Au Revoir, Adsense...

[RJM62]

...at least for now.

I've watched my Adsense revenue drop by about 70 - 80 percent in the past 18 - 24 months. I'm not alone in this: The Adsense boards on Google are full of people who have noticed the same thing, as Google has moved away from its original (and successful) contextual model for ad selection, to one that weights user history more heavily.

You can find literally thousands of posts from frustrated publishers who have tried every possible trick in the book to get relevant ads to show on their sites -- changing keywords and meta tags, disabling interest-based ads, re-enabling interest-based ads, allowing or disallowing third-party ad networks, and whatever other meager controls Google extends to publishers -- all to no avail.

The only voices that seem absent from the boards are those of people who actually work for Google, which seems to act as if nothing's wrong.

When I first started using Adsense, my revenue from Adsense was about five times that from Amazon. Nowadays, Amazon way outperforms Adsense -- which is pretty impressive when you consider that people actually have to buy something for me to make money with Amazon.

Well, I've had it with Adsense. I recently applied for an "invitation" to put contextual ads from Yahoo / Bing on three of my sites. I received notice today that two of them have been approved. (The third is too new and needs to build up its traffic some more.)

The first thing that struck me, however, was the welcome email I received. It was from a real person who asked intelligent questions, offered advice, and said she was going to be monitoring the ads daily for a couple of weeks. She also asked me what kind of ads have worked well in the past, and told me that Yahoo / Bing takes a "high-touch" approach to the program. She said she would be "tweaking" my account on their side to maximize ad relevancy and performance.

Wow! A real person is going to check to see if the ads are relevant! This must be heaven!

Well, I wasted no time pulling the Adsense code off the sites and replacing it with the Yahoo / Bing code. So far, the ads are completely irrelevant, but it's only been an hour or two; and irrelevant ads are the norm with Adsense ads for the first couple of days on a new site, too.

So I'll give Yahoo / Bing's crawler a couple of days and see how it works out. At this point, Adsense's revenue is so deep in the toilet that it doesn't matter much, anyway. There are days I don't even break $10.00 on Adsense. It's become pocket change compared to Amazon, the affiliate ads, and so forth. Yahoo / Bing can't be much worse.

-Rich

 

[JHW]

Just a side comment, apparently US-English has bifurcated, I don't understand a single word of this.

 

[bbchien]

Rich, all the advertisers are using appNexus' product, which is User profile oriented.....

 

[nddons]

Just a side comment, apparently US-English has bifurcated, I don't understand a single word of this.

Thanks, Jeff! I thought it was just me.

 

[Pilawt]

The only part I understood was "au revoir" ... and I don't speak French.

 

[RJM62]

Rich, all the advertisers are using appNexus' product, which is User profile oriented.....

You know, doc, I think a big part of the problem is that the people who come up with the algos and metrics that convert user history into ads haven't spent enough time in the field, especially in terms of watching how people use their home computers.

I spent many years doing onsite residential and commercial tech support, and I've observed a few things. One of them is that even in families who have multiple computers, family members tend to share them, especially if they only need to "look something up real quick."

They also tend not to bother creating individual profiles for different family members on shared computers; and even if they do, they tend to ignore them -- again, especially if they're "just looking something up." They don't bother logging out of one profile and into another just to do a bit of searching or other Web activity.

As a result, all the users' activities become jumbled together; and all the algos and metrics designed to convert user history into relevant ads are no longer worth a damn. Instead, it winds up working something like this:

It's 6:30 a.m., and 6-year-old Susie bounces out of bed and starts checking her Webkinz. She sees ads for trips to Aruba, because Daddy was researching them last night as a possible anniversary gift for Mommy.

Mom calls the kids to breakfast, and takes an opportunity to do some quick research on the SUV she wants to buy. She sees ads for Webkinz, because that's what Suzie was looking at.

The next user is 13-year-old Billy, who wants to look up some new games after school. He sees ads for SUVs.

