Not really as I found everything you said to be completely true for me too (all four of your points exactly). It seems like a waste of time for the most part UNLESS it is a truly offending ad or advertiser you're trying to stamp out.

It certainly isn't as refined nor useful a system as it could be but it is still better than nothing.

Here are 2 things I find useful:

1. Zoom out on the page so that you can see more ads per screen

2. Start by typing in culprit keywords. My first is always “download”

Most of the download ads no longer have "download" in the URL. They wised up. Or maybe I've just blocked them all by now.

Another buzz word I typically block is "free."

The review center is mostly a reactive tool. Ads only appear in the review once they have appeared on your site and almost always after two or more impressions.

It is also very important to note in terms of spammy ads blocking is problematic. Firstly, spam ads are symptomatic of having a lack of demand for your supply of inventory. Spammers, typically do not like to pay a lot for their ad impressions. Ad placements are purchased by auction, so blocking an ad, (spam or otherwise) frees up a space to be taken by the next highest bidder. If the spam ad won the last auction then what type of ad follows the spam in the auction cue? Likely another low quality ad and definitely an ad that pays less. So blocking is a least worst option. I only block ads that will negatively reflect on my site.

But the most effective way to block this underperforming inventory is to use the ad-balancer. The ad balancer removes the inventory so there is no replacement. If you can't sell it at a good price don't show it. The added benefit of using the ad-balancer is that it significantly reduces the number of ads to review. Typically a successful ad will appear multiple times on your site (in the thousands) that ad only needs to be reviewed once. The low quality ads will tend only be shown a few times for each ad. So to make up thousands of impressions, you will end up reviewing hundreds of ads. I went form reviewing 600 to 1000 ads a day to about 200 to 400. That is a lot of time saved.

Before blocking any ad I check its stats, when you click on an ad unit in the review center it will open the ad in a new window and show the impressions, the ad network, ad-words account, destination URL, a preview of the destination. Typically I will block the ad-words account and the ad itself. If I notice that the url is re-appearing frequently I will block the URL (yes in the old version). If I notice the ad-network (when the ads are not Adwords ads) then I will block the ad network. But that happens very rarely. Note that typical spam ads re-use the ad creative frequently albeit with small modifications, but they rarely re-use the same domain. So blocking domains tends to be a waste of time.

I find the related ad features completely and utterly useless. It often misses the actual related ads and shows nothing, it is simply unreliable. It seems to work based one the destination URL and Adwords, and as explained above those tend change for spam ads.

I agree with CommandDork, it is not refined. I really feel they could do a much better should and helping to weed out the spam.

The worst feature is the "predicted block", this features frequently predicts that I should block my top advertisers, but never predicts that I should block the spam ads. A real joke!

"The worst feature is the "predicted block", this features frequently predicts that I should block my top advertisers, but never predicts that I should block the spam ads."

Lol, same with me.

Is it just me, but I can no longer access the old ARC. The option is there, but it takes me back to the homepage when I click on it.

@Lame_Wolf - same for me... they may have (just today) removed the option, although the link is still displayed.

If this is true, that's not good since that was the only way to block by adding a URL.

Thank you, keyplyr, for confirming. It's #*$! annoying to say the least.

I don't like the new ARC as it takes longer to review the adverts, as well as all of the other sections now missing.

It still works on my end. Are you clicking on "All my sites"?

Are you clicking on "All my sites"?

Ahhh... thanks NickMNS, there it is :)

The other route has been removed. Hopefully this stays.

It has been like that for a while, at least three weeks.

@NickMNS

Thank you for that tip. I don't normally use that option. I normally click on the "Allow and Block ads" and then directly to the ARC - then click on the option to revert back to the old version.

Let's hope they don't remove the method you mentioned.

Thanks again.

"It has been like that for a while, at least three weeks."

It's only happened recently here. I was in there just the other day, and was still working. (UK)

@Lame_Wolf - same here

Strange, you would think that they would roll out things like this to everyone at the same time.

Well I'm not saying the old ARC wasn't always accessible from "All my sites."

I just never tried to get to it from there since I was always getting there the other, now defunct, way.

I appreciate reading all the above comments and would like to use some of the tips. However, I am unable to get to the Ad Review Center at all. In my Ad Sense Account I click on the Allow & Block Ads section to the left, but I only see the following message:

"We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are unable to process your request at this time. Our engineers have been notified of this problem and will work to resolve it."

I follow Google's instructions:

"To enable the Ad review center, follow these steps:

Sign in to your AdSense account.
In the left navigation panel, click Allow & block ads.
Click your product. For example, click Content for AdSense for content.
Click Ad review center.
Click Enable.
Your Ad review center is now enabled. You can start reviewing ads in about an hour."

I have never seen anything else but the above error message. Can anyone help so I can follow some of your guys' great ideas?

Don't see how *we* can help. Did you follow the instructions and did you wait "about an hour" for ARC to become activated?

@Exploration Same thing here, haven't been able to access ARC for months - same message you are receiving.

Have you tried those steps using the Chrome browser?

Just tried Chrome (was using FireFox) - same thing. Don't even get to see any "steps". As soon as Allow and Block ads is clicked it goes directly to "We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are unable to process your request at this time. Our engineers have been notified of this problem and will work to resolve it." page.

Sometimes stuff like this happens. The only way I've ever been able to resolve it has been to dump the account and open a new one. I've done that with Gmail and Bing Webmaster tools twice.

OMG! I just turned off my Ad Block Plus for the Google Adsense webpage, refreshed it, and guess what! I finally got to be able "to enable" the Adsense Review Center.

The above Firefox comment gave me the idea to turn off my Adblocker in Chrome --- thank you very much No5needinput!

Yeppers, works again in firefox, had adblocker on too.

Yeah... using an ad blocker blocks ads.

One of those old timer duh moments...