Content Networks - Manage Where Your Ads Show
In a latest sensationalism of online marketing news, InSing, a new food and recreation portal for Singapore by SingTel, has been reported to have placed ads on a porn site.
But is it really their fault?
Are they really in control of all their ads? Let’s put aside the fact that the complaint was from a person visiting a porn site when he saw the InSing ad appear.
Being an online marketer helping Businesses in Singapore get their ads onto Search Engines and well, browsers near you, I’ve seen InSing ads EVERYWHERE and on almost EVERY KEYWORD related to food, leisure and recreation, local services and more. InSing is a new portal and the backers (SingTel) surely have deep pockets - it only makes sense to push a ton of ads through all channels; search networks and content networks.
Since the ad was encountered when viewing a website, we are most likely talking about the following sources:
- Content networks via Google Adwords/Adsense, Yahoo Search Marketing and the like.
- Direct Banner Ads, buying ad space directly with the website publisher
I’m pretty sure that SingTel would not approve of directly placing banner ads in questionable places, so we’d rule this one out.
How Content Networks work
Content networks are where you want your online ads to show for a thematic grouping of keywords. These ads appear on various places within websites, blogs and forums.
Taking Google as a good example to explain the situation, Adwords for Content is used by the Advertisers like SingTel/InSing. This is paired with Google Adsense where publishers of websites, blogs and forums indicate various locations on their webpages where the ads are to be shown. What connects the two, are the carefully themed keywords.
Adsense publishers do not have absolute control of what ads can appear. However, they can influence this by having worded content on their pages which address the themed keywords. These would draw the automated ads.
For this InSing situation, I’d expect that the worded content on the questionable webpages could include mundane themes like playing golf, swimming, going for manicures, dog training, descriptions of hobbies etc, while being peppered with images of pornography. No one would be the wiser of the keyword baiting process until the visitor makes a notice of the ads (other than the lewd images).
How to Manage where Your Content Ads are Showing
Apart from the Tarnishing of the Brand name, it’s also a cost for the Adwords Advertiser. What can you do to avoid both of these?
If you are on Google Adwords for Content, you can extract a free ad placement report that lists ALL the websites that your ads are being automatically placed on. If they are websites of a questionable nature, block them. And that’s it.
But new websites appear everyday, vying for your ads. So you have to do this monitoring periodically. Advertisers of new campaigns have to monitor these ad placements daily for a start. As the campaign matures, it is possible to reduce the monitoring effort to a monthly task.
So is SingTel to be blamed for this today?
Well, if you see the InSing ad on your favourite porn site today, you shouldn’t fault them. Yet.
If you still see the InSing ad on your same favourite porn site next week and also the month after that, then yes, they are absolutely at fault. This means that the ones managing their ad campaigns are not monitoring their ad placement reports.
Did the above statements sound ironic?
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2 Responses to “Content Networks - Manage Where Your Ads Show”
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Hi Paul,
Agreed with what you’ve shared about Google’s content work and the how to.
However I beg to differ that SingTel inSing is using Google content network to promote the portal in this case. Neither there is any connection to Google for having ads streamed on porn sites.
Allow me to further elaborate my point.
Firstly, we need to understand that Google will not allow their ads to appear on pornography sites or sites with racist or other non-family friendly content.
You have AdSense on your blog and I supposed you knew the process of signing up Google’s ad network.
All potential AdSense publishers need to apply to Google and their sites will be screened by Google to see if it meets the Big G’s criteria.
Obviously this is to filter out those non-family friendly sites from streaming Google’s ads like I mentioned earlier.
After joining Google’s ad network the publisher has to continue to comply to Google’s guidelines at all time.
One will be disqualified if Google found out the content is offensive and against the policies.
Last but not least, I’m not here to defend Google nor I’m one of their fans. Just feel like there is a need to clarify some misleading info you have mentioned in your post.
Hope this is clear to you and your fellow readers that the ads wasn’t provided by Google but another ad network which is Admax if I’m not mistaken but how Admax screens their publishers is not something I like to comment here.
My final word, inSing should not be blamed here but Admax is as they are managing the campaign for their client.
This is the same as if Click Media has mismanaged your clients’ campaign.
Wish your success online.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the insightful piece. Am a digital marketeer, and i say ad placement reports only tells you what are the sites you got in after you advertise, advertisers need to take preventive measures to not even let their ads get in undesirable sites in the first place. Best way is to avoid networks i would say, because its a blind buy. Some sites might disguise their site a a legit site e.g. pornsite might have keyword news and you might just get in there. My two cents worth.