When you buy site targeted AdSense ads (or other CPM priced ads), there are easy ways publishers can inflate their pageviews and ad inventory. I listed a number of them here, but a few other common techniques are
- showing ads to bots (or running traffic bots against their site)
- refreshing pageviews
- framing external pages
- adding a forum to a website
- creating traffic exchanges and siphoning off credits
- creating ad units that offer no value, but cash in on naive advertisers
Here is an ad unit on a popular category leading hub site. Notice that it is literally below the page footer in the forum section of the site. It is a great site with lots of traffic, but it is hard to profit from that ad unit.
If you blindly buy site targeted ads those are the impressions you buy first…the ones that are deemed to have the least value and/or the ones that are hardest to match to a commercial intent.
If you buy site targeted ads, in many cases you will be buying some amount of junk, so if you are buying as a direct marketer it is best to try to buy the most precise and most relevant ad possible. That could involve any of the following
- contacting the webmaster directly for an ad on a specific section or page (prices can vary widely – I have seen ads of similar value in the same vertical priced from $6 to $1,000)
- creating a relevant ad and ad group targeted specifically to a site
- targeting a specific folder or specific page
Google’s site targeted tool tends to aim for bulk buyers who do not care if they get a bit of remnant garbage inventory. They do not make it easy to add a specific page to a site targeted ad group unless you click the edit sites and CPMs link from a site targeted group, at which point in time you can list individual URLs or folders you want to target. Remember that if you list a home page or root folder page it will also place your ad on other pages from that site or folder.
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