This is for all of you bloggers who have woken up one morning and discovered an offensive ad generated by Google AdSense on your site. If this hasn’t happened to you then you are either new or you haven’t monetized your website with AdSense or something like it that generates ads on your site that are ‘supposed’ to target and compliment the content.
What to Do With Offensive Ads
Some site publishers are content merely put an ‘ad disclaimer’ right above each spot where the AdSense ads appear or a general ‘Ad Disclaimer’ somewhere on the website (which I favor and we will explore later in this post). Some will say that the best way to get rid of them entirely is take AdSense off of your blog and set up affiliate ads that really do compliment your content. This I have done to a greater degree lately. However, I have found that AdSense is still a valuable tool in monetizing sites with only moderate to low daily traffic. So most of all, I just want to get rid of offending ads once and for all by blocking them from my sites.
AdSense has made it easy to block any advertising that you find offensive once you discover the address. That is the rub sometimes, since it violates your agreement with Google to merely click through the ad on your own site. However, on a number of occasions I was able to find the offending ad on someone else's blog and click through for the address.
While some ads may list the address on the illustration itself most do not. Sometimes you can find a clue to the address by hovering over the ad. But the most offensive of all seem intent on hiding their destination with impossibly long assorted numbers, letters, and dashes that are no help at all in determining its final resting place. Sometimes it takes a little Internet research to find and block a truly offending ad.
The most effective method that I have found to determine a ‘hard to find’ ad address is to ‘google’ it’s message. If you find it offensive others will also and there will be comments about those very same ads all over the web. Recently I had an ad showing a scantily dressed woman implying that she helps men over 40 break their wedding vows (on my Bible Study site). I ‘googled’ the message and found out that I wasn’t the only Christian site that was plagued by that offensive ad. One Christian discussion site had the actual address listed in order to protest. One more ad to include on my ‘do not go’ blocked out forever list.
Setting Up an ‘AD Disclaimer’
Regardless of the type of advertising showing up on a site, I believe that it is important to have some kind of ‘Ad Disclaimer’ appearing on every page with ads or at least a link to an ‘Ad Disclaimer’ page. I also believe that it is important to give the readers a contact link in order to alert or complain about any offensive ads showing on your site.
I have seen tasteful disclaimers at the bottom of a page or even in a sidebar. I really do not like those which protest their own monetizing by placing the disclaimers (e.g.: “Ads are not necessarily endorsed by this site”) right above or below the ads themselves. It seems rather disingenuous to me even if they are effective.
I decided instead to set up an ‘AD Disclaimer’ page on everyone of my websites. A link to the ‘Ad Disclaimer’ is displayed at the top of every page included in the template of all individual posts and articles:
AD DISCLAIMER
Re: Offensive ADs Appearing On This Site
Please be Aware: The publisher of Blogging Ministry does not necessarily support the advertising showing up on this blog generated by Google’s AdSense program. It does help to pay for some of our website expenses but sometimes the ads are offensive and diametrically opposed to the Christian message promoted on this site.
As much as possible we take the time to block ads that are particularly troublesome but we can’t seem to get rid of all of them since new ones show up all of the time. Please bear with us on this issue.
If you see an ad on our site that is particularly offensive please alert us as soon as possible:
Click Here: To Contact Us by email
This is similar to the ‘Ad Disclaimer’ page that I have placed a link to at the top of all of my sites. Meanwhile, I will continue to be vigilant in keeping offensive ads off my site and at least now my readers have an opportunity to sound the alarm and comment on any offensive ads still falling through the cracks.
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