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Google AdSense Site Targeting stinks

May 3rd, 2006

There’s a very interesting post over at Lynn Terry’s blog about Google AdSense Site Targeting.

Lynn spotted some Google AdSense ads on her site that didn’t have the right format, so she investigated it some more and discovered that those were ads placed specifically on her site.

And unlike regular Google AdSense ads, which are PPC, these ads are CPM.

So the advertiser pays per impression, and not per click.

Lynn has been getting some rather appauling results from the CPM ads, so I decided to dig into some of the advanced reporting features that Google AdSense offers to see if I was also displaying CPM ads on my sites.

Well, it turns out, that I’ve been displaying then since September last year :-(

And I wouldn’t say they’ve been wildly profitable for me compared to what I get from the regular PPC ads. The Google AdSense ToC of course forbids me to share any hard cold facts :-(

Now, I don’t know which sites are Site Targeting my sites, so I can’t really do anything about them since I can’t add them to my exclude list.

The only option I have - it seems - is to go through my pages and see if I’m  lucky to spot an out-of-place ad.

Not an ideal option when I basically strive to automate as much as possible.

From an advertiser point of view, this seems like a really good deal.

Imagine being able to “leach” traffic off your competitors highly optimited AdSense monetized pages ;-)

Related posts:

  • Opting out of Onsite Advertiser Sign-up isn’t enough…
  • Google AdSense changes
  • New Google AdSense TOS

    • 1 Comment Add your own

    • 1. Lynn Terry  |  May 3rd, 2006 at 1:59 pm

      I think that’s the most frustrating aspect of the whole thing - that you cant see WHO is site targeting you and that it causes so much extra work on the publishers end.

      There’s no way to catch them all visually, even if you sat at your computer day in and day out with your eyes peeled… because you will never see all of the same ads that some of your visitors see.

      It’s insanity!

      -Lynn Terry

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