In one of the Wordpress Support threads, mjo202 asks the ultimate blogger-AdSense question:

“…while AdSense works great on my site, it only delivers ads targeted to the keyword “blog” on my blog. This is really weird, as I rarely use the word “blog”, and there are certainly other targeted keywords that show up a lot more frequently.”

This is one of the most obvious problems with contextual ads: the serving of irrelevant ads. HTNet reports that the two most common cases of irrelevant ads especially in AdSense are:

• Blog related ads - I’m talking about ads that carry taglines like Free Photo Blog, How to publish a Blog, Start your blog now, etc.
• Country specific ads - you have one instance of “Philippines” in your blog category list and then all the ads being displayed on your digital camera posts are Philippines-related, not a single digital camera ad.

When irrelevant ads get displayed, you have very little or zero chance of getting AdSense clicks. Bloggers are the worst type of visitors. They know about AdSense (they see it every second online). They also know just about any other ad system in the world. They’ve since added another skill; they’ve become quite adept at ignoring ads. Banner blindness they call it. You can’t click what you can’t see, can you? ;)

So how do I make irrelevant ads go away?

The Remedy

Out with the Irrelevants :)

Block ads via Google AdSense’s Competitive Ad Filter feature. Now it would appear that the facility will only benefit corporate bloggers out to block competitor ads from their blogs. Not true. Ordinary bloggers like you and me can use this facility to block irrelevant ads.

Step 1: From the AdSense start screen, go to AdSense for Content > Competitive Ad Filter.

Step 2: Add the URL of the ads you want to block.

For more detailed instructions, read Google’s Competitive Ad Filter Guide.

Remember, you can only blick a maximum of 200 URLs. To save URLs, avoid keying in specific URLs; block all ads by keying in domain.com (not www.domain.com, subdomain.domain.com or domain.com/folder).

I’ve set up a list of blog-related URLs that you may want to use in your filter list. Feel free to copy/paste the URLs to your Competitive Ad Filters.

Help me keep the list updated, please suggest other blog-related URLs by leaving a comment below.

URLs to Block
Last Update: Monday, August 16, 2005 10:03 AM

blogexplosion.com
blogger.com
blogit.com
bloglightning.com
blogomonster.com
blogpulse.com
blogs.com
cohit.com
dailyluxe.com
flavorphoto.com
fotothing.com
gemstream.com
myblog-online.com
netwinsite.com
newcommblogzine.com
peachpit.com
person.com
squarespace.com
starware.com
stellarmag.com

Contributed by Ka Edong:
21publish.com
blogging-bonanza.com
newsfirerss.com
rsscache.com
sitelutions.com
weblogone.com

The other important thing to remember is that filtering sites may decrease your potential AdSense earnings and/or the number of ads that get displayed on your blog pages. If you ask me, your ad space is better served by non-blog related ads. If no ads get displayed, then you need to work on your post’s keyword density to improve the page’s focus.

AdSense is testing a program with a few publishers, letting them send more “signals” about their Web site, to better tailor ads. Though AdSense already uses signals based on the content of Web sites, such as headlines and font sizes, to generate ads, this would let advertisers tailor ads based on their users’ demographics and other signals, which are yet to be determined.

“We realized there is benefit in allowing publishers to tell us more about the page, [information that is] not directly on the page,” Rajaram said. “This will give publishers potentially more control over what ads are being shown.”

The type of signal would depend on the type of Web site. A music site may send Google information that its users are mainly young males, for example, and Google would use that information to target ads.

“They could send us a list of topics that users of this site are interested in,” Rajaram said.