Google Adsense: I Don’t Want Those Ads!


February 12th, 2008

Have you ever clicked on your website/blog that has Google Adsense Ads and had your jaw hit the ground? This happened to me today when my music based blog showed gay ads served by Google Adsense. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I didn’t know that Adsense served advertisements like this.

I kept refreshing the page, hoping that the ad was a mistake – but no…. There it was again. Refresh. Same thing. Refresh again. Same.  “Damn! How do I get rid of this?” I thought.

Well – having quickly searched the net, it seemed the best way was to get the destination URL of the ad and then add it into the competitive ad filter in Google Adsense setup. One problem with this is that it can take up to 4 hours for the ad to be blocked. :-( thats pretty poor. I added the URL to the competitive filter over an hour ago now and it is still on the site. Pretty frustrating.

It is all well and good that I have blocked this ad – but the problem comes with the ads that I don’t know are out there. I am sure many other unsuitable ads are in the wild – so how do I restrict them? I cannot sit all day refreshing my webpage to weed out the bad ones only to manually add these to Googles competitve filter.

The problem is – Google does not provide any functionality to do anything like this.

I don’t even know what keywords the Adsense ad server has scanned from my website to determine that a gay ad was the most appropriate to serve.

Do you know a way around this issue?

Categories: Ads, Google

10 Responses to “Google Adsense: I Don’t Want Those Ads!”

  1. Jason says:

    I even get some chinese ads!

    Get yourself a better ad programme.

  2. Entrepreneur says:

    I’ve had some of those racy ads as well and my site is on entrepreneurship! You may have seen it, its a picture of woman grabbing her boobs followed by George Bush. Google’s funny with what it does and does not allow. Did you know that they banned ads by Anita Roddick of The Body Shop because they didn’t like her politics? She wrote about it in her blog. (It’s still up although she has passed away)

  3. mcnicholl says:

    Hi Entrepreneur,

    I fail to believe thats your real name? ;-)

    I couldnt possibly comment on Anita Roddicks political point of view – but if its extremist – then I guess she should be restricted from impeding googles good name. One doesnt want to associate with the wrong crowd. Thats true in business more than anywhere else.

  4. Entrepreneur says:

    Mcnicholl: nope, entrepreneur is not my true name :D but I’d like it to be.

    Are you being serious about your Google comment, that if someone has a political ad on the Google adnetwork its associating yourself with the politics of that advertiser????

  5. mcnicholl says:

    Yeah – I’m serious.

    Put it like this – You mentioned that you didnt want the racy ads on your website … Why?

    Probably because they either didn’t fit with your target audience OR you didnt want to be associated with that market.

    Reasons you wouldnt want to be associated with that market are pretty obvious where porn is concerned. Your target audience of Entrepreneurs, myself included :-) , probably couldnt visit your site for fear of who would see them and what they would think they were up to – when they saw those ads.

    Politics is a “thin line” situation. You can align yourself to one side or stay neutral.In business you must ask the question “What are the consequences of my actions?” .

    My point is that Google doesnt want to be associated with extreme points of view.

    p.s I must stress that I know nothing of Anita Roddicks political point of view.

  6. Laice says:

    Hi, thanks for dropping by :)
    I usually check all my ads especially from google, the best one I found were from bidvertiser and adtoll – with adtoll you are in control of what ad is displayed and with bidvertiser you can state what type of ads you do not wish to appear on your blogs.

    Have fun and enjoy great success with your blog, I will sure drop by once in a while on my many travels :)

  7. Entrepreneur says:

    But how can you say that running an ad on the VAST Google network means its Google’s politics? If that were true, then Google should be damned.

    I mean, there are really morally bankrupt websites being advertised all the time, outright evil, outright let me take your money and scam you out of your life savings type ads, all over the place.

    Google agrees with their values … this is a sad day indeed.

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