Inside the science of contextual matching

As an AdSense Product Manager for ads quality, I'm part of a group that works to make the ads on your site relevant for users. One of the ways we do this is through contextual targeting, which matches ads to the content of your webpages. With contextual targeting, our system parses and analyzes the content of your page, conducts an auction among the relevant ads, then serves the winning ads -- all in the blink of an eye! Pretty simple, right?

Actually, matching relevant ads to the content of your pages is quite a scientific challenge involving semantic analysis and machine learning. It's a challenge that keeps me and my team busy. Our machines are very good at the matching process, but there are still a few cases where their definition of relevance differs from our human definition of relevance. In these few cases, the system might end up serving ads that don't seem immediately relevant to users. We understand that increased ad relevance contributes to a positive experience for users, publishers, and advertisers, so we're continuously working on ways to improve the relevance and quality of ads that appear on your sites.

I'm excited to let you know that this week, we'll be rolling out a series of enhancements to AdSense's contextual targeting capabilities, which will more accurately match relevant ads to webpages. You won't need to update your AdSense account or ad code, as these changes will be applied automatically. In many ways these types of improvements are par for the course at Google - but I wanted to let you know about the kinds of improvements we've been focusing on. Please keep in mind that these changes won't affect how other types of ads are matched to your sites; for instance, you'll continue to see placement-targeted ads when advertisers bid to appear specifically on your pages.

This is by no means the end of our efforts to perfect the system, but we believe that with these changes users will start to see even more relevant ads, advertisers will generate more attractive returns by finding the right users, and publishers should make more money over time.

As always, we're interested in your feedback on these improvements!

Tuesday, August 18, 2009 at 2:18:00 PM

19 comments:

David said...

I will generate dynamic web pages for which there is a lot of context, such as "two people arranging a date near zip code 12345 seeking a restaurant".

What is the best way to let Google AdSense detect the context, especially the transitory aspects such as zip code that are purely dynamic?

saaZ said...

Dear sir,
I see there are few of the visitors using proxyserver to visit my website. Is there any method to hide ads from such proxyserver? Since few days I've being receiving rapid clicks in my ads. And it was not supposed to happen.
If you have any such feature then Please provide me information about that. I want to hide Ads from such proxyserver. I cannot describe which one is proxy server so I hope google have their own resource to detect any proxy server and ban them.
I feel there is a risk for my website and my website account. Please inform me about this. I am waiting for your response.
thanx

LobKing said...

We hope this will work and start see more relevant ads on our webpages.

Thanks adsense support team

tenouk said...

Me Love "contextual targeting" for longg time... but hate "Interest-based Ads" that keep showing unrelated adds..

wasaweb said...

It's a bit difficult to get the picture, since concrete details are lacking - nevertheless I look forward to see what changes will be effected.

SCREET METODE said...

Thanks for your info
and I hope I can make big earn from Adsense always day by day and mont by month

Ellithy said...

I would like to make much attention to interest-based ads
they have higher ctr for publishers and sure they are more useful to advertiser.
they seem not to be working on Arabic sites.

spencer said...

I was getting fairly relevant ads after installing section ignore and section targeting, but today (Aug. 19) it appears google is ignoring my targeting and reverting back to looking at entire pages. I am now getting irrelevant ads.

Is this because the upgrades will take some time to take effect?

My content is very subtle. A computer will never get it right. Only hands-on section targeting will get me the right ads.

Jobs Online Directory said...

Nice to see this improvement for the publishers. Thanks for the information

George said...

Sorry - nowhere else to report this. The Google Adsense change country form has a bug - it doesn't recognise county, province or region. PLEASE fix this ASAP.

Ronald said...

"Actually, matching relevant ads to the content of your pages is quite a scientific challenge involving semantic analysis and machine learning."

That smells like VooDoo on so many levels.

How about working from a set of definitions so one can actually get what's going on.

Like(simplified):

Information = Data in context
Context = Organized data
Learning = Self organization of Data

Which means learning builds context which we use to evaluate data.

Or what's your def of learning (some people still think it's memorization, what's context and how is it created ?)

News Blog said...

Nice Post
Gay

zabiullah said...

i want to know about adsence how to earn money i heared lot anout it but havent done it practical i wanna do so can u help me

zack said...

i have already done my adsense account for a few months,why is that until now i dont receive my confirmation of application ,where as it is just a week,now its already a month,i need my ads to be working all of it are not working. i need it on my blog.please do something about my concern.

mark stallon said...

well first off all i think it is working for me and my blogs thanks google

Moth said...

Interesting post, but is this actually in place already as my CTR has tanked in the last two or three days. I have long struggled with irrelevant ads showing up and found section targeting tags only partially useful and very slow to work if they do work.

Alastair said...

I'm almost certain this work will see a decrease in my earnings and here is why...

My income stream comes from (1) Direct advertising, (2) Google and (3) InfoLinks. InfoLinks I joined about 5 months ago and currently has built to some 75% of my Google earnings.

The point I would make is that Google adverts are well targetted to my site but the InfoLinks most certainly are not and yet the trend with them suggest that within the next 6 months they are likely to exceed my Google earnings.

As my site is an education one about Scottish history Google serves up lots of Kilt adverts and I would suggest while relevant are not likely to be purchased very often. As most of the people that visit my site will likely be of Scots or Irish background all over the world I'm stuck with these types of kilt adverts.

The InfoLinks results would suggest to me that I would do far better on non Scottish adverts and yet Google seem to want to make their advertising even more relevant and hence I suspect my earnings might actually go down as a result.

TechsTalker said...

It is a shame that adsense doesn't consider the webpages with dynamic content(read AJAX)

Term said...

I have a question adsense is delete my account how i create again? and thanks for the info keep sharing..!