Friday, 17th August 2007
If the Google AdSense sites that appear on your web sites are very well targeted for the content of your site, you won’t need to use the competitive ad filter. However, if you have web sites that do not get the right bunch of ads, you should use the competitive ad filter to block those untargeted ads from your web site to increase the chances of getting a more targeted ad.
The big problem with Google AdSense is they consider ads you wish to block as “competition”. Personally, I do not think of them as competition but annoyances. Once you enter a domain name into the competitive filter list, it will get blocked throughout your account. All of your web sites will not be able to display these ads.

As you can see from my competitive ad filter list, I have disabled some useless “Oasis spa” ads and other holiday related ads. If I create a web site about holiday topics, I will not be able to have these ads on my holiday sites even though they are targeted to my site’s content. Heaven knows why Google can’t create a “site specific ad filter” instead of the current filter system.
There used to a method of disabling advertisers on your sites based on the estimated bids the advertisers are paying. When the Overture Bid Tool was still working, some webmasters used to run a check on their Google AdSense ads’ advertisers on Overture and disable the lower paying advertisers. This would increase the chances of the higher paying ads to get displayed on your sites. Too bad, we can’t do this now…
Tagged As: Competitive-Ad-Filter, CTR, Google AdSense
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