as I said, with limited ad blocks on a page, judicious use of the filter, we simply aren't having them displayed on our sites as near as I can tell.

I haven't noticed any signs of a decline in advertisers on my European travel site. Month-to-date EPC (a good indicator of advertiser demand) is running ahead of last August's, despite terrorist scares and a weak U.S. dollar. So the problem isn't universal, though it's certainly possible--at least in theory--that demand and prices may drop as time goes by. (I say "in theory" because the advertiser who's enjoying a positive ROI probably isn't obsessing about MFA ads from other advertisers.)

If it's any consolation, Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google) had some disparaging things to say about click arbitrageurs during a press Q&A at Danny Sullivan's SES conference. Reporter Andrew Goodman notes that Schmidt "sounded annoyed at the prospect of users landing on such 'arbitrary agglomerations of ad links'" and said that "we don't believe it is healthy." Schmidt is also quoted as saying that Google has to fight to keep low-quality sites out of both the search and AdSense sides, and that "We are now trying a lot harder to catch them, because there are a lot more bad guys now."

It's important to remember that, if Google surrenders to the bottom-feeders and bids drop as a result, Google will feel the pinch in the same way that publishers do. It simply isn't in Google's own interests to let AdSense deteriorate into an ad network of last resort for legitimate advertisers.

[...It's important to remember that, if Google surrenders to the bottom-feeders and bids drop as a result, Google will feel the pinch in the same way that publishers do. It simply isn't in Google's own interests to let AdSense deteriorate into an ad network of last resort for legitimate advertisers...]

The real problem is Google doesn't necessary have the risk awareness because they are looking at the big picture, a sector may not mean anything serious nor significant. Actually those macro figures (that supporting the stock price) just can not reflect the exact situation at the micro side.

[edited by: GoldenHammer at 11:03 am (utc) on Aug. 26, 2006]

Sad to read this thread David_uk, but you made your decision right when I made a similar one. AdSense has gone so low for me that I can explore other ways. And banner quality (=visitors' experience on my site) is really important to me too. It is sad to see that an algo (SmartPricing) is left to run in the wild. I would rather use it as a "suggestion" tool: I would let it run, cut publishers' earnings automatically, but only until a manual review actually checks the site to state whether it's a good one or not. AdSense, and I, lost some 100K$ during the past 10 months thanks to SmartPricing. I don't think it was a nice experience for Google.

The real problem is Google doesn't necessary have the risk awareness because they are looking at the big picture, a sector may not mean anything serious nor significant.

Depends on how big the sector is, I guess. Still, it's worth noting that Google has implemented landing-page Quality Scores on the AdWords side, which suggests that it's well aware of the risks that low-quality advertisers pose to Google Search. So it's likely that Google is, at the very least, aware of the possible risk to "Ads by Google" clickthrough rates if MFAs are allowed to rule the roost in major AdSense sectors.

I'm inclined to believe that a "quality score" alogrithm will be applied to AdSense advertisers at some point. For that matter, I wouldn't be surprised to see a "quality score" algorithm used to adjust pricing or compensation for AdSense publishers, too. Members of Webmaster World might kick and scream over such changes, but that would be a small price to pay if it helped Google earn credibility with mainstream advertisers who have been leery of PPC advertising in general and the "content network" specifically.

I think the real problem is that Google had credibility, and of their own choosing lost it.

They could easily forseen what the course of their actions and decisions would be, based on history of the online advertising industry, but chose to ignore all signs.

Instead of making sure that web pages in content conformed to the TOS they simply allowed everybody to bung the ads on whatever pages they liked - whether they conformed or not, and as we know most dont.

They also COULD have policed their own policies but chose not to.

They COULD have forseen the problem MFA's would cause to their credability and kept them to a minimum all along.

However, they chose not to.

No amount of fancy non-working algorithms are going to resolve the basic problem that scalable solutions in themselves won't work. They won't restore credibility. What Google need to do, and many of us here have said this all along is to use humans AS WELL AS algo's to uphold the TOS, the quality of the content network ads show on, and the ads that show as well. They need to take a bold decision and not just charge the scammers more, but eject them - publishers AND advertisers, and keep doing so.

The difficulty is that once you lose advertisers once, you probably lose them for good. Google don't need the junk advertisers, and junk content. What they need is advertisers with goods and services to sell. That's who they need to encourage, and they also need quality content. From where I'm standing, they have made no attempt to encourage either!

To some degree, when I started with adsense 2+ years ago they had the credibility. Click fraud, non-converting MFA's and all the stupid, stupid crappy Ebay "new and used dead dogs - get 'em quick" ads that have appeared since really have wrecked their credibility. They now have to play a catch up game. I'd like to see them win it, and win back the advertisers, but in reality I think it's 50/50. I think they have left it too late for a lot of advertisers.

The need to rely on scalable solutions isn't an excuse. I'm no longer advertising on Google, but if I was I'd not regard that as an excuse for the failure to uphold their policies.

