AdMoolah News and Views

Google did something yesterday that they rarely do, give us a glimpse into new features that they are working on. They posted an entry on the Inside AdSense blog about ad filtering and mentioned that they were working on better filters:

We’ve heard your feedback about how quickly filters take effect and the ability to block specific categories of ads, and we’re working hard to improve our current controls and provide more powerful ones in the near future. Over the next couple weeks, we plan to improve the speed of your filters, and we’re working towards filters in the future that will take effect in less than an hour. We’ll also continue improving the Ad Review Center, giving you ways to block entire categories of ads in addition to individual ads. We are also working on ways for you to establish guidelines for the type of ads that will be acceptable to your users, so you can “set it and forget it,” while feeling comfortable that users will have a good ad experience.

I’m sure much of their feedback was about Propostion 8, a controversial issue in California that seeks to ban gay marriage. Californians surfing the web before the election on Tuesday saw a lot of ads supporting this proposition. I saw them on my own sites and quickly used the competitive ad filter to stop them.

Many publishers who use AdSense often complain about ads that are inappropriate for their sites, so hopefully these new filtering techniques will help.