Google - You Win…

Regular visitors might remember when I blacklisted Google AdSense about 3 months ago. They accused me of cheating their system, by artificially boosting my ad revenue - something I did not do (at least not on purpose). So I blacklisted Google, and started to look for another ad supplier.

That, however, has turned out to be quite a problem. Google literally has a monopoly when it comes to online advertising. There are a lot of other players on the market - and I have tried many of them - but none of the even comes close to the effectiveness and usability of Google AdSense.

Google AdSense has 4 major advantages over their competitors:

Availability: The most promising replacements of Google AdSense are Text-Link-Ads and Yahoo, but I cannot use either of them. TLA requires that I primarily place ads on my front page - which I do not want to do, and Yahoo is in beta, and currently only available to people within the USA.
Payment:Google will pay directly to your bank account, while most other advertising networks will pay you by check. Getting a check is probably fine for people in the USA, but I have to walk to the bank to cash it - and pay a currency conversion fee of $15. So for every $100 check I will only receive $85. Not good!
Quality: Almost all other advertising networks are filled with very bad ads. ValueClick even decided to put adult ads on my site (even though I specifically said they shouldn't). AdBrite (the one I tested earlier this week) mostly added advertisements for smilies, free college degrees and poker sites. I never got this junk when using Google AdSense.
Control: Google AdSense allows you to remove any ad that you do not like - it is easy and simply. Something that has turned out to be very hard, time consuming or both with most other advertising networks.

So, I have reactivated Google AdSense.

I could, of course, just remove all ads for good. But, the ad revenue more than pays for all the expenses I have on this site. And, my traffic has gone up over the last couple of months. In this month (December) I have an average of 8,200 daily visitors (absolute unique visitors), and about 14,000 daily page views. This is a considerable increase over the amount of traffic I had 3 months ago. I would be a fool not to take advantage of this.

But, I have added a few checks to prevent invalid clicks on my website in the future. I do not want to get into the same situation as before. I have also "banned" myself from seeing the ads. Meaning that I never see any ads myself, and thus cannot generate a lot of ad requests (especially in times when I am making changes, and is checking to see the result). I think this was the reason why Google believed that I previously was generating invalid traffic. Now, my personal activities will not influence the advertisements in any way.

So Google - you win. I still do not like being accused of something I did not do - but hey... if you cannot beat them, join them...

Comments

Emma - Dec. 23, 2007

Yes, Google has done a much better job than the opposition in building a good advertising network. About the only real alternative is finding targetted affiliate products, which is a lot more work on your part.

You might want to add a channel for the 'design' category. That might help them 'see' that the different traffic is in a different area

HIH! Good luck :)

Ali Servet Dönmez - Dec. 25, 2007

Could you please explain further more what do you mean by "I have also "banned" myself from seeing the ads"? Is there a way to add some kind of filter on AdSense to exclude my self or what did you do to get that? Thanks.

Thomas Baekdal - Dec. 25, 2007

Emma, That might be a good idea - thanks!

Ali, No, not really. I have simply added some code to my own CMS system, that checks the IP address. If it is mine, then the page will not include the ad script.

Ali Servet Dönmez - Dec. 26, 2007

Oh, I see...

I'm using Firefox's AdBlock addon, which will hide any kind of Google Ads around. Well, that's not the same thing as yours, since (I guess) it'll load scripts anyway, but hide'em later resulting no Ads on the final page, thus they're unclickable nor seen by me.

But this made me think about how would it be if Google AdSense had a filter section, just like Analytics has, where we could exclude our selves...

collector - Dec. 26, 2007

The thing i like about AdSense is targeting. It is not perfect, but mostly on topic (pages do not look spammy because of unrelated ads).

Johnathan - Jan. 4, 2008

How did you get off Google's blacklist? I had this happen to a site I worked on, and the client has reapplied for Adsense several times and they rejected him each time. After the initial blacklisting, we couldn't run the adds any longer and I don't they can run again until we're approved.

Suggestions?

Thomas Baekdal - Jan. 4, 2008

Ahh... Johnathan. Goggle didn't blacklist me, I blacklisted them :)

Johnathan - Jan. 14, 2008

Okay, so you blacklisted them, but did they try to blacklist you for supposedly clicking on your own adsense links? That's what happened to my client's site. They took away his account and we couldn't argue it.

Thomas Baekdal - Jan. 14, 2008

Nope, they never tried to blacklist me.

BTW: I am not surprised that you "couldn't argue it". I have never experienced Google to be even remotely interested in the customers side of the story.

unTECHy - Feb. 23, 2008

I don't blame you for returning to adsense. However, you may want to make it 'FLOW' with your site a little better.

I instantly caught myself skipping over your mid-post advert because I could tell it was an ad. Blend it in a little better, and visitors will most likely give it a once-over instead of skipping over it.

Good luck with your adsense.

paranoiaparadise - Feb. 29, 2008

One should not support a company that will rule the world soon...

Did you know that Google plans to collect all patient data worldwide? The Cleveland Clinic already operates its own electronic personal health record system, eCleveland Clinic MyChart, holding the records of 100,000 patients. It will invite between 1,500 and 10,000 of them to participate in the trial with Google this month.

Soon Google will know too much of everybody - very scary in my eyes...

gopi - Jul. 6, 2008

How do we activate this site to my account,How will they pay the amount,