Preventing leaky filters

Creating effective Competitive Ad Filters is easy as long as you follow a few simple guidelines. Here are some quick tips to improve your filters:

Tip 1: Don't use "www" in your Ad Filters

Ads should be blocked at the domain level. Frequently, publishers append "www" to their filters, such as using 'www.example.com' instead of 'example.com'. If you filter 'www.example.com' and the ad points to landingpage.example.com, the ad will continue to appear on your page. However, filtering 'example.com' will block ads from 'landingpage.example.com', 'example.com/subdomain', and 'www.example.com'.


Tip 2: Don't believe the myth about blocking 'low-paying advertisers'

Our auction system automatically selects the best performing ads for each page to help you earn the most possible money. This is especially true with our new expanded text ads. By filtering ads you think are low paying, you could actually be cutting out the most optimized ads and decreasing your revenue potential. Each ad that is filtered is one less bid in the auction, lowering the price for the winning ad on your site. You benefit most when there is a larger pool of advertisers competing for a place on your site. Additionally, when we calculate the auction, we take ad clickthrough rates (CTR) into account - an ad with a $0.25 cost-per-click (CPC) with a 5% CTR is more valuable than an ad with a $1.00 CPC but a 0.1% CTR.

Learn more about how the auction works.

Tip 3: Don't go overboard with filters

Only filter URLs when absolutely necessary. As mentioned, each URL you add to your filter list may cut into your AdSense revenue potential, so it's important to think carefully before deciding what to block.

Some publishers worry that competitive ads will affect their bottom line and they may overuse filters, limiting the ad inventory available for their site. Our advice? Test it. Some publishers don't use filters and sell at the same levels after adding AdSense to their pages. This might not be true for all publishers, but you should test first so that you know the actual effects before unintentionally reducing your AdSense revenue.

Posted by Bryan - AdSense Publisher Support