May
22
Adsense/ Adwords problems
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You know, this is one of the things that bothers me about Adwords/Adsense.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m talking about Google’s advertising program.
I think that it’s against google rules to talk poorly about them, but this is just too much. In a nutshell, the program works like this: advertisers create ads that Google then pushes out to content producers/ providers so the ads can be displayed on relevant pages. As a content producer/ provider, I get a cut of the ad revenue whenever someone clicks on the ad. The advertisers use “Adwords” and the publishers place “Adsense” ads on their pages.
As an adwords advertiser, you can use a technique called “dynamic keyword insertion.” Basically the ad replaces a word in the ad copy with a keyword on the page. The only real requirement is that the inserted keyword has to physically fit in the space alloted for it within the ad.
When applied properly, it produces an ad that perfectly matches the page or whatever keyword the person is searching for. It’s a thing of beauty. When it doesn’t work, it’s just embarrassing. Oh yeah, I should also mention that Google penalizes you the advertiser if you do not have a relevant landing page for your ads. What that means, is that whatever your ad is about, has to be on the same topic as the page that people land on when they click the ad. I don’t know what the repercussions are when Google posts your ad on a page or post that does not have a close topical relation to your ad. Take this ad for instance:
I have a post on one of my other blogs where I’m talking about the cyclone that hit Burma. I talk about all the people that died there, and how the gummint over there is killing their own people. The best ad that they can come up with to post on this page, is an ad for “Myanmar Ringtones”?
What does that sound like?
Howling wind, houses falling over, people drowning? What kind of a ringtone is that? How is a ringtone relevant to Myanmar? Is this Google’s fault for displaying an ad on a page that is not relevant to ringtones, or is it the advertiser’s fault for including the word “Myanmar” as a word they want to target? More importantly, will I get penalized?
Image via Wikipedia
Of course, you can argue that I should write more targeted posts, meaning posts that target a specific keyword or whatever. Well, there’s a whole industry that does just that, but that’s another story.
I guess I wouldn’t be so miffed if I had written a story about Justin Timberlake, and the ad had said something about getting Justin Timberlake ringtones. That would be a better fit
Maybe I just caught it at the end of a product rotation, and those ringtone ads were the last one left to display. Google only gets paid when someone clicks an ad, so I guess they have to display all their inventory if they want to make any money. I’m really not hating on Google, I’m just hating the limitations of the system.
OK, enough of the whining. I think I’m going to go drink for whining.
Actually, I think I’m just going to go to bed. I’m getting grumpy. Hopefully, I’ll still have an adsense/adwords account tomorrow or whenever the next time they look over the network and figure out that someone’s been talking trash.
Maybe I’ll come to my senses in the morning and delete this post before anyone notices it. I just had to get these frustrations out.
May
19
Technorati claim
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I feel like I should type some kind of legal-ese language on here. Something like I hereby claim this blog to myself and no one else can claim it for themselves from here to perpetuity, my domain name registration expires or I sell this blog.
Whichever comes first.