Then Dad comes home and start searching for better loan deals for that SUV that Mom wants to buy, and sees ads for computer games.

Next, it's time for Suzie to check her Webkinz again, and Suzie sees ads for auto financing companies.

And so it goes. That's what happens in the real world.

The other problem with using user history to choose ads is that what a user is searching for now is not necessarily what he'll be interested in tomorrow. Even when a computer is not shared, some searches have a way of embedding themselves deep in a user's profile.

For example, I remember last year I was researching to see if it was practical to repair the gas tank in my old car by welding it. (It wasn't.) For several weeks thereafter, I was served ads for gas tanks, water tanks, tank trucks, tanks in general, model Sherman tanks, welding companies, welding equipment, welding rods, welding gases, welding classes -- you get the drift -- even when I was on my own sites, none of which have a blasted thing to do with welding or gas tanks.

It simply has become impossible to get ads based on pure conceptual analysis out of Adsense. Even if you log in through a proxy server to change your IP address, and use a virgin browser, you'll still get at least some location-based ads based on the IP you present to Google.

I'm really not that smart a guy, and I know that smarter people than me work for Google. So why can't they figure this stuff out? They have publishers leaving in droves because their revenues are vanishing, and Google still doesn't want to admit that their foray into user profiling has been a complete and utter failure.

The sad thing is that they already had a system that worked. It worked great, in fact. Before they started all the user-tracking crap, irrelevant ads were rare on Adsense once the system understood the site. In fact, the longer the code was on the site, the more relevant the ads became -- and the higher the CTR, pRPM, and revenue numbers got.

Nowadays, most publishers' revenue is in the toilet, and many are leaving the program. I was hoping the October plunge would wake Google up, but it didn't. They still refuse to admit that user-tracking has been a disaster, and refuse to go back to contextual selection. It's like user-tracking has become a religion unto itself, and they simply have to use it -- even if it doesn't work worth a damn.

As I said earlier, my Adsense revenue has been reduced to pocket change. It's so insignificant a part of my income that I don't even consider it a budget item anymore. It's beer and pretzels money. So I have nothing to lose by making a switch.

That's why I'm giving Yahoo / Bing a chance. If they can't figure out how to serve relevant ads, I'll try Chitika, 7Search, Adbrite, PPP affiliate ads... whatever. They can't perform much worse than Adsense, at this point; and who knows, maybe they'll be better.

-Rich

 

[EppyGA]

I've noticed that if I go to a site to look for some product then almost immediately ads for that site are all over the place. Of course those ads don't really drive me to buy anything from them.

 

[RJM62]

I've noticed that if I go to a site to look for some product then almost immediately ads for that site are all over the place. Of course those ads don't really drive me to buy anything from them.

Randy, it works a little differently on the "Search Network," which is composed of Google Search, some other search engines that use Google or partner with Google in some way, and custom search boxes that publishers can place on their sites.

On the search network, the ads are based primarily on the search terms used in the current and very recent searches, which is as it should be. I haven't noticed much user experience, if any, factoring into the ads that come up on Search.

The "Content Network" is composed of non-search, content sites, the vast majority of which are not owned by Google. The content of these sites can be pretty much anything that's legal: News, informational sites, Flash games, blogs, random rantings of lunatics... pretty much anything other than kiddie porn or bomb making will most likely be approved for Adsense. A site has to be really bad before Adsense will reject it.

The way Adsense used to work on the Content Network sites was that Google's robots would "read" the pages the ads appeared on, and choose the highest-bidding ads that were relevant to the pages' content. It worked remarkably well.

Once in a while, though, the robot would latch onto some insignificant term and start serving irrelevant ads because of it. Usually, the webmaster could easily fix this by de-emphasizing the word or removing it altogether.

But even if the webmaster did nothing, over time, the Adsense robot would learn that certain ads didn't generate clicks on certain sites, and would stop serving those ads. So the longer the Adsense code was on the site, the more relevant the ads got, and the more likely they were to be clicked.

That's how it used to work. Nowadays, they factor in user data, the relevancy has gone down dramatically, and the revenues have followed.

Google's answer to publishers' complaints (when they bother to provide one at all, which is rare) is that what seems relevant to the publisher is not important. What's important is what is relevant to the visitor's interests; and that the best ad is the one the visitor is most likely to click -- even if it has nothing to do with the site's content.

In effect, Google is saying that using user data makes the ads more relevant -- from the visitor's perspective. That should in turn increase clicks, which should increase revenue. And honestly, that argument might make sense if it weren't for the fact that Google hasn't been able to pull it off. Their own numbers show that.

In fairness, though, I don't think there is a way for Google to make it work. Using user metrics to choose ads is an inferior and obsolete technology.

In fact, I submit that the reason Adsense used to be a better performer than affiliate programs was precisely because the affiliate networks were using using data long before Google was, but Google came out with something better. Google figured out how to serve ads based on contextual relevance -- and Adsense promptly became the most popular and successful Web site monetization method in the world.

Google became the biggest precisely because they took a different approach from everyone else out there at the time. The others were all tracking users and looking at cookies. Google blew them away by looking at content, instead.

Which only makes their decision to start using user history even more puzzling.

-Rich

 

[PilotAlan]

Google's been getting stupid lately.
Like ending support for IE9 and earlier, trying to push you to Chrome. I used to use Google Flights and buy from there, but now it won't work on my company computer (locked to IE9, and ONLY IE9).
Gmail and other services are no longer 'universal', but instead only work on the platforms they want you to use.

The need to read about the Wrights, and what happened to Wright Aircraft.
In the meantime, I'm moving my stuff over to MS (Skydrive, Bing, etc).

Remember, if you aren't paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product.

 

[RJM62]

Here's a visual illustration of what is happening to Adsense. These screenshots were actually from several months ago and may have been posted here before. But they illustrate what I'm talking about WRT user history versus context relevance. (The TSC ad is an affiliate ad that I put up myself, not an Adsense ad.)

The site in question is a DIY pest control information site, and the page in question is about Norway rat control. This screenshot is of the page as viewed as an ordinary user, meaning I just pulled it up on my usual computer, using my usual browser, from my usual IP, without clearing the cookies:

The ad for long-term care plans probably came from my having been looking for new health insurance around that time. I have only vague hunches where the others came from.

Possibly my lady friend did a few searches (explaining the menopause-related ad), but she usually doesn't use my computer. And when my neighbor had been arrested for a DWI some months prior, I'd done a search for local defense attorneys for him, which might explain the "arrest records" ad (although quite some time had elapsed since then).

All I do know for sure is that the ads all were completely irrelevant to the site's content.

The ads also were irrelevant to my own interests. The one ad that was somewhat related to my recent activity missed the target because I was looking for a health insurance plan, not a long-term care plan. And if my looking for a defense lawyer for my neighbor triggered the "arrest record" ad, that also was not what I'd been looking for -- and in any event, it had been several months in the past, so the passage of time would have made it irrelevant even had the ad been for F. Lee Bailey himself.

Long story short, as an ordinary user looking at that page, I had no reason at all to click any of the ads that Adsense chose.

Now here's the same page, viewed while I was logged out of Google, connected via a proxy server to change my IP, and using FF in "private mode" to eliminate any browsing history, cookies, and so forth. I also directly accessed the page, so there was no search history or referrer information.

Having zero user history, IP, or other user information to rely on, Adsense was forced to choose ads based solely on context relevance. In this case, they chose a single banner ad rather than text ads:

The ad chosen when Adsense had no user information was contextually-relevant. Yes, it was for mousetraps on a page about rat control, but at least mice and rats are both rodents.

More to the point, if I were a site visitor reading that section of the page about the disadvantages of using rat poisons, and was therefore considering using rat traps instead, I would have clicked that mousetrap banner. A company that makes mousetraps can reasonably be expected to make rat traps, as well; so the ad is relevant, as far as I'm concerned.

The problem is: How many people routinely view the Web using proxy servers and virgin browsers? I'd say about ... almost none?

So instead of the relevant mousetrap ad, the vast majority of users will be served ads based on their user histories, which will look more like the first screenshot than the second. But no one at Google seems to get this, despite literally thousands of comments on their own boards from people who are walking away from Adsense because of it.

Early this morning, I got another email from my account manager at Yahoo / Bing, asking me for detailed data from my site stats programs (traffic sources, keyphrases on incoming search traffic, that sort of thing) to improve ad relevancy.

She also asked me to let her know the highest revenues the sites had ever earned from "the other advertising program" (I guess saying "Adsense" is kind of like saying "Macbeth" in a theater), and she set those numbers as the goals to match within four weeks.

Whether or not that goal is achieved, at least some human being over there "gets it." Their company's revenue is tied up with my own, and irrelevant ads don't generate any revenue. So we'll see what happens. So far, I think I made the right decision; and if it pans out, I'll be moving other sites over, as well.

-Rich

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

I'm having trouble finding your DIY pest control information site. Does it discuss those plug in rodent repelling things that my wife thinks will work?

 

[wsuffa]

Even when a computer is not shared, some searches have a way of embedding themselves deep in a user's profile.
...........
It simply has become impossible to get ads based on pure conceptual analysis out of Adsense. Even if you log in through a proxy server to change your IP address, and use a virgin browser, you'll still get at least some location-based ads based on the IP you present to Google.

I'm really not that smart a guy, and I know that smarter people than me work for Google. So why can't they figure this stuff out? They have publishers leaving in droves because their revenues are vanishing, and Google still doesn't want to admit that their foray into user profiling has been a complete and utter failure.

The sad thing is that they already had a system that worked. It worked great, in fact. Before they started all the user-tracking crap, irrelevant ads were rare on Adsense once the system understood the site. In fact, the longer the code was on the site, the more relevant the ads became -- and the higher the CTR, pRPM, and revenue numbers got.

Google's plan is to (eventually) tie actual user names, locations, demographics, etc together. That is why G is essentially requiring users to use real names, why they are tying G+ to real names (and email, and reviews, and... and... and...). They are losing out to Facebook which not only has names but a ton of demographic data (and relationships with others). It's also why G ****ed off the user community with the privacy policy changes. And why those with Android phones need to be aware of just how much data G is collecting on them whether they know it (or like it) or not. And why G is pushing Chrome browser and OS.

Yes, it can make for a more personalized user experience (which in some cases torques me off). But at the same time it is supposed to allow them to increase ad monetization by pushing personalization. They really don't care whether or not they push ads related to the context of the website: if they can capture a potential car buyer while they are on a pest-control or home-improvement website that's all the better for them and their clients. The advertiser wants their ads to reach folks that are in the right demographic for their product regardless of the site they're on.

Suppose PoA took advertising. The contextual ad would shill for aviation products. The personal ad might promote Lexus (because pilots are rich....)... it might go further, if Ted or Andrew were on, they might see ads for baby stuff (because they have new children). Bruce might get ads for medical office stuff, etc.

That's been the holy grail of marketers and the media for years. Broadcasting, newspapers, magazines - can't touch it (well they are limited in doing so - they can hit the demographics that they aim their content toward, not context but "who listens/reads this stuff". That really misses the mark for self-help websites, who are more like special interest magazines than mass media.... such websites are more interested in getting folks to buy the products recommended.

Given G's commitment to moving the world in that direction, I would expect no change. And given that the product really doesn't meet the needs of your websites, then it's probably not ever going to work for you. You've effectively been "fired" as a customer by Google... time to move on.

 

[RJM62]

I'm having trouble finding your DIY pest control information site. Does it discuss those plug in rodent repelling things that my wife thinks will work?

The site is http://www.scarafaggio.info/

It's due for a facelift and some major revisions, so please be kind.

As for the ultrasonic devices, I don't believe they're mentioned in the current version of the text because (ironically enough) one of the few relevant ads Adsense generated was for ultrasonic rodent repellers -- which would be fine if the things actually worked. But none but the most expensive ones work very well, if at all; and I don't want ads for things that don't work on my sites. I may be a Capitalist, but I'm not a thief.

The very best, high-end sonic devices actually do work, but they cost thousands of dollars and are only used in places where absolutely no poisons (or even traps) can be used. They're also ineffective if the sound waves are obstructed by anything other than air, so the effective range is limited to the unobstructed area directly in front of them.

The medium-priced ones may work for a while, but not for very long. The rodents get used to the tones and stop reacting to it with fear, and the amplitude isn't high enough to be sufficiently annoying to keep them away once they're no longer afraid of it.

The cheap ones sold to consumers are a complete waste of money. I try to make those ads go away if they sneak in -- which is why the devices are not mentioned (I don't think, anyway) in the current version. If I mention them at all -- even to warn people not to buy them -- it causes ads to be created for them.

-Rich

 

[JHW]

So, apparently your user history says that you are considering murdering your menapausal wife who resides at a long term care facility and who you believe is having an affair ?

I don't know how this ad business works, but even i can see that is probably a flawed system they are using.

 

[RJM62]

So, apparently your user history says that you are considering murdering your menapausal wife who resides at a long term care facility and who you believe is having an affair ?

I don't know how this ad business works, but even i can see that is probably a flawed system they are using.

First laugh of the day for me. Thanks!

-Rich

 

[RJM62]

Google's plan is to (eventually) tie actual user names, locations, demographics, etc together. That is why G is essentially requiring users to use real names, why they are tying G+ to real names (and email, and reviews, and... and... and...). They are losing out to Facebook which not only has names but a ton of demographic data (and relationships with others). It's also why G ****ed off the user community with the privacy policy changes. And why those with Android phones need to be aware of just how much data G is collecting on them whether they know it (or like it) or not. And why G is pushing Chrome browser and OS.

Yes, it can make for a more personalized user experience (which in some cases torques me off). But at the same time it is supposed to allow them to increase ad monetization by pushing personalization. They really don't care whether or not they push ads related to the context of the website: if they can capture a potential car buyer while they are on a pest-control or home-improvement website that's all the better for them and their clients. The advertiser wants their ads to reach folks that are in the right demographic for their product regardless of the site they're on.

Suppose PoA took advertising. The contextual ad would shill for aviation products. The personal ad might promote Lexus (because pilots are rich....)... it might go further, if Ted or Andrew were on, they might see ads for baby stuff (because they have new children). Bruce might get ads for medical office stuff, etc.

That's been the holy grail of marketers and the media for years. Broadcasting, newspapers, magazines - can't touch it (well they are limited in doing so - they can hit the demographics that they aim their content toward, not context but "who listens/reads this stuff". That really misses the mark for self-help websites, who are more like special interest magazines than mass media.... such websites are more interested in getting folks to buy the products recommended.

Given G's commitment to moving the world in that direction, I would expect no change. And given that the product really doesn't meet the needs of your websites, then it's probably not ever going to work for you. You've effectively been "fired" as a customer by Google... time to move on.

That about sums it up. Thanks.

-Rich

 

[Gary]

Here's a visual illustration of what is happening to Adsense. -Rich

Big Snip!

Rich:

Thanks for taking the time to explain this process. Learned a lot of new things!! Talk about "big brother" watching over us!!

Gary

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Wow.

So this is why all I see ads for now is women's boots. In fact, the exact pair of boots that I already bought my fiancée for Christmas! Why are they trying to sell me something I already bought?

Google had better fix their systems to work, whether or not they use user information, or they're going to be losing a lot of ad money.