23 Musings

Techrunch carried a post the other day highlighting the way publishers have little control over what adverts Google Adsense puts on their websites, using an example of the U.S. baseball/steroid drama. It's always been a bit of an issue for publishers that they could end up carrying advertising that isn't really suitable for their content, and as usual Google have an answer.

Google's just announced the Ad Review Center. This allows publishers to review the ads targeted for your site and lets them ensure they get suitable content related adverts. This should help publishers increase their revenue from Adsense as any adverts that are totally unrelated to their content are more likely to get clicks. Feedback from the publishers will make its way back to the advertisers as well, thus allowing advertisers to target ads better and get hopefully more qualified referrals.

The NY Times technology blog surmises that this could reduce Googles revenue but I highly doubt that as this could encourage wider take up of Adsense by those who've found it poorly targeted in the past.

It's another added value tool from Google that makes Adsense still the most viable ad serving solution for small publishers everywhere.