Ad Blockers: Let's Talk!

There are many different adblockers available in the market for a variety of different browsers. But the one most people seem to complain about, is one that seems to be the most well-known. Adblock Plus is a much-used adblocker. Publishers hate it (well, some do - I do not) because so many people use it. According to ABP, 75% of their users don't mind some types of ads, while 25% of their users want to just block everything. Keep in mind that for those users who just want to block every type of ad and refuse to see any advertising at all, nothing you do will make them change their mind.

But AdBlock Plus isn't the villain here. At least, I don't see it that way. In some cases, the problem is the publisher themselves. They have too many ads on a page from too many different ad providers. Or, the ads they use are intrusive, cutting into a person's ability to read content without being interrupted by advertising. Intrusive and annoying ads will create a poor user experience, and may actually lose you visitors, especially if you are begging them to turn it off.

AdBlock Plus has a feature called "Acceptable Ads", and the criteria for acceptable ads isn't hard to understand, even for users who are less web-savvy. You can turn on, or turn off the Acceptable Ads feature. Some will just leave it off and see no ads, either because they just simply hate ads period, or because they aren't sure how to use it, or how to change it.

How Would You Change AdSense?

Here's a question for all of you - or any of you - that have had frustrations with Adsense. Sometimes things don't work as intended, do they? This can be particularly true of companies that use automation for much of their processes. I'm sure at some point in their AdSense career every publisher has probably said something like "If I ran Adsense, I'd __________!". So, let's fill in the blank.

What would you do if you ran the AdSense Program; what would you change, fix, or drop? How would you make those changes work? After all, it's easy to say "this should be better", but it's not always easy to come up with a viable way to make those changes work.

Here's my lists:

Publisher Pluses

1. Good publishers would be rewarded. Maybe with quarterly bonuses, or a premium-style ad format. By good publisher, I don't mean "high earning publishers". I mean publishers whose sites contain no violations, who practice good ad placements, who don't promote their sites using non-approved methods, etc. etc.

2. Payment thresholds would be lowered a little (maybe $75) and the process for validating a publisher's address would be changed to uploaded documents when crossing the threshold, instead of waiting for a PIN by regular mail. Since very few countries have check payments any longer, verifying a person's country address by documents makes more sense, and creates less waiting time, meaning publishers may be able to collect their first earnings a little quicker.

(a) country changes could be requested through the account, rather than publishers having to close their current accounts, however, in order for a country change to be approved, publishers would have to provide (i) documentation for the address they signed up with and (ii) documentation for their new address. They'd have to prove they lived at the first country address, as well as that they've moved to a new country.

Your Best AdSense Moment in 2015

What was your best moment with AdSense during 2015? Was it a month with really great earnings? Was it a month where you got a lot of comments on your articles or videos? Or was it something even simpler, like finally getting approved after several tries? Was it learning something that you didn't know, or producing some content that you're particularly proud of? Was it solving a problem that frustrated you, or was it helping someone else fix a problem?

If I had to pick just one moment, I think it would be the conference I attended, meeting "Top Contributors" from all over the world, and meeting up again with our AdSense in English help forum family.  For me, that probably outweighs almost any amount of earnings I'd get. (See here for information on becoming a Top Contributor for Google Product forums.)

As 2015 is only half a month away from being over, I want to wish my friends and readers a successful 2016. Every day is a new day, giving us a chance to do better, and to be better. Not just with Adsense, but in our personal lives. As 2016 comes closer, maybe we should all think about how we can make ourselves better in the upcoming year ... be kinder; be more caring; share with others; support those who need help; be less judgemental; accept others for who they are, and where they are ... I think there are any number of small, everyday changes we can make in our lives that might make a difference in the lives of those around us.

High Paying Keywords Waste Time

WHAT? Yes, it's true. Not only does spending time playing around with keyword values waste time, it's unlikely to result in higher paying CPCs. And there isn't any one single reason that it's true, but multiple reasons.

Hundreds of blogs write lists of these mythical keywords ... they're pretty useless, unless of course you're looking for humour. Even as far back as 2006, there were smart publishers out there who understood what was and what wasn't true about these mythical beasts.

Raise your hand if you've done it ... gone looking at lists of high paying keywords?

Yep, just what I thought. An awful lot of you have, especially the ones new to the world of advertising revenue. That isn't surprising actually. There are a plethora of unauthoritative blogs out there eschewing the greatness of using high paying keywords but the truth is ... that's a fallacy (ie: untruth, fib, lie).

Oh sure, maybe way back near the beginning of the online advertising word, these keywords were useful but in the early days, advertisers didn't have as much information, data, and knowledge available to them as they do today. Now, advertisers are a lot less willing to waste their money advertising where it doesn't count (or, put another way, a lot smarter about how they spend their advertising dollars).

Where to Find Google Product Help

One of the things that frequently occurs in the AdSense Help Forum are posts from people looking for help for other products that Google Supplies. I expect a lot of this might be due to the fact that the AdSense forum is first on the list of help forums on the Google Support Forums listing page. I imagine lots of other help forums run into this problem too because the AdSense forum gets lots of posts moved into it from other forums.

I'm not sure why this is such an issue - the the support forums listing has direct links to most of the help forums for Google products, but there are several related forums that currently don't have their own help forum (AdMob doesn't have an active help forum; Google Accounts doesn't have a help forum), and I guess when people just want to complain about anything related to Google they'll post on the first forum they find ... fairly often it's AdSense.

So, to that end ... here's a list of forums and what help they offer.  A lot of these products also offer the ability to use Adsense with the product itself, so it's understandable if someone posts in AdSense instead of the product help forum. It's hard to know which place you need to post for help.

In some cases, like YouTube or Blogger, if it's a technical issue that relates to the actual function of the product (like a channel, or video, or blog or blog post), you'd need to ask for help at that product forum, rather than Adsense. If it's an issue that is specifically Adsense (ie: your payments, earnings, or AdSense account, or creating ad codes, etc.) then you'd ask at the AdSense forum.