To some degree, when I started with adsense 2+ years ago they had the credibility....I'd like to see them win it, and win back the advertisers, but in reality I think it's 50/50. I think they have left it too late for a lot of advertisers.

Depends on the sector. I see plenty of advertisers in travel, for example. Some have been around almost since the beginning, and newer advertisers have included big-name companies such as hotel chains, cruise lines, tour companies, and airlines. If anything, I'm seeing better-quality ads (and more varied ads) than I did a couple of years ago. Affiliate hotel-booking sites used to be a much bigger part of the mix than they are today, to judge from what I see on my pages.

To make a long story short, potential advertisers on the topics that I cover aren't seeing a lot of "Buy dead people at eBay" or "Cheap little blue pills" ads. In sectors where junk ads are a problem, legitimate advertising prospects may well see the junk ads and decide to skip the content network or PPC advertising altogether. But the problem isn't universal, and that may be why Google hasn't put it at the top of the AdWords/AdSense team's "things to fix" list. (Which isn't to say that it won't get fixed in due time. See my earlier post about Google CEO Eric Schmidt's comments about click arbitrage and bad guys.)

The need to rely on scalable solutions isn't an excuse.

It isn't an excuse; it's a reason.

>>>Depends on the sector. I see plenty of advertisers in travel, for example.<<<

that is obviously not a valid argument, efv, because you haven't bothered to check out the number of advertisers in google search vs. google content... so you don't have a clue what you are missing out on.

fewer advertisers = less competition = lower epc, period.

I think the real problem is that Google had credibility, and of their own choosing lost it.

You couldn't tell based on my advertisers and income and I rarely have MFAs that I've seen, maybe 40 blocked sites ever.

I'm like EFV in that it's still working just fine.

The only thing I just saw as an AD unit which blew my mind was an actual ad for "google.com/base" along with 3 other ads, which makes me wonder how much Google is paying for that click?

[...Depends on how big the sector is, I guess. Still, it's worth noting that Google has implemented landing-page Quality Scores on the AdWords side....]

Personally, SP and QS are WRONG directions, both are introducing additional administrative influences into the market, it's not performing as a NATURAL mechanisms but directive rules that affects the effectiveness.

Considering the natural section rights/ votes ... if publishers can select their own advertisers with a minimum bid, that is completely a different world.

[edited by: GoldenHammer at 10:18 pm (utc) on Aug. 26, 2006]

[...I'm like EFV in that it's still working just fine.]

It's still working (for me) up to the moment too .... :P

[edited by: GoldenHammer at 9:52 pm (utc) on Aug. 26, 2006]

fewer advertisers = less competition = lower epc, period.

Yeah, you keep telling us that. Too bad Google's reporting and payment systems are faulty: If they weren't inflating our statistics and funds transfers, the rest of us might be able to see the truth, too. :-)

... if publishers can select their own advertisers with a minimum bid, that is completely a different world.

I totally agree

>>>Too bad Google's reporting and payment systems are faulty<<<

huh? why go off-topic, efv?

just fess up and admit that you have never compared the number of adsense advertisers for content vs. search, in the european travel sector.

David,

Sad to see you leave, but I fully understand and agree.

I've tried it all besides the removal step you took. And to be honest I've a few times stood on the brink of removing the code.

And I'm sure google would need to worry less of us leaving them if
- They allow us to set negative keywords in the ads
(e.g. if the ad matches on ebay, free, ... I do not want it.)
- They allow us a minimum bid to be set
(e.g. if it'll at best bring me $ 0.01, I'd rather
have alternate ads instead of the one they'll give me)
- They allow blocking on advertiser, blocking on shown
URL not matching destination URL, ... wildcard
(better: regexp) blocking of advertisers.

If many sites start to block an advertiser, do a manual review and kick him out.

E.g.:
right now the #1 spot is on my travel related website is taken by this (widgetized, but you'll get the meaning):

Free Green Widgets
Get Instant, Easy Access to Widgets &
Widgets. No Spyware-Download Now

Let's see: free, promising no bad things like spyware, and buying a #1 advertising spot what's wrong in the picture ... right; business model cannot work, hence there's a lie somewhere in there.

The #2 spot right now goes to a text that's relative ly normal and promises something more or less relevant.
Cute. When I surf to the URL ... however ...
Site renders with text on top of other text, it has 11 advertising blocks (all pointing to the city/credit card),
so it just feels like a trap for a visitor.

#3 is geotargeted locally and off-topic but I understand why the missed on their keywords.

Even if I discount the incident where they sent me an extremely inappropriate ad in single geotarget (I actually got apologies for that one), my bottom line:

I do not want to be associated with those people.

BTW: If I try to block them I run out of sites I can block and only get more MFAs that are actually even worse. So it seems there are indeed way too little decent advertisers and it might be time to give up on adsense.

I'll probably must get less lazy and sell my adspace to advertisers I can choose myself.

David,

one more thing to consider: the adlinks do not look crappy on the site itself and might retain a fraction of the revenue.

Once the visitor gets there (s)he'll probably run into the same scams though.