My Blog

During the recent U.S. election period, our team heard your concerns
and feedback regarding political ads appearing on publisher sites. As a
Product Manager who helps build the AdSense product, I'd like to take a
moment to explain our ad targeting technology and policies, and what
we're working on to offer you even more controls.Ad Targeting I wanted
to help clarify first how advertisers are able to target your sites. As
you know, ads that appear on AdSense sites are provided by advertisers
participating in the AdWords program. To help publishers earn revenue,
advertisers are able to target ads not only based on the content of a
site, but also based on the audience of the site. When we first started
AdSense in 2003, we only offered contextually-targeted ads; advertisers
bid on keywords, and our system matched those keywords to the content
of publishers' pages. As we developed the product, we expanded these
targeting capabilities. For instance, placement targeting allows
advertisers to select specific topics, sites, and pages on which they
want their ads to run. In the U.S., our placement targeting tool also
allows advertisers to find sites serving a specific audience, such
as "Males ages 18-24."To help new and existing publishers better
understand our targeting options, our support teams will be reviewing
and expanding the material available on our Help Center and homepage to
make sure it better communicates our offerings. In addition, we'll be
exploring different methods of explaining this information, such as
through webbing and videos, and demonstrating how publishers can
optimize their sites to take advantage of these targeting
options.Advertising Policies We also received questions about why
political ads are able to run on Google and AdSense sites. The Google
advertising program is managed by a set of editorial policies that we
have developed based on various factors, including user and customer
experience. While Google or its executives and employees may express
opinions about specific political issues and candidates, Google's
advertising system does not favor one political position over another.
Our network provides advertisers with a way to reach their audience,
whether they are companies selling products or political campaigns
promoting candidates or issues. Just as Google's advertising system
does not favor one car manufacturer's ads over a competitor's in our
auction, we also allow ads regardless of the particular political
position they represent.Publisher Ad ControlAs we've expanded to new
forms of advertiser targeting, we've also added controls for the ads
that can appear on your sites. Our automated targeting technology will
never understand your users as well as you, so it's important that you
have the ability to control their ad experience. For example, we
mentioned earlier this week that tools such as the Competitive Ad
Filter and Ad Review Center are designed for you to prevent specific
ads from appearing on your pages. 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. One of our goals with AdSense is to
help you easily generate revenue for your site without much work, so
that you have more time to focus on developing great content. Many of
our best ideas, like the Ad Review Center, are inspired by your
feedback and suggestions. Please keep letting us know how we can make
AdSense a better product.