I’ve been using Google AdSense off and on for about 10 years ago. They preformed OK in the beginning, then Google introduced “re-marketing” ads. These ads are chosen for you based on your browsing history (something you looked at yesterday perhaps), and not based on the content you are currently reading. When you are on my hiking website reading up on your next hike, by default most of the AdSense ads will not be hiking related.
“I Hate Re-marketing Ads”
On my niche-content site 4 out of 5 ads Google shows are irrelevant to my content. Very few people click on irreverent ads. Why? Because that’s old news. They’ve moved past it already, or maybe even purchased the item already. Here are 6 (out of 1000) irreverent “re-marketing” ads google chose to show on my hiking related website:
6 irreverent “re-marketing” adsNotice above the ads are marked as “BLOCKED”. I have blocked more than 1000 ads so far.
I’ve been painstakingly reviewing all of the ads google is using on my site, and blocking the crap-ads. Last month I filtered out a few hundred ads, but took a break from filtering crap ads the month before. As a result, my filtered ads earned 44% more, in comparison to the month before:
“AdSense Needs A No Remarketing Option”
If I could shut off re-marketing ads on my niche-content site I bet earnings would double. Better yet, if I could leverage AI to select brands and gear my audience will appreciate, earnings would go way up.
On my site I also run hiking specific sales and promotional affiliate ads. I run them on the same pages, in the same size as AdSense. But these ads come from retailers I know my audience will appreciate. There is almost no comparison in the performance. The ads I curate by hand (featured ads) have a CTR 3 to 6 times higher the AdSense.
My site is not at the back of the funnel, people don’t come here to buy gear. So sales are low. Affiliate ads only pay when someone makes a purchase. I’m stuck in the middle. I get a good CTR on affiliate ads but few payouts, and I get crap with pay-for-click AdSense ads. This is so frustrating. I wish there was something better.
What do you think about Remarketing Ads? Do you run AdSense and affiliate ads on the same page and get similar results as me? Is there something better out there?
(Do not post actual CTR rates or dollar amounts please – that’s against your AdSense user agreement)
