website design, optimisation and content

When AdSense makes NoSense

Posted by Stewart Twynham on 12 June 2009

Advertising fulfils a necessary part of many Web strategies – but these examples from the BBC demonstrate why it’s important to keep a close watch on those third-party adverts!

For many websites, the costs of maintaining servers, software and staff are not met directly by the sale of goods and services from that site but by advertising. The revenue generated by viewing or clicking a single banner may only be a fractional amount, but thousands of impressions and hundreds of clicks later – it all adds up. Advertising is what keeps many news/fan/club websites online.

Whilst the BBC doesn’t serve up adverts to its UK audience, it has for some time used advertising extensively for its international viewers. The theory goes that the revenue thus generated supports a wide range of digital services, reducing the burden on licence fee payers.

Clout

Despite having the obvious clout to attract big-name sponsors – the BBC have also chosen to link up with Google’s AdSense to deliver third-party ads to its news items.

This approach is also attractive to many smaller websites that would otherwise struggle to bring in advertising revenue. Third-party schemes simply syndicate adverts out to your website with the minimum of fuss, you get to choose from broad categories of things that are relevant or appropriate to your audience – but the final selection is generally out of your hands.

Keeping it relevant

Where AdSense tries to take things a stage further is by only serving up adverts which are relevant. As the page loads, Google profiles the content and ensures that only ads with the most relevant keywords are displayed.

For example, find a forum on car repair and you’re likely to see adverts for all kinds of car related items. Look at a site dedicated to beauty, and you’ll most likely find ads for relevant cosmetics. Start talking about cylinder heads on that beauty forum, though, and you may well find that the adverts will automatically switch away from cosmetics onto automotive repair – such is the intelligence of these tools.

No AdSense of humour

Computers don’t do ‘judgement’ very well – which is why you can sometimes end up with really bad combinations of page content and adverts that would, to a computer at least, seem reasonable. Take this rather inappropriate combination from the BBC’s own news site, served up to international customers this weekend:

Concerned about flying? Become a Flight Attendant!
It doesn’t take much looking around the BBC site to find similar ‘bloomers’ – take this one:

Yet another Auntie-AdSense Bloomer!

Trivialised

The use of advertising in an indiscriminate way will, at best, trivialise what is otherwise a very important news story. At worst, it can be downright offensive to those involved. Take another article headlined:

Another serious article from the BBC...
I’m sure relatives of the man would be less than delighted to see this advert at the bottom of their screen:

Always look on the bright side of death?

Commercial implications

For commercial sites whose revenue depends on people buying up goods and services, the impact of banner ads can be detrimental to good business. Even with the most appropriate ads, a poorly laid-out page which fails to differentiate between your content and the adverts on the periphery will turn these adverts into a distraction – meaning that fewer people will buy.

If the adverts are not well matched, however, things can be much worse. There are plenty of examples where the content on the page actively triggers the production of banners for competitor sites. That’s right – you could be advertising your direct competitors right now, simply because Google thinks it would be relevant to your readership!

Taking control

For websites looking to partner with third-party advertisers, it is important to keep a close eye on the quality and relevance of automatically generated adverts. Several options may exist to exclude certain keywords, subjects or types of advert, but webmasters must remember that the ultimate veto lies with them.

Excluding the ad-generating code from any page prevents the ads from appearing at all. Removing ads from contentious material – or any content which might be misconstrued – removes the risk that adverts might otherwise harm or offend.

Content moderation is one of the key roles of a webmaster – that goes for third-party content as well.

Of course, there will be those who argue that taking a scythe to banner ads will also slice ad revenues, however, I disagree. Certainly, after reading about flight 447, I won’t be rushing out to buy my flight attendant’s uniform just yet.

Comments

No comments · be the first to add a comment · this blog is moderated