I just cost myself $1000s – blocking weight loss ads from adsense

Google has this handy feature (which is certainly new from when I started using adsense) that allows you to block weight loss ads. You can find it at this url: https://www.google.com/adsense/site-targeted-ad-review

Mr Mander argued that my last post was unfair and that Google offers me the option to block these ads and that was a fair argument so I have gone ahead and done it. In general I agree with him but given I am a professional in this industry and wasn’t aware of this page (whereas he actually worked on adsense for 2years :)) it certainly suggests it wasn’t very well promoted vs the optimization reports on my homepage that tell me to add multiple ad units per page.

Anyway decision is made. Scammy weight loss ads removed from my site and I hope my users will benefit from a higher quality of ad on my site.

I then went on to block the rest of the exploitative ads on my site (I don’t in general think politics is exploitative although I realize it offends some folks) and I find Google only allows me to block 8 of their 11 categories. Why? This just seems like a silly decision given together they only make around 25% of my revenue.

Ah well. I feel a lot better for blocking these evil ads. You should consider doing it too: https://www.google.com/adsense/save-excluded-ad-categories.do

Comments

[fat burning supplement]

The exercise is undoubtedly the best and most healthy way to weight loss and fat, but over time have developed products that help make this more effectively and promptly, excellent theme.

[alexschultz]

have updated the details here: http://www.alexschultz.co.uk/weblog/2009/12/upshot-of-blocking-weight-loss-ads-50-of-revenue.html

this cost me 50% of my cocktailmaking.co.uk revenue

[alexschultz]

oh boy did it cost me a lot of money... my cpms halved. There's another blog post in that may write it later tonight or tomorrow.

[twitter.com/TheNextCorner]

Would be interesting to hear if your adsense revenue really went down, or up because of higher quality.

DG

[Ben Requena]

Thanks for this information. I just blocked similar ads on our site as well.