I thought it was me....

I saw the same thing but with captital letters in the URL

BottomFeeder vs bottomfeeder

How is this even possible?

ARC

There must be some small glitch in the matching sequence between real and display that Adwords uses that they have discovered. What make the whole thing double evil is they stay out of the preview tool so you can't validate the true URL. You have to research by hand and that is where they get you, fool you into thinking you got them.

"Danger Will Robinson"

[edited by: Khensu at 12:57 pm (utc) on Oct. 13, 2006]

I have seen this and other similar techniques.

I wish we could have a choice to "Block all ads from this advertiser" instead of just filtering by domain.

Or if we could click our own ads and then add to block list - just like the sleeze email filters that would be great. Only thing is we can't click our own ads, nor can we acurately see what is appearing to users in another country - nightmare. These are not bugs - they are cockroaches - ie not easily killed and would survive a nuclear holocaust!

nor can we acurately see what is appearing to users in another country

That's a great point--and it's one that tends to be missed by publishers who think playing Whack-a-Mole is a viable solution to junk ads.

love it - "whack-a-mole"! Another great term comes into play - wonder if it will make it into next years Oxford English Dictionary! We could also cultivate a severe case of "flea-byte-us" I guess..... Guess this will get removed os OT again - sorry in advance!

> I wish we could have a choice to "Block all ads from this advertiser" instead of just filtering by domain.

I wanted this too (back before I gave up on the idea of blocking, that is)
[webmasterworld.com...]

p.s. Thanks Khensu for the sticky! :-)
I've switched from Leaderboard to Large Rectangle like you're using and so far the results are looking very good.

have you encountered the morphing type that shows up fine in the preview tool but when clicked on it begins to load like a normal landing page then poof! Instantly a different page for ringtoneworld comes up fast. Completely different url. So I blocked BOTH urls and notified Google by using the ads by Gooooooogle.

Sheesh won't it ever stop? I guess Google will have to invest more money in more software to catch these slime ball superfleas... :(

Ann

Remember that if you have any specific examples where the URL shown in the ad is not representative of the landing page URL, or there is a redirect involved that the ad may be in breach of the adwords TOS. It's worth reading the adwords TOS and reporting any that don't comply. It's better to get an ad removed that way than to clog up the filter.

Reporting them AND filtering them is safer...it's a matter of trust.

Ann

I've just noticed an ad with subtle spaces in the displayed url. Oddly enough it was an MFA. I've reported it and not blocked. I'll see what happens.

I wish we could have a choice to "Block all ads from this advertiser" instead of just filtering by domain.

Interesting idea. On the advertiser side, a "block all ads to this publisher" filter might be useful, too.

Interesting idea. On the advertiser side, a "block all ads to this publisher" filter might be useful, too.

^ Why wouldn't Google do this then? It seems to me that this is one of the best ways to let natural selection do its thing on both sides of the fence.

So would it be "once an MFA always an MFA"?

I talk the point - that there are some "publishers" who "tweak their domain name and/or URL line to multiply and evade the QS and channel filters - however different people have different opinions about what constitutes an MFA. To some it is purely about how much that pay for a click; to others its about the content (or lack of it) and the user experience; and to others sill, it is any site that isn't actually selling a product or service.

At one extreme maybe it would be reasonable to exclude all the sites run by someone who only publishes rubbish sites with nothing but ads. But is it reasonable to start excluding some quality sites, because someone considers one of their other domains to be low quality.

^ Why wouldn't Google do this then? It seems to me that this is one of the best ways to let natural selection do its thing on both sides of the fence.

If Google do that, it will be a killing spree. Google need both sides of the fence alive.

Interesting idea. On the advertiser side, a "block all ads to this publisher" filter might be useful, too.

It should pe pointed out that advertisers can block domains where they do not want their ads to show in the same wasy as we can block advertisers. The main difference being that from the adwords side there is no mention of a limit to the size of the filter that I could see.

I'd agree that allowing advertisers to block by publisher would be perfectly fair, and may encourage more of them into content. But this is not the adwords forum, and I believe that we primarily discuss from the publisher point of view.

I'd agree that allowing advertisers to block by publisher would be perfectly fair, and may encourage more of them into content. But this is not the adwords forum, and I believe that we primarily discuss from the publisher point of view.

Legitimate publishers who deliver good value for advertisers can only benefit from improved controls on the advertiser side, and it's in their interest to discuss and encourage such controls.

I'd agree: once they use the dark side, they are lost. Never seen star wars?

Aside from killing them by the publisher, I feel it's also long overdue we get a minimum bid we can set ourselves and get an alternate ad instead of the bottom feeders's scams, arbitrage, spyware, and whatnot.

I feel it's also long overdue we get a minimum bid we can set ourselves and get an alternate ad instead of the bottom feeders's scams, arbitrage, spyware, and whatnot.

That might be nice from a publisher's point of view, but if Google needs inventory for lower-priced ads, why would it want to let publishers set minimums? And if Google did allow publishers to set minimums, how many of the publishers who are currently plagued by low-paying ads would be able to find higher-paying alternative ads?

We also need to remember that just maintaining a publisher's account and deciding whether to display an ad on a page incurs overhead for Google. Let's say that Google allows a publisher to set a minimum EPC of a dime or 20 cents. All of a sudden that publisher, who was getting one- and two-penny ads before, is now serving alternative ads on the majority of his or her pages. What's Google to do? Keep a higher percentage of the revenues on the ads that do get served? Charge a monthly maintenance fee? From Google's point of view, there needs to be some way of recouping the overhead of checking inventory every time a page is served and rolling over to alternative ads when ads that pay more than the publisher-set minimum aren't available.

ronburk made some good points regarding setting a minimum bid here
[webmasterworld.com...]

