Google Adwords New Feature Seeks to Improve Content Ads Performance

Google has added a new feature which allows advertisers using it’s “content network”, or ads that appear through Adsense on websites, to exclude sites such as forums, image-sharing sites, social networks, and video sharing sites.

This appears as an effort to improve advertising returns of advertisers who use the “content network” as well as the Google “search network”.

This will also have an impact on the revenue the sites were making from the Adsense ads they were showing.

Sites like Facebook, Myspace, Friendsite, Flikr, Youtube, have users join and share videos, images, and conversation. Some of these sites also have ads that generate revenue for them through “content advertising” such as Adsense, other networks, or proprietary advertising networks.

If you are a Google Adsense advertiser, you may not want your ads to appear on one of these sites, because the visitors who visit these sites are less likely to be interested in actually buying the product or service you are selling.

Previously advertisers could only select specific URLs to exclude their ads from appearing in. Now you can exclude with one click entire groups of these sites by the categories;

  • forums
  • social networks
  • image-sharing sites
  • video-sharing sites

It is likely many will choose to exclude this categories to get a higher return on their advertising dollar which is why Google has added this feature.

Since there will fewer advertisers showing ads on these sites they are likely to see click rates fall and a decrease in revenue.