Fighting the pain of Google Adsense Public Service Ads
We all know them, we’ve all seen them: Adsense public service ads. It’s when you see an adsense ad about the red cross, or an ad that asks you to donate for the victims of the earthquake. You may even think they are nice, and they are! But did you know that they don’t earn you a dime?
So, now that you know what these public service ads are, and what they do ( or better: don’t do, which is paying you), the next question is:
Why are you getting those public service ads?
red cross adsense public service ads
The answer to this question is relatively simple, you get them because Google can’t figure out what ads to serve for your site. Why it can’t figure that out? There’s a variety of reasons for that. For instance, if you have only just subscribed to adsense, or you put a new website online, and googles adsense spider hasn’t visited your site yet. Or, your page includes lots of flash and pictures, but very little text, so google has no keywords to rely on. Or if you’ve selected to show only image ads, and there are no image ads available for your keywords. Or, another possibility is that your pages is password protected, and you haven, so google has no keywords to rely on. Or if you’ve selected to show only image ads, and there are no image ads available for your keywords googles adsense spider how it can log in (you can do that on your adsense account page).
So, then how do we get rid of these public service ads?
First of all: by making sure that Google knows what your site is all about, so that it can target its ads to your content. Of course, that is, if you have content. If you don’t then that is the first step to take 😉
Assuming you have content in the meantime, then you still have some other options for tackling those Adsense public service ads.
The first and most easy thing you can do is to place a block of color instead of the ad unit. You can choose any color you like for the block, but setting it to your background color seems to be the “best” option. This will just show an empty space where the ads are supposed to be. Sounds like a waste of space and time, right?
The next thing you can do is create your own ads. You can do this by creating an html file that holds your ads in the same size as the adsense ad which it has to replace. You can make your own ads look just like the Adsense ads you should receive, but for instance make them point to other websites you own. You can also add images to your own html file, and serve image ads that way. In your Adsense ad setting for that ad, you simply put the url of your self created ad as the alternate URL. Be careful though, don’t format your own ads as Adsense ads when you also have other Adsense adblocks that ARE serving ads! Because, serving ads that mimic Adsense ads on a webpage that also serves Adsense ads will get your account kicked faster than the average ball in the Fifa finals!
Another good option besides serving your own ads as alternate ads is serving ads from another ad system. A perfect replacement for your Adsense ads is serving Chitika ads. Chitika can be used together with Adsense Ads without breaking the Google Adsense Policy, so it is a perfect solution for the dreaded Adsense public service ads.
The way to get this working is the same as above. First of all create a Chitika account, then create a new blank html page, and put your Chitika Ads on it. Then point your Adsense Alternate url to this file, and see your Adsense public service ads dissapear!
