I have been disappointed with the AdSense ads I have seen on my blog. They all advertise poor-quality vendors and controversial topics.
Doing research on this many people got banned from Adsense for no clear reason after using them successfully for years. Others had their number of visits decrease which is clearly showing the ads are invasive. I reported an ad that was political and against what I believed. Site visitors might assume that I believe that if they come to my site. It is clear that those kinds of ads will make your visitors assume things about you that aren’t true.
There are other non-adsense ways to get ad revenue on your blog. I am investigating that as well. You do have some broad ways to control the types of ads that are shown, but there should be more specific ways to filter out ads. I think ultimately that AdSense won’t work for me because I don’t like the trash they are selling.
The ads that I have seen on my site have nothing to do with my content and often are about things that I didn’t even know existed. I saw an ad for an attorney, something for trucking, and so on. It really is a random mash-up of things. In the past, I tried a plugin that replaced text and had links to products but it made very little money. It honestly wasn’t worth it for me. I feel that links are assumed to be useful and when you start messing with those you violate the trust that users have with you.
I can also begin to understand why people like long-form content. One of the longest recent posts that I wrote is very popular and it shows in the time that the people stayed on site to read it. I can understand why websites are focused on increasing the time on the page so that they can place ads with higher value. This doesn’t mean that I will automatically have longer content, but it also shows people who want details.
This has been educational trying out AdSense. Even if it doesn’t work for me, I am glad I did it.