Does anyone find it irritating to visit a page that features ads that do not actually relate to the product being offered? According to a WebmasterWorld thread, this is actually a constant concern. The culprit? Well, for one, a lot of newspapers are responsible, but it is happening everywhere.
A member writes in to say that this is happening to him:
My local newspaper's website recently underwent a complete overhaul and now they display AdSense ads prominently. It's amazing how many of the ads are just plain outright misleading. The landing page/site is an actual site, not a page full of links, but what is offered is not what is promised in the ad.
He is hardly alone:
In my country, the most widely circulated newspaper has blended ads and ad links very well with navigation and I am sure they must be getting tons of clicks.. Bikini babes, lingerie tag lines do generate a lot of cliks. Where they lead to is very diffn..
A member mentions that he's already banned 200 AdSense abusers -- and that's the limit.
I've also seen so many fraudulent ads by AdWords abusers. I've banned many of them, but already reached the 200 limit.Their link titles look attractive and optimized for relevance--they 'tell' consumers what they want to 'hear.' But they mislead the public, leading them to, among other destinations, a search engine whose results are new ad links of another online advertising company other than Google.
People who utilize AdSense are just getting frustrated:
I felt like putting a warning notice on my site:"If you find ads misleading, please report to Google... Apologies in advance. Google has an awful screening system... if the domain listed in the ad is weird, the ad is probably bogus. Google offers many useless, time-wasting, misleading ads. Its team of talented engineers is currently working on a solution."
Google needs a craigslist bad ad flagging system.
I understand their frustration, since it goes against the Google AdSense Program Policies. Further, I don't see how clicking on an irrelevant ad that promises something else could possibly yield a decent ROI.
If you want to see PPC to PPC to PPC to PPC (in other words, additional AdSense abuse), check out a video demonstration we displayed at the end of last year.
Discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
