do you see badly targeted Google adverts?

[sub]

Do you get shown really useless Google ads on the forums? I seem to get shown ads about careers and 'earning degrees from home' and stuff like that. Pretty useless really. I guess this ultimately flows through to a very low click through rate, and crappy payouts from Google.

I thought it might just be showing me these because I was in New Zealand, but crappy ads here in the US aswell.

[Jaggy]

Pic attached of what I'm seeing right now reading your message & it looks fairly useless to me
Although I did see something the other day that I did click on........unfortunately what was at the other end wasn't at all like the add was suggesting....... very typical for advertising eh? <grin>

[bgowland]

The attached is what I'm seeing.

The scary thing is that two of the links (Scrum development and Project management) actually relate directly to some recent Google searches I've done.

Maybe a coincidence but lets face it, Google Ads are supposed to target at least geographic location so perhaps they're tracking my browser history too (I'm using Chrome).

Just because I'm not paranoid doesn't mean that Google isn't out to get me.

Having said that, however, yes they're pretty useless and don't relate to PVRs, TV, home entertainment etc.

[mvallevand]

This is called Adsense (I think) you can opt out here http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/

Martin

[stustunz]

so im a bit slow on all the advertising stuff and how you make money from it
If I click on the ads you get money ?

[bgowland]

This is called Adsense (I think) you can opt out here http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/

Martin

Yep, I think you're spot on - I'd forgotten about AdSense. If sub hadn't mentioned the ads, I wouldn't have made the connection with my recent searches.

So the question is...how useful is that to sub? On the one hand if I really cared about Agile software development techniques I might be clicking away at those ads but my searches were for an unusual reason so I'm not really interested.

Surely there should be a way to force ads for a particular site that are relevant to the site's subject matter. Hmmm.

[sub]

Surely there should be a way to force ads for a particular site that are relevant to the site's subject matter. Hmmm.

Their ads used to be much better, with video conversion tools etc, but maybe those people just arent buying advertising in this economic environment. Google usually base the advertising on the search indexing they've done for the specific pages the ads are shown on. Its possible something vbulletin have done with the URLs in recent releases has made that not work so well.

[sub]

so im a bit slow on all the advertising stuff and how you make money from it
If I click on the ads you get money ?

Basically google pay me a few cents for each thousand adverts shown on gbpvr.com, and a few more cents if the ads are well targeted and users click through an ad. The payments from google dont add up to much, but its better than nothing.

They actively monitor for fraud though, like abnormal amounts of ad viewing or clicks-thrus from certain clients.

[bgowland]

Their ads used to be much better, with video conversion tools etc, but maybe those people just arent buying advertising in this economic environment. Google usually base the advertising on the search indexing they've done for the specific pages the ads are shown on. Its possible something vbulletin have done with the URLs in recent releases has made that not work so well.

Yep, I remember when the ads were generally related to PVR stuff, capture cards, home entertainment etc.

I just opted out of the AdSense and DoubleClick thing to see what happened. Now I'm pretty much just seeing random ads although many relate to 'making money' (surveys, web/blog advertising etc - slightly ironic considering this threads theme).

All in all I can't see this as particularly useful to you. I generally resist clicking on ads but in the past I have done here when they've been related to the technology.

[johnsonx42]

yes, now that you mention it, I'm getting completely irrelevant google ads too. right now I'm seeing something for some statistical software. I recall the ads here used to be generally PVR-related in some way.

edit: looking at a few more pages, I do seem to be getting somewhat relevant ads on the main forum page, but I get the statistical software ad every time I look at this thread. does the ad engine actually look at the content of the page to determine what ad to show?