If you’re looking for an incredibly easy way to implement a few ads on your site to help cover costs then Google AdSense is great. What isn’t so great about Google AdSense is its contextual logic. Sure, it picks up on keywords and dynamically replaces ads depending on that page’s content, that’s cool and all but it doesn’t seem to do it with a lot of thought behind it.
Here’s a funny example to explain that belief. Yesterday I put up a discussion on how Iran is angry about the movie 300 portraying their ancestors (2500 years ago) negatively. On that page is a Google AdSense text block, so what does Google choose to put in there? How about an ad for something that everyone reading an article about how angry Iran is with America would want to have. That’s right, cheap plane tickets to the heart of Iran! Woohoo!
Maybe a trip to Iran isn’t what you want. Then hop over to our American Idol: Separated at Birth post and check out the ad for “Get Divorced Online!”. Well hotdog, how convenient and relevant. Apparently the “separated” keyword overrode the American Idol keyword. Good going AdSense.
Alright Google AdSense, kudos on your ability to make advertising easy for the little guys, but how about you work on your algorithms a little more. Hopefully they’ll get that working by the time I get back from my tropical, relaxing vacation in Tehran!
Has anyone else come across some funny, misplaced ads? Let me know. Submit a link below and we can start a gallery.
Posted on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007
March 14th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
This might help you out in the future Matt. In the AdSense Code book I have, the author suggests to focus Google Adsense to particular content by using tags in your code.
Section Text
Give it a try and see if you get better ads that fit the post. I haven’t tried it myself because the overall theme of retiring creates ads that are retirement based. Most of the time.
March 14th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
No kidding? That’s very cool. We’ll start playing with that and see what we get. Thanks.
March 14th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Matt,
You can also delete the domains that you do not want to show on your site.
An example would be to delete all the low paying domains and keep the better paying ones.
Mark
March 14th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
That’s a very good idea. Any way to track down the payout information based on domains? I’ve notice quite a range in amounts. We had a click worth almost $2 while others have been as low as $0.04. I’d love to pinpoint that high number and wipe out the low as you suggested.