> If advertisers had to pay $2 a click to have their ads show on my sites vs. a few cents
Then even more of them would abandon the content network and just stick with advertising in the Google SERPs.

I don't get to bid separately on what I'll pay for your website for a CPC ad, so you're effectively asking me to pay $2/click for a bunch of crap publishers (unless I can track them all down and block them -- what fun) just to advertise with you.

Many of these issues are classic middleman problems. If I could bid separately on just your website, I might pay $2/click and you might be happy. But to do that, I'm going to want to track the ROI coming from your website, distinct from all others. And if those abilities result in both you and me making significant cash, then it eventually becomes foolish to retain Google as the middleman.

Google must try to keep advertisers and publishers at arm's length in order to avoid losing many of the more profitable advertisers to private advertising arrangements. But that information barrier Google erects leads to inefficiencies, such as paying publishers with lousy ROIs the same as publishers who give advertisers great ROIs. Google struggles with an algorithm like SmartPricing, when advertisers could easily and directly weed out bad publishers if the Google information barrier did not exist.

It's also a very big schema change with scalability challenges to switch from the current AdWords/AdSense design to one that allows per-advertiser actions on a per-publisher basis. Heck, they can't even offer per-domain actions at the moment, keeping everything grouped by account for the most part. So, it's possible that Google doesn't fear increased advertiser/publisher multiplexing, and is only held back by the technical challenges.

[edited by: Play_Bach at 8:52 pm (utc) on Oct. 14, 2006]

I feel it's also long overdue we get a minimum bid we can set ourselves and get an alternate ad instead of the bottom feeders's scams, arbitrage, spyware, and whatnot.

I was actually a big proponent of this a while back -- but if you think it through to its logical conclusion, believe it or not this would actually end up helping the MFA'ers in the long run and probably make the problem get even larger.

Think about it. They live in the arbitrage world. They buy clicks at specified prices (AdWords), and then hope that they can manage to sell clicks (AdSense) in the right mix of CTR and CPC to turn a profit margin. They have a LOT of control of their expenses on the AdWords side, as they can very precisely control their spending there. But the revenue side is a bit more of an uncontollable variable for them - they have to write junk page copy with enough keyword density to make sure they get the right ads targeted that might click well and pay well.

While you might think, at first, that a checkbox for "Enable minimum ad rate of _____ per click for this channel" might be useful in AdSense, you're right - it would. But anything like that which would be a little bit useful for us, would be extremely useful to the MFA publisher. If that option were in place, Joe MFA would then be able to control his costs precisely (i.e.: Never pay more than $0.05 per incoming click), and his revenue more precisely (i.e.: only allow ads with values of $0.20 or more). A perfect arbitrage scenario, when you can tightly control both sides of the equation.

Sadly, I think such an option would hurt us ...

If that option were in place, Joe MFA would then be able to control his costs precisely (i.e.: Never pay more than $0.05 per incoming click), and his revenue more precisely (i.e.: only allow ads with values of $0.20 or more). A perfect arbitrage scenario, when you can tightly control both sides of the equation.

That's a great observation (and one that illustrates the law of unintended consequences!).

I think it may have been 21_blue (where is he now?) that suggested this some months ago, and yes I think there is a lot of truth in it. I was once a fan of the idea of minimum click value, but seeing the bigger picture does rather indicate against for me personally.

- as to publishers costing google money: so do adwords advertisers who set a too low bid.

- as to abritrage ebing easier: sure, but I also propose to cut it completely: if you use adsense on an adwords target site, your adsense gets cut (or your adwords get raised) articicilly to make sure your lowest costing incoming click is more expensive than your highest earning outgoing click. [Regardless of what keyword it is for]

- if it earns me less: sure, but at least I wonl;t have all the scams on my site.

Google is basically a marketplace for matching advertisers with publichers (who have readers). The advertisers get to set a maxiumum bid, so should the publishers be able to set a minimum (really I don't ever want to loose a visitor for $0.01 or less.)

And dealing with arbitrage is GOOG's problem, not mine. I just want the crappy advertisers out of the picture.

as to publishers costing google money: so do adwords advertisers who set a too low bid.

But the low-bidding advertisers do generate revenue (and probably enough revenue to cover Google's costs).

as to abritrage ebing easier: sure, but I also propose to cut it completely: if you use adsense on an adwords target site, your adsense gets cut (or your adwords get raised) articicilly to make sure your lowest costing incoming click is more expensive than your highest earning outgoing click.

I think that's a great idea in theory, but I wonder how effective it would be in the real world. Couldn't arbitrageurs simply buy cheap traffic elsewhere? Unless Google could identify users as coming from YPN, Kanoodle, or some other source of purchased clicks or traffic, a filter wouldn't stop arbitrage--and, from Google's point of view, it would have the further disadvantage of letting AdSense competitors profit on the "buy" side at Google's expense.

If we could add .info to the filters I'd knock out 30% of the MFA's on our site instantly!

If we could add .info to the filters I'd knock out 30% of the MFA's on our site instantly!

Maybe, but there are some legitimate .info domains. (I can think of a couple of national tourist offices, for example.)

I don't think Google will ever allow that kind of blanket discrimination by TLD, any more than it will allow publishers to block the serving of ads to users in certain countries.