Time To Clear Out Your Competitive Ad Filter?
Google has always allowed AdSense publishers to ban specific advertisers from displaying their ads on a publisher’s sites. This is done using the competitive ad filter in the AdSense console. The competitive ad filter lets you list up to 200 domain names (or partial URLs) that are to be blocked; any ad whose destination URL matches one of those values is blocked. See the Google help pages for more information.
Many publishers use the competitive filter for an alternate reason: as a way to block out made for AdSense (MFA) sites, either for pragmatic reasons (they don’t pay enough) or to simply deny those sites some extra money. Google has always insisted that this kind of blocking is wrong because their auction algorithm ensures that only the best-paying ads show up on an AdSense site. But anectodal evidence and sites like AdsBlackList have gone against that advice.
However, now that Google has disapproved of the AdSense arbitrage business model and has taken various steps lately to improve AdSense site quality and remove MFAs from the indexes, it may be time for everyone to clear out their competitive ad filters and see what happens. It’s easy to do, and you can save the existing list in a file somewhere for safekeeping. I’d be curious to hear from anyone who does this to know if your earnings go up or down after doing so (give it a few days, though).
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Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.
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6 Responses to “Time To Clear Out Your Competitive Ad Filter?”
That’s a good thought, Eric. I did it awhile back (maybe 2 months)…before I knew about the crackdown. I had previously been maxed out on the number of sites I had blocked.
Unfortunately, no…I am still at an all-time low for AdSense income. Well, “all-time low” is not strictly accurate, since I originally started at 13 cents. I mean, since my all-time high, I am at the low-end of earnings…fairly consistently about 1/3rd of what I was earning two years ago.
There are times when other programs start to sound inviting. It’s tempting to believe that someone else would pay a lot better for my space, since my sites are highly-ranked (in the SERPS, not necessarily high PR) and traffic is solid. If I had more time, I would probably experiment with it. But, for now, I’ll probably stick with Big G. I hope they find out how to make this program reward publishers more effectively soon.
Eric
I disagree. I filter out ads which are:
- in conflict with my site (could be construed as a competitor).
- are unsightly (I had a skin disease banner which kept appearing on a celebrity site I maintained. Gross!).
- are not in line with my audience (a parenting site which kept advertising the “Are you Gay?” quiz link).
- Political. Best way to drive off an audience.
Just my .02. About the same amount a click gets on my site!
I cleared all competitive ads a week ago (I got most the URLs from AdsBlackList). Did this mainly because earnings in July have dropped quite badly and I was ready to try anything. (Although my CTR is better, compared to July last year my earnings per click have halved).
Since clearing the filtered ads, CTR appears to have improved slightly and thus also eCPM, but nothing dramatic.
My traffic drops in July/Aug, presumably because you guys in the Northern Hemisphere are out enjoying the summer, but this doesn’t explain the overall drop in revenue. I can’t escape the fact that each click is simply paying less that it used to.
Jack: You’re using the competitive ad filter the way it was meant to be used. So you shouldn’t clear it out. What I’m talking about are the publishers who use “black lists” compiled by others (not themselves) to specifically filter out “low-paying” ads. Very different phenomenon.
Chuck & Scotch: I think it’s too early to see a big rise in per-click values yet. It will take a while for Google to shake the MFAs out of its system.
I still use the filter occasionally…for example, to keep those ridiculous fart joke ads off my site.
All I can hope is that Google gets things straightned out. I know I’m doing my part…providing content people want on sites they want to visit and seeing solid traffic each day as a result. And I see a crapload of clicks each day (well over a thousand on average). But, it all returns so little in the overall scheme of things. “Cheap clicks.”
AdSense was an incredible deal for a long time… but, as usual, things get ruined by idiots looking to suck a system dry thru games and manipulation… and it’s the guys who are in it for the long haul who get hurt. But I still believe that doing it the right way is the right way.
And, doing it the right way… I was rewarded recently when one of the major shopping engines came to check out my stuff and bought ads across 10 of my sites for 90 days in one fell swoop. Gotta love that.
Still, for as much space as I give to Google and the quality of my traffic, I deserve more than I’m getting. And if they won’t pay me more, I’m sure someone will.
In Google’s defense, Text-Link-Ads have done almost nothing for me, AdBrite the same, YPN has been…just OK…when I’ve used it. I have to say that the nicest surprise for me lately has been AuctionAds. Even without working much on ad placement or keyword selection, it’s turned into a nice little income stream for me. I’ll probably tweak my positioning and experiment with keywords one of these days. Scratching the right itch with items in a decent price range could serve one well over time with a tool like that. But, AuctionAds has a long way to go before it will make up what I’ve lost with AdSense. So I’ll need to investigate other options if things don’t turn around signficantly in the next couple months.
I wish there was a truly viable alternative going after the same market as AdSense. Yahoo would be closest, but they don’t have the little Adlinks units that perform great for me…and, inexplicably for a program that’s got so far to grow, they won’t allow their stuff to appear on pages with Adsense. And…what the heck is taking MSN so long to get down to us little guys with THEIR offering? Without competition, it’s hard to keep anyone honest… especially an 800-lb gorilla like Google.
[...] couple of days ago I suggested that it might (with the emphasis on might) be time to clear out the competitive ad filter as Google gets more successful at removing made for AdSense (MFA) sites from its search index. [...]