[Originally posted on Thursday, November 12, 2009 10:11:13 AM]

I firmly believe today's Admob is a product of small publishers or as some say hobbyist wapmasters. If you have spent some time on mobile internet you'll notice that majority of sites out there are small hobby sites that are hosted on free services. Admob gave those people a chance to make couple of dollars and enjoy their hobby more.

Anyone remembers first months of admob will remember their approach to the content of the sites that publish Admob adverts. Admob always had their content guidelines but they weren't strictly applied at first. This would be due to lack of staff to check each and every site, but whatever the reason is; it helped a lot to Admob and to their revenue stream. Everyone was happy.

But as Admob grew, number of unhappy publishers grew too. Simply because Admob started to force their content guidelines. Small/hobbyist publishers don't really care about content on their site or if they do, they usually haven't got enough time or resources to maintain compliance of their site with content guidelines. According to Admob they have 15K+ publishers. Although i have no real statistics I believe at least %70 of that 15K+ are small/hobbyist publishers.

Last content check by Admobe done by their outsourced team in India just before Google deal announced and many publisher accounts got closed including one that users Youtube api to create mobile Youtube access site who was publisher of Admob almost since they started business. Reason was that some video titles had keywords like SEXY - HOT . If you check Admob guidelines you'll see that there is no mentioning of keywords like SEXT - HOT being against their gudile lines and i myself seen many ads on Admob's network using those keywords.

From what I have read on Admob mailing list there is another problem. Admob's attitude to generated income of closed publisher accounts. They do not pay any money owed! They do not give you any answer about money owned to you! As small publisher (1) (2)


My worry is this type of attitude against small/hobbyist publishers will increase with Google's take over.

I hope I am wrong.

You've probably already heard that google started behavioral advert targeting. In a nut shell if you show interest to an advert on the google ad network you start to get more of smilar adverts as you surf on the internet.

It's been some time but I recently experienced it  on my blog. I was searching about FOREX and clicked on an advert on google home page. I don't usually click adverts on google but this time was different. I've read on the net that some people makes 100s in matter of days. That sounded perfect way to get extra money. Anyways, in short i didn't invest and i wasn't going to anyway. I just wanted to get some info about what it is.

After my short info gathering surf i started to realize that i keep seeing adverts about FOREX. At first I didn;t notice anything fishy as there is a good market and it is perfectly normal to come across adverts related to FOREX trading companies. My coin dropped when i started to see adverts about FOREX from google adsense on my blog! I don;t have any content related to FOREX or any financial system but i was seeing adverts about FOREX!

I advice everyone to do what i done. Whichever browser you are using get an ad-blocker plugin!

• Firefox already have one called adblock plus
• Internet explorere users can instal IE7Pro's ad blocker
• I use Opera and here is my urlfilter.ini. Copy > Open notepad > Paste > Save as "urlfilter.ini" and put it under profile folder of Opera
• Chrome? Are you mad? I am trying to stay away from google as much as possible.

Here is my Opera adblock list

Opera Preferences version 2.1
; Do not edit this file while Opera is running
; This file is stored in UTF-8 encoding

[prefs]
prioritize excludelist=1

[include]
*

[exclude]
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/*
http://*.2mdn.net/*
http://i.xx.openx.com*
http://img-cdn.mediaplex.com/*
http://*.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/*
http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/*
http://ds.serving-sys.com/*
http://cdn.undertone.com/*
http://bs.serving-sys.com/*
http://ad.doubleclick.net/*
http://spe.atdmt.com/*
http://hstgb.tradedoubler.com/*
http://r2.ace.advertising.com/*
http://reklam.e-kolay.net/reklam/*
http://*.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif
https://*.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif
http://*.google-analytics.com/ga.js
https://*.google-analytics.com/ga.js
http://*.adtech.de/*
http://*.atwola.com/adserv/*
http://ec.atdmt.com/b/*
http://cdn.fastclick.net/fastclick.net/*
http://images.widgetbucks.com/widgets/*
http://www.crowdgravity.com/AF_CG/*
http://content.yieldmanager.edgesuite.net/atoms/*
http://video.flashtalking.com/tagsv3/*
http://r1.ace.advertising.com/*
http://*.ace.advertising.com/*
http://*.247realmedia.com/RealMedia/*
http://cache.specificmedia.com/creative/*
http://info.clipta.com/storage/*
http://date.ventivmedia.com/sfwgirls/*
http://content.yieldmanager.edgesuite.net/ct/*
http://www.adreactor.com/services/*
http://www.friendlyduck.com/AF_TA/*
http://static.bittorrent.am/banners/*
http://ads.ookla.com/*
http://content.pop6.com/*
http://banners.adultfriendfinder.com/*
http://static.getclicky.com/*
https://static.getclicky.com/*
http://in.getclicky.com/*
https://in.getclicky.com/*
http://ads.ign.com/*
http://b1.adbrite.com/iads/*
http://ads.adbrite.com/*
http://statse.webtrendslive.com/*
http://m.webtrendslive.com/*
http://aka-cdn-ns.adtechus.com/apps/*
http://static.planet49.com/*
http://ad.yieldmanager.com/*
http://d1.openx.org/*
http://static2.theloungenet.com/Advertisers/*
http://www.ajansreklam.net/media/*
http://img.medyanet.com.tr/*
http://crea.medyanet.net/*
http://reklam.vimjo.com/*
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/*
http://ec.atdmt.com/ds/*
http://graphics.pop6.com/banners/*
http://ads.juicyads.com/network/*
http://static.fleshlight.com/images/*
http://data.ero-advertising.com/datanew/*
http://img.giantsquidmarketing.com/img?*
http://graphics.hotbox.com/banners/*
http://85.17.80.70/datanew/*
http://media.etology.com/bannerimg/*
http://nimages.gtsads.com/*
http://*.flashbanners.static.ard.cdn-xxxblackbook.com/flashbanners/*
http://ads.media.program3.com/images/*
http://*.img.awempire.com/jsm/*
http://new.gtsads.com/*