I have just been killing time and played a game on my iPhone. A free one. One with little ads at the bottom, mainly asking you to download all sorts of apps and games. Powered by Admob. And what do I get? An ad in Dutch asking me to download Skype. Then one in French offering me a free game. To make it clear: I am in the UK and had been playing on a UK-sourced iPhone with an O2 UK SIM card. I am a foreigner in this country but I am neither Dutch nor French; in fact, neither the Dutch nor the French usually like to be thrown into one pot with Germans… ;-).
Does anyone really think that this will work? And, moreover: what are ad “impressions” really worth when they only quite literally display, well, random stuff rather than ads people can also understand (for those unaware: being able to say “merci” with an even remotely foreign-sounding accent is considered a major linguistic accomplishment in this country)? In this context, AdMob’s recently reported numbers might be queried, I guess…
If advertising is to serve as a working alternative business model to paid downloads, then it is absolutely mandatory that advertising networks get their back-ends right. Depending on the ad model, simple ad fill might be enough for a publisher (if they are being paid by impressions; ECPM) but not if they are paid by click (CPC) but impressions of Dutch ads to Germans in the UK surely do not impress advertisers who are, after all, footing the bill!
I don’t know if this was a small glitch in AdMob’s systems or is more widely spread but I do hope it is the former.
Patrick Lord
On most ad networks, the majority of ads are paid by CPC and Admob is no exception. The problem is twofold:
– It is down to the advertiser to define the targeting of their ads, not the ad network. So if an advertiser uploads banners in one language for their campaign, but targets them at people in another country with a different language, that's what you get. The ad networks do not have the resources to police this.
– it is down to the publishers to implement ad serving code correctly on their sites. And some of them will cheat. In this case, it may have been admob code used to integrate ads into the app, in which case publisher cheating can be avoided. But on mobile web sites, publishers can spoof the IP and useragent, and re-engineer the adserving code, and serve literally any kind of ad they want. Of course if they serve ads in the wrong language, they lose out on click revenue too.
Remember the old adage that with any system 'if you put crap in you get crap out'. The thing is that with a CPC or CPA model the advertisers lose volume but not money whilst the publishers (and indirectly the ad networks) lose face.
Patrick Lord
On most ad networks, the majority of ads are paid by CPC and Admob is no exception. The problem is twofold:
– It is down to the advertiser to define the targeting of their ads, not the ad network. So if an advertiser uploads banners in one language for their campaign, but targets them at people in another country with a different language, that's what you get. The ad networks do not have the resources to police this.
– it is down to the publishers to implement ad serving code correctly on their sites. And some of them will cheat. In this case, it may have been admob code used to integrate ads into the app, in which case publisher cheating can be avoided. But on mobile web sites, publishers can spoof the IP and useragent, and re-engineer the adserving code, and serve literally any kind of ad they want. Of course if they serve ads in the wrong language, they lose out on click revenue too.
Remember the old adage that with any system 'if you put crap in you get crap out'. The thing is that with a CPC or CPA model the advertisers lose volume but not money whilst the publishers (and indirectly the ad networks) lose face.