Inappriopriate ads on your website - what do you do?

[Erki]

I don't know if this is asked before but here it is.

I don't have a website so I don't know how all the ad-stuff goes and how much you can choose the ads your site displays. But what if there happens to be an ad on your site that is actually leading to a site that is not something that contributes and you wish your visitors would visit.

What is your look on inappropriate/unethical/foul/just generally bad ads your good and contributing site might display? Or just generally, what do you think about sports stars being sponsored by alcohol/tobacco companies? Sport & beer/fag doesn't make exactly the greatest combo... (I asked about website ads since a lot of you here have something to do with them so it's more related)

I hope I worded my question well enough, let me know if there's trouble understanding, I'll help you out.

[ticktockclok]

Google AdSense bases the ads on your site by the content on the page. So if you have content about saving the environment, you might get ads about an e-book on being environment-friendly. If for some reason, you have an odd combination of words, you may end up with ads that go completely against what your article is about. In this case, you are allowed to block ads to a limit.

[gberardi]

Some time ago, I remember finding something being advertised on my blog that I usually find in my comment or email spam. I purposely delete all of those messages so my readers don't have to read them, and yet here was my blog advertising for them!

As said above, you can block certain ads. I have yet to do so as I haven't seen the ads since, but if it happens again, I will definitely look into the specifics.

[troque23]

I just recently implemented Goodle AdSense on my site. My latest blog entry was about starting my zoo apprenticeship, which I filed under the category "Animal Advocacy". Needless to say I was disturbed when I saw an ad for "Animal Cruelty: see videos on animal cruelty at [website]." I was so upset!! Yes, the offensive ad has been banned from my site.

I didn't think my entry would come up with ads that are the complete opposite of what I'm advocating! Besides constantly monitoring the ads appearing on one's site, what else can one do to make sure these offensive ads don't show up on your site?

Trish

[gberardi]

Another thing to be concerned about is that it is possible that Google may show different ads to different viewers. I would imagine that someone in Australia would not get Burger King ads. Instead, they would receive Hungry Jack ads.

So it is possible that while you got the videos for animal cruelty ad, a number of your readers may have never seen it and never would have, just because Google does something to determine what ads to show.

Now, I'm guessing that they would optimize based on user data (IP, geographical location, etc), but I don't actually know.

My point is that it may be possible that your readers are getting ads you had no idea were getting displayed. What if you didn't see that ad, but someone else did? You wouldn't even know that you might need to ban it!

[spirited]

I feel uncomfortable with them, to the point that I am considering disabling Adsense altogether. Ticktockclok: the ads are relevant, but they are still not something I would like to send my visitors to. For example, I have a site about weight loss with lots of ads for diet pills that do not work. Sure, you can block certain urls, but this is difficult to keep on top of, especially if you do not live in the country that most of your visitors live in.

[troque23]

Originally Posted by gberardi

My point is that it may be possible that your readers are getting ads you had no idea were getting displayed. What if you didn't see that ad, but someone else did? You wouldn't even know that you might need to ban it!

So, it seems that there's really no way around this issue... doesn't google have some kind of "Safe Search" thingie similar to what they use to safeguard visitors from seeing porn sites when they do a google search? Is there one for their Google ads? I haven't seen one yet, though I've only started to play around with AdSense....

[MartialDev]

Originally Posted by spirited

Sure, you can block certain urls, but this is difficult to keep on top of, especially if you do not live in the country that most of your visitors live in.

They allow their best publishers to block ads by keyword instead of URL, or so I hear.

[jthayes]

I've found the ad's to be pretty targeted towards my content. I do want to put together a list of what to show when google doesn't have any ads to display though.

Google adsense ads work best of pages with lots of text. I assume when the spider comes and crawls your page it does something like looking at keyword density to pick up themes in the text. If you had mentioned 'animal' and 'cruelty' several times throughout your article advocating against it then chances are it picked those keywords.

As suggested, best thing you can really do is ban ads (once you are aware of them) that you do not want displayed.

What's the 1 lesson to learn from this?
Probably that google can't detect context. It does some clever keyword/title analysis to pick up the theme of the post (I'm guessing). So, be mindful of repeating keywords in a post when you are talking about them in a specific context.

If you know you have an article like this, you may just have to watch it for a while.

All the best,

[Caveman Joe]

I check my AdSense banners every now and then and ban the ones I don't want to see - same goes with Project Wonderful, although there's been far fewer inappropriate ads on PW than with AdSense.
Also, Erki - "Fag" does not mean "Cigarette" if you speak American! Man, I learned that the hard way...

Me: "I'm just nipping out for a fag, I'll be back in a few minutes."
Rest of party: SHOCKED LOOKS.
Girl I was talking to earlier: "Do you do that often?!"
Me: "Um... I like to smoke the occasional fag, yeah. Why, is it a problem?"

[Erki]

Didn't know this one. But hey, I didn't speak American anyway! I spoke perfect Elizabeth English, just as well as I could.

[Scorpio]

Just for the record, AdBrite is horrible for showing irrelevant, inapproiate adds.

The eventual goal is to get individual advertisers to buy the space but until then you can opt to put up PPC network ads. If you want to annoy your visitors with offers for cheating at online casinos and make money from home schemes then this is the site for you. I had one for a 'Bum fighting league'. What the hell were they thinking allowing that one? Also, occasionally the block of text ads will turn into an eye-destroying flashing banner.

Ugh...

[da1prophet]

Originally Posted by troque23

I just recently implemented Goodle AdSense on my site. My latest blog entry was about starting my zoo apprenticeship, which I filed under the category "Animal Advocacy". Needless to say I was disturbed when I saw an ad for "Animal Cruelty: see videos on animal cruelty at [website]." I was so upset!! Yes, the offensive ad has been banned from my site.

I didn't think my entry would come up with ads that are the complete opposite of what I'm advocating! Besides constantly monitoring the ads appearing on one's site, what else can one do to make sure these offensive ads don't show up on your site?

Trish

The good news is that there's most likely *not* a website showing animal cruelty videos...it was probably a generic ad for a company that just threw a couple of keywords into the text. You see this a lot for Ebay--like if you're looking for an article on 'vampire bats' on Google you'll see a sponsored link that says 'Shop for vampire bats at Ebay'. Now that Google owns YouTube it wouldn't surprise me if they're doing the same thing to promote it.