Thread: Adsense Interest based vs Contextual Ads

Well I know I've seen Adsense ads that show things I've recently looked at, or websites I've visited before. I'm very new to Adsense (Only 3 weeks or so), so I'm not sure how it affects the clicks/income. I think Google is thinking that if they display things that you've looked at recently, you're more likely to click.

Yes, and what's interesting is I turned off "interest based ads" in the settings and yet I still see ads from sites I visit on my sites so I'm not sure why turning that off does nothing. I would prefer to only show ads that are related to my content.

Thanks Lisa, I didn't know it could be turned off or on. I thought it was something new, but then I looked at Google Analytics and see that I can get reports on CTRs for ad by type going back for months. It is kind of creepy though, that you search on one site and then go to another and low and behold, there are the products you just looked at on the first site are coming up inside the Adsense ads on the second site. A lot of people are put off by this, because they view it as a privacy concern. I don't care too much since I realize there's not a whole lot of privacy on the Internet, but now that I see it generates half the CTR of the contextual ad, I'll see if I can figure out how to turn it off (and hoping it will work).

-Lee

Turning it off doesn't help with the amount of interest based ads adsense shows. I don't know why they put the option in there.

Originally Posted by Spirit

Turning it off doesn't help with the amount of interest based ads adsense shows. I don't know why they put the option in there.

I turned mine off a few days ago, but according to the adsense analytics, Google is serving them. Incidentally, I searched the forums and this topic was discussed last year with the same observations. It appears that Google has it set up to run these interest-based ads about 20% of the time and the contextual based ads 80%, a ratio that has been consistent over the last year on my website.

-Lee

Originally Posted by Spirit

Turning it off doesn't help with the amount of interest based ads adsense shows. I don't know why they put the option in there.

Exactly. Why bother with that option?

Originally Posted by lee810

I turned mine off a few days ago, but according to the adsense analytics, Google is serving them. Incidentally, I searched the forums and this topic was discussed last year with the same observations. It appears that Google has it set up to run these interest-based ads about 20% of the time and the contextual based ads 80%, a ratio that has been consistent over the last year on my website.

-Lee

I found something that I think other WB members would be interested in. As I look at my own website, EVERY SINGLE PAGE shows me Adsense that is somehow related to my recent search/surfing behavior and that is very frustrating since I have no idea why certain pages are performing well. Chrome has the ability to surf using 'incognito' mode with the <ctrl><shift>N. Press all three keys at the same time in Chrome and then view your website and you will see ads that are quite a bit different than what you're used to seeing if Google is using your id to serve ads.

-Lee