Google AdSense Testing Category Filtering Feature

Apr 23, 2009 at 9:22am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Google AdSense blog announced they are testing a new beta feature that gives publishers control over the ads they can filter. This filter allows advertisers to pick specific categories of ads that they want to block.

For example, if you have a site about education and you specifically do not want to show any ads about religion and/or ads that are sexually suggestive, with this tool, you can exclude religion ads. Here is a screen capture of the available categories you can exclude:

Notice how on the right column, it shows you how much revenue you made (as a percentage of total income) from ads within those specific categories.

This feature has been on the top of publisher’s wishlists for a long time. Currently, this is in a limited beta right now, so speak to your AdSense representatives if you really want to test the feature out early.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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ONE COMMENT ON Google AdSense Testing Category Filtering Feature

segrantAMP, April 27th, 2009 at 2:55 pm ET:

It’s good that Google’s offering better targeting – in theory it should help maximize a site’s revenue. But have you seen this – an article on how Google’s banning sites that don’t update their privacy policy from the AdSense network: http://www.adotas.com/2009/04/google-bans-publishers-for-not-updating-privacy-policies/#comment-757525

In addition to making it more difficult for publishers to serve ads, Google’s also continuing to grow their margin and reduce payouts to AdSense publishers. It seems like they’re continuing to make it difficult for smaller publishers to monetize their sites. A great alternative is pubMarketplace.com – a new platform for small publishers without the privacy policy ban…

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