With Google’s AdSense program, site owners and bloggers are given the option of filtering and blocking advertisements that don’t fit in with their site, either because they are from competition, are unrelated to the site content, or have a low payout. Google insists that webmasters are financially better off blocking ads as little as possible, an assertion many disagree with.
At the Inside Adsense blog, the support crew disputes the widely held belief that webmasters benefit by blocking low-paying advertisements, calling it a “myth.”
“Our auction system automatically selects the best performing ads for each page to help you earn the most possible money. This is especially true with our new expanded text ads. By filtering ads you think are low paying, you could actually be cutting out the most optimized ads and decreasing your revenue potential. Each ad that is filtered is one less bid in the auction, lowering the price for the winning ad on your site. You benefit most when there is a larger pool of advertisers competing for a place on your site,” says AdSense Publisher Support staff member, Bryan.
But the (almost) general consensus over at professional web forum WebMasterWorld, is that filtering ads is a proven method for increasing AdSense revenue.
“Google *should* be aware that blocking in fact DOES increase income for many of us, hence the official blurb is misleading, and inaccurate [sic],” posts preferred member david_uk, who broached the subject.
“The difficulty that Google’s targetting algorythm [sic] causes is that it often removes ads it thinks are low paying, and replaces them with ads it thinks are high paying. These decisions are based on performance on OTHER WEBSITES – not yours! If your website is about bright orange widgets with stripes, then logically ads trying to sell bright orange widgets with stripes would be the obvious choice. However, as they don’t perform well elsewhere on the network the chances of you seeing them are lessened – despite the fact that they may perform very well on your site!” he continued.
The crowd, the wisdom of which Google regularly endorses, seems to echo David’s concerns, emphasizing that the data used to evaluate ad performance derived from the entire network, and not from how those ads actually perform on one given site.
One point raised suggests that there are too many cooks in the kitchen when Google Search, AdWords, AdSense, and webmasters all tinkering with ads at the same time in different ways, the effectiveness of ad filtering is difficult to measure.
Does filtering AdSense ads work for you? Discuss in WebProWorld.
