Stopping Abuse on Adgitize and a New Rule
Posted by kexbrown on January 7, 2009
It has been brought to my attention that there is an overuse of Adgitize Ad Groups showing on some blogs. As with any good idea there is a handful that think more is better. They don’t realize the fine balance in advertising in providing a good location for the ad message, the right quantities of ads on a page and the power of less is more.
A Reminder about Our Rules
We have a rule here at Adgitize that you are limited to two Adgitize Ad Groups per page view. The reason for that rule is to provide balance and a good advertising environment for our advertisers. If you were advertising you would want your ad to show in the best place possible to drive customers to your blog or business location.
Our ease of use copy and paste system allows blogs to add Adgitize Ad Groups all over the place with no regard for their blog look and feel or the value the advertiser will place on this blog’s value to the advertiser’s ad.
I was hoping that this system would self regulate itself as bloggers would not want a large number of ads floating all over their blog. But, then we reward you based on ad views, so it lends itself to abuse pretty easily.
Stopping Abuse Immediately
Anyway, starting immediately, our team will be wandering around the Adgitize community and looking for pages abusing the Adgitize system with more than 2 Adgitize Ad Groups showing. It is real easy for us to turn off blogs abusing the system. We send you an email and tell you why we are turning you off. You stop receiving page view points, article points and ad views points.
When you are ready to only put two Adgitize Ad Groups on the blog in question then send us an email with a link to the blog and we will reinstate the blog. We will also keep a close watch for further abuse from that member.
Limit to 10 Ads Showing on a Page
We are also implementing a new rule starting today. A blog may only show a total of 10 Adgitize ads at one time per page view. So if you have an Adgitize Ad Group of 6 ads then you may have another Adgitize Ad Group of 4 ads. Then you would have a total of 10 ads showing with only 2 Adgitize Ad Groups.
A Benefit to Publishers
I challenge all of you to look long term. We show advertisers which blogs show their ads and how often they are being clicked. We do that for the publisher’s benefit. Why is that a benefit for the publisher? Because as a good publisher you may be able to earn a lot more dollars selling ads on your own space than you can as just an Adgitize Publisher.
We make it easy for an advertiser to visit your blog if the advertiser likes the numbers they see. But, when they see 40 ads showing all at once then they are turned off from advertising on your blog and from advertising in the Adgitize Network.
Think about Your Blog’s Future
If you think you aren’t earning enough as an Adgitize member, then I can assure you driving away current advertisers and potential advertisers will not help you earn more.
Anyway enough of me preaching. Starting today, any blogs with more than 2 ad groups per page will be having that blog turned off from earning points in the Adgitize system until you fix it.
All bloggers need to evaluate the number of Adgitize ads currently showing on each page and reduce that number to ten. I will be a little more lenient to let that slide for a couple of days until you have time to correct that issue.
Why 5 Categories of Earning Points?
This post is already too long, but I did want to mention, that the reason we have five categories of earning points is to help prevent this type of abuse. A person showing too many ads on their page is really only going to be able to score 1/5 the possible scores necessary to be on top. They still need to be writing articles, we want them to be advertisers and we would like for them to be visiting other blogs and becoming readers and commentators on those blogs.
This is also why we have a sliding scale for ad views and page views. To reduce the advantage gained by this type of abuse.
Matt Oxley said,
Hey Ken, thanks for looking at this, i have been seeing this for the last few weeks and as an advertiser and a publisher I want to see the most benefit for my dollar and be able to remain competetive without having 50 ad blocks on my site…thanks very much
as i have said before, your quick response to things like this and other things is the reason why I believe Adgitize will have continued success in the future
Rik said,
Good call Ken,
The 2 ad block rule was fine at the beginning, when the biggest ad block was just a 1X4. With the newer ad blocks going up to a max of 3X3 it was getting a bit crazy. The limit of 10 ads total is more than justified.
Only 1 of my blogs exceeded that limit anyway and is already corrected to fit the new, sensible rules.
Looks a lot better for it too
Rik
Jena Isle said,
I am new here and I’m still finding my way. so I’ll just post the code in my blog and then what? Thanks for any help.
kexbrown said,
@Jena – then keep doing the things that good bloggers do everyday. Write good articles, stay in contact with other bloggers and maybe think about advertising on the Adgitize network.
david said,
im new also and this is my first comment in here. hope i can get 5/5 score. and i will put 1 group of ads again in my blog cause I only place one singgle 125×125 in my blog go go go adgitize
Grandy said,
Way to be on top of things Ken. It’s very much appreciated by those that try to play fair in the sandbox.
eric said,
i saw the improvements already on some blogs. they corrected the showing of more than 2 group ads.
mye said,
Good call, Ken! This will surely balance things out for Adgitize advertisers.
sharkbytes said,
Well, I’m still trying to figure the click system out, but this all sounds good.