With Adsense is it better to show interest based Ads or context based Ads?

5 replies
  • SEO
  • |
My Adsense is showing interest based Ads rather than showing contextual Ads, i.e it's are displaying Ads based on my previous browsing.

Ads are displaying based on a visitors previous browsing behavior and NOT on the article and content on my site.

Is it better to show interest based Ads or context based Ads?
#ads #adsense #based #behaviour #browsing #displaying #wrongly
  • Profile picture of the author Ant B
    Split test both as it can be different for everybody depending on their niche and traffic. Only you can really tell based on a few days or more of testing both.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5410560].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      You can't actually turn off interest based ads. They will
      show them regardless, based on habits and location.

      It was kind of misleading anyway for google to have this
      option. It was not actually turning off giving ads based
      on a visitors preference. It was about not collecting data
      from your site, not about targeting visitors.

      Google has decided, with years of research, that putting
      ads on pages when they can match the visitor is much
      better than just a crap shoot.

      Google keeps track of the visitors that come to your adsense
      page. If lots of travel enthusiasts visit a site, the ads will
      become targeted for travel.

      Visitors can actually tweak the ads themselves if they are
      using the ad choices, why these ads, etc. buttons.

      Paul
      Signature

      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5410768].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author dp40oz
        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        You can't actually turn off interest based ads. They will
        show them regardless, based on habits and location.

        It was kind of misleading anyway for google to have this
        option. It was not actually turning off giving ads based
        on a visitors preference. It was about not collecting data
        from your site, not about targeting visitors.

        Google has decided, with years of research, that putting
        ads on pages when they can match the visitor is much
        better than just a crap shoot.

        Google keeps track of the visitors that come to your adsense
        page. If lots of travel enthusiasts visit a site, the ads will
        become targeted for travel.

        Visitors can actually tweak the ads themselves if they are
        using the ad choices, why these ads, etc. buttons.

        Paul
        I always wondered why Google would still have irrelevant ads on my pages after turning off interest based ads. That used to drive me nuts.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5411482].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author madison_avenue
    Ant B and Paulgi

    Thanks for your replies. One point about ''interest' ads could that google will place the ones they know are higher paying . They are hardly likely to select the ones that pay very low as Google will get more for the higher paying ones. So although contextual is good, I'll let 'Interest' based ads run and see how they perform.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5411283].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author mrtrance
    It just seems my CTR has really dropped for many of my sites since now when I go to one of my sites the ads showing are not relevant to the page with the content. It seems only 1 ad show that is relevant and 3 of them show ads that are related to stuff I was just browsing. Last year i was getting very high CTR and when Adsense changed their layout things have really changed and my CTR has really dropped on many sites that were getting good CTR. I checked off the Interest based ads option to see if things revert back to the old ways. I'll give it a few days to see if the CTR goes back up.
    Signature

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5485792].message }}

Trending Topics