Category Filtering For AdSense – How it impacts Content Targeting Advertisers

This is an important announcement for the other side of the fence…for advertisers on the content network:

http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/04/category-filtering-feature-being.html

I was in the AdSense Forum when they talked more about this and I asked the question "how will advertisers be categorized". The panel couldn't answer that question but one of the Google AdSense developers was in the audience and the short answer is that advertiser categorization will be determined by two elements: ad copy and landing page.

I took some time to talk to the Google guy again after the session to try to get more information. My concern…that a landing page will be "labeled" and attached to one category based on someone at Google who reviews the site. If he's right…and categorization will be based on the combination of ad copy and landing page…then legitimate sites can work with that.

Bottom line…AdSense publishers are fed up with the spammy diet ads and make money ads. They are tired of trying to keep up with filtering those sites out individually (much like site negatives with content targeting) and they have asked for a better way to stop those ads so Google is going to give them the option to exclude entire categories from showing ads (much like category negatives in content targeting).

I know a lot of legitimate advertisers who are testing more "colorful" language in their ads and on their landing pages because of the competitive nature of their industries. What I'm taking away from the conference and announcement is that there will probably be certain keywords in both ad copy and on landing pages that might categorize them in a way that will greatly limit their traffic so they may want to be more selective and even more creative when testing ad copy and copy on their landing pages.

About the Author

Perry Marshall's books on Google Advertising are the most popular in the world. He is referenced across the Internet and by The Washington Post, USA Today, and Entrepreneur Magazine.

He has helped over 100,000 Google Advertisers save billions of dollars in Adwords stupidity tax.