I got this curious email from google adsense one day. Incidentally I was wondering why the sudden drop of my adsense earnings. Probably I was just having a bad day.
Hi,
We’re writing to let you know about the upcoming launch of interest-based advertising, which will require you to review and make any necessary changes to your site’s privacy policies. You’ll also see some new options on your Account Settings page.
Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user’s previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. “sports enthusiast”). To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network. As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the “sports enthusiast” interest category. To learn more about your associated account settings, please visit the AdSense Help Center at http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=20310.
Here I was working my bum off optimizing my ad placement to make the ads appear relevant to my content. Then out of the blue Google comes up with this brillant idea that will make ads irrelevant to the content.
How To Opt out/Disable Interest-based Ads
Upon logging in to your adsense account, look for the Interest-based Ads Preference. By default the Interest-based Ads were enabled. However it was discussed at the forums, despite disabling it, there’s no guarantee that google will stop serving interest based ads.
Who will be at disadvantage?
Specialized niched sites would be greatly affected the most and the Made for adsense sites. Niched sites rely greatly on search engine traffic since they target only one topic. For instance you run a site that’s all about medieval costumes. Then a surfer who previously browsed swimsuit would see that the ads on your site would be about swimwear. So the surfer might not click on the ads since what she wants is something related to what she’s looking for like medieval costumes.
Who will benefit the most at Interest based ads?
High Traffic News sites, Youtube and other general interest site will definitely benefit from this. These sites caters to all demographics but it’s difficult for them to determine what ads to show. By determining the surfer’s browser history and cookies, adsense then will show ads based on their interest.
What needs to be fixed?
While there’s nothing wrong with the interest based ads, it should be available in the channel options .The publisher should have complete control of what kind of ads they want on their site.
How do users opt out of interest based ads?
Let’s face it, not all surfers are web savvy and some couldn’t be bothered to disable the interest based ads. But at least they gave the users the option to opt out.
Here’s the link on how to opt out
http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 1:05 amand is filed under Goblin News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.