Open Letter: Talking politics with Google Adsense doesn’t make sense

Dear Google Adsense,

What are you trying to do to me? Isn’t your service called Google Adsense? Aren’t you supposed to “match ads to [my] site's content… ads so well-matched, in fact, that [my] readers will actually find them useful”? You do a marginal job at best, and when it really counts you fail miserably.

What am I referring to, you ask? I'll tell you what: these stupid GOP ads. I hardly ever even mention their candidate by name (exemplified by the screenshot below, taken from a May post), and yet you continue to serve this crummy animated GIF at the bottom of 9 out of 10 of my political posts.

I wish you’d just sit down and read my blog once it a while. Understand it. Because right now, I feel like you don’t get me at all – like we’re not on the same page in this relationship. I really don’t want to end things with you, but it might come to that if you keep misinterpreting my feelings.

Best,
Ryan 

And to my readers – please ignore the GOP ad that’s probably at the bottom of this post. Clearly, I do not support their candidate’s campaign.

Comments

[jpastor]

Holy. That's messed up. Makes you wonder.

BTW, I had a dream last night with you where I begrudgingly admitted I was prob going to vote for Obama, which I thought was kinda funny.

Now that my Hillary fever has died down and I've been able to look at McCain more carefully, I can't see myself voting for him. Although I believe in a lot of what the Republican platform stands on (mostly fiscally) I cannot in good measure say I agree with it on social issues.

There's just something about the Obama movement that gets on my nerves. I'm at a point where I'm like, fine I'll vote for him, just don't talk to me about him or I'll hurl.

[Ron Newman]

I believe you can tell Google to block ads from domains that you don't want? I just had a conversation with Adam Gaffin about preventing dianetics.org and scientology.org ads on his Universal Hub site.

[adamg]

I'm getting all those McCain ads, too. If it bothers you, there's a way in the AdSense console to block them.

[eeka]

Yeah, you have to select the particular domains each time something you don't like comes up. The people who buy ads of course know how to target their ads to the "opposite" demographic. When I blog about homophobia, I've gotten ads for curing your children of homosexuality and things like that. I block those ads. I also frequently block ads for unorthodox eating disorder treatment places and things (other clinicians get those too -- I think the advertisers must be putting mental health credentials in their keywords or something).

I did think it was pretty funny when Domenico Bettinelli (not going to link your wonderful blog to his hate-ridden one, but feel free to google him...) made some post about how GLBT parents are enslaving their kids in homosexual bondage or some crap, and his whole site got covered in full-color rainbow flag ads for some pride merchandise site. I took a screencap and laughed at it at length. (He also seems to no longer run Google ads. I like to hope that adsense banned him for violating their terms of service with his hate speech blog).

[RyanB]

Thanks for the help guys :) I'll get down to the bottom of it.

And Juan, I'm really glad that you've examined McCain's social platforms closely. I can also see how the in-your-face nature of Obama's "movement" can turn some people off. So, I won't talk to you about him - but I will say welcome aboard ;)

[jpastor]

OMG. Thanks I guess.

[fak3r]

I'm having this exact problem, I've tried blocking the M-C.ain ads, but I still get them. I suspect that the people paying for these ads are bidding on keywords like hi11ary and 0bamma so that sites that have those as keywords still get the M-C.ain ads. Not sure what to do next, will look at blocking the domains next, thanks.

[Patrick]

I'm having the same problem with my site. I've sent them an email and of course no response. I've try to exclude these ads and nothing work