AdSense (Continued)

One of my readers sent me an email asking if it bothered me that AdSense was running ads on my blog for companies that do back door IPOs and other somewhat shady operations.

To be honest it didn’t bother me until I started to think about it. I certainly don’t think back door IPOs are a particularly good way to finance startup businesses and I know that many of the people who operate in this market are not particularly ethical. That doesn’t mean the company that is running an ad on my blog should be avoided, but I also can assure you that I am not endorsing their services.

In my most recent post on this subject, I said that I would like to be able to have some say on what kinds of ads run on my blog. I don’t love the anti-spam ads and the blog ads are OK, but in my ideal world, the ads generated by the ‘venture capital’ keyword are the ones I most want to run on my blog.

And now I am thinking I want to exclude certain kinds of ads. This speaks to the need for tools for publishers who are participating in contextual networks like AdSense. Maybe these tools exist and I just don’t know about them. If they do, I want to try them out. If they don’t, then Google and its competitors (Overture, Kanoodle, and others) should develop them.

Comments

[hugh macleod]

I think there's something rather unpleasant about Adsense. I prefer Blogads. Fifty times the human dimension (at least). Pity they don't have a cost-per-click-through model.

[Josh]

We've done some blogad advertising, and while it's not PPC, it is good for fixed price testing to see what kind of results you get.

[Tom]

We have also used blogads and it has been very successful. I could not imagine spending money on adsense for the blog world. With blogads, people will give you the benefit of the doubt because of the implied community